Kebabs!

January 10, 2011

Today was the first day of orientation at the school and we were first welcomed by the dean of the school Marcello Fantoni (who I must say is a pretty awesome guy and all of the girls would love to marry him if he weren’t married and like 55). After Marcello talked for a while we had to begin the process of filling out our home stay permits. Everyone who lives in Florence must fill out a stay permit and if anyone were to spend the night in our apartment it would be against the law because they wouldn’t have a stay permit for our apartment – it’s pretty serious stuff.

We had a break for lunch and I got my first Kebab and it was out of this world! It was like a huge pita that the guy cooked and then he brought it out, put fresh clumps of cheese on it and shaved pieces of chicken off of this huge rotating hunk of meat (all the girls claim it was lamb but I swear the guy said it was chicken). He put it back into the oven and then brought it out and put lettuce and a yogurt sauce on top. I always thought you were supposed to eat Kebabs rolled up but he cut mine like a pizza for me and I could have probably ate the whole thing, but I saved two pieces. After I got my Kebab and everyone else had lunch we went to the market – and I must saw walking around with food in a pizza box is a bad idea because I got harassed by so many vendors asking me for a slice. At the market I bought red and yellow peppers, onions, and potatoes which combined only cost me less than 5 euro and it filled an entire plastic shopping bag.

We had to go back to the school to meet with our housing people and they re-went over different things inside of our apartments and whatnot. Italy highly stresses energy conservation so fuses blow extremely easily if say too many lights are turned on or if the stove and washing machine are both in use. Also the have heat regulations on how warm each person’s heating elements can be in their household and literally the heat won’t go up any higher even if you try to turn the dial yourself. We also got talked to by a police officer on different ways to stay safe in the city and he gave really helpful pointers that I wouldn’t have ever thought about – like if you’re wearing a backpack to class someone can easily open one of your small outer pockets without you knowing, so I carry my book bag with all of the zippers toward my back. The school had a reception with mini sandwiches and fruit, so me and my roommates filled up on the free food and then headed to a gelato shop to use their free Wi-Fi because there still is no internet in our apartment. I got chocolate chip (in Italian it’s some crazy s word) and tiramisu gelato and finally got to Skype mom! We came back from the gelato shop and sat in the family room and watched Lauren’s season one DVD’s of Modern Family with a little wine, and went to bed.