School Daze...

.So I get to the University on Monday morning just before 9 and students are sardined into the main vestibule, zig-zagged every which way. Complete disorder and obviously not enough administrators to assist all the incoming students that are waiting to get enrolled, get their temporary registration to live and attend university, and to take their entrance placement exam. I´m hardly a morning person, so my crankiness level rose to about 7.4 on the richter scale. I really like organization and promptness (although punctuality is hardly my forte), especially at world-renown institutions...so to say this was unorganized is an understatement.

As of this posting, I have yet to commence classes because the line to get my entrance placement results (and thus my class schedule) has been 4 hours minimum in a basement that apparently has the heat going all year round. Ugh.

I also managed to get an apartment after seeing 5 assorted slums, complete with paint crumbling off the walls in 4 of them. Unfortunately, I didn´t take the (only) one that was the cheapest, large, nice and nearest to the University because my roommates would have been a 75-year-old married couple looking to rent out their 2nd bedroom. Sigh. My current apartment is pretty crappy with a sketchy Italian roommate who calls himself Fran (who is also my landlord) but not that expensive either. I picked it for two reasons: it´s located on the only flat road in Perugia (land of the rolling mountains) and it will force me to never be there.

P.S. In case you didn´t know, there´s a magnetic forcefield around Italy and as soon as you enter the country, you deodorant immediately ceases to function.

Oh and by the way, I love the comments, I read them all so thank you very much. Keep 'em coming.

Lovable Chaos

The amazing author Neil Gaiman once described Italy with those two words. I concur.

Trekking back to Sunday: I took plane, trains, and automobiles to get from Berlin back to Perugia. The grand voyage began at 3am in Berlin, ending at 4:30pm in good old Perugia. Practically every view you set your eyes on here takes your breathe away...as long as you're not looking beyond the façade (many apartments in Perugia are terribly rundown, especially those rented to students.)

Being first generation Italian-American, you´d think I´d appreciate the motherland and possibly even want to live there someday (ahem, Mom). But it's not so simple. And I do love Italy because it´s gorgeous but it´s just, well, not my cup of espresso. I can´t seem to identify much at all with the people nor their general mentality and certainly not with the way things are organized (hah, Italy and organization are two words that never belong in the same sentence.) But it´s a love-hate relationship because, of course, I think I do have some of that "Ah, who cares" mentality in me as well and so I like it when their mentality works to my advantage (for example, taking the bus the other day without paying for a ticket and not even thinking twice about it because I know Italians really could care less about traffic and public transportation law enforcement in general.) On the upside, I have lots of friends and relatives that are either living in or visiting various regions of Italy, so I'm looking forward to seeing familiar faces in strange places.

On that note, I´m actually a bit sad that Germany lost last night, because it´s also sweet to see the host country lift the cup. Alas, the world is not perfect. (I know, I know, my family is probably throwing my belongings out of the window as I type this.)