In which Amber finally gets inside the synagogue
Last Friday, I finally found San Francesco! It’s right near the top of the Hill of Doom. I really like the little park outside, and I want to study there when it’s not pouring rain (like it is right now). I went inside the Basilica when I finally found it (it was open because it was 9 in the morning), and it was beautiful. I even paid 50 Euro cents to light one of the little candles. Sadly, again, no pictures allowed inside.
That afternoon, I did some more exploring out beyond the Duomo (L’ Aquila and La Tartuca). It drizzled a bit, so I ended up going into a bookstore that turned out to be English-language. Now I know where to buy more British edition Harry Potters! Still not Book 6, though. Why is my favorite one nowhere to be found, in British English or Italian? I may or may not have gone through the La Chiocciola (Snail) and La Pantera (Panther) contradas, but I didn’t see any contrada paraphernalia. I did eventually find myself in La Selva (Jungle, with the rhinoceros mascot), and that’s where I took a photo of the fountain. Then I was back at the Duomo. So I basically walked around a third of the city, the district known as Terzo di Città.
Apparently, Siena is built on three hills, and the city has three parts, corresponding to each hill, to which the people have some kind of allegiance (though of course the contrada comes first): Terzo di Camollia, Terzo di San Martino, and Terzo di Città.
Friday night I hung out in the Piazza del Campo with one of my housemates, Roman, and some of his friends from the UC program in Siena, most of them from Santa Cruz. It’s nice being out in a big piazza with all sorts of people walking around-and there are all sorts. It’ll be a shame when it gets too cold (or WET-gah, rain) to do that anymore.
Saturday morning at 9:10am we were on the bus to Florence, though all of us had been out until 2 or 3 the previous night. Out of our program of 30, only six of us were alive enough to make it, haha-me, Mary, Fernanda, Alisa, Frank, and Harrison. A little over an hour later we were in Florence. After a cup of coffee as a pick-me-up, we met up with Fernanda’s friend Dylan, who is studying in Florence this semester. He took us around to some of the big sites, like the Duomo, Medici Palace, Ponte Vecchio, Dante’s house, the Uffizi. We didn’t go into anything, we decided that this would be more of a getting-ourselves-oriented-in-Florence trip. Plus we didn’t have any reservations. I am disturbed by the fact that I found the flatness of Florence disorienting. Though we eventually climbed up a massive hill to get a great view, and I felt better. This is a disturbing development. I may be suffering from the previously unknown condition of being-in-shape. Even Hill of Doom, Junior from my school to Piazza del Campo doesn’t make me want to die as much as it used to. I am becoming addicted to Siena’s Stairmaster-like qualities. Anywho, we got pretty tired by about 3 pm, so we took the 4pm bus back to Siena. The four girls decided to meet back in Siena for dinner at 8:30 (we had already told our host families we wouldn’t be home for dinner), and had fun at a reasonably priced restaurant off the main drag. Then we hit the Piazza del Campo, and I ended up wandering around the city a bit with UC people (thus the nighttime pictures by the Leocorno fountain). And then, of course, the last 24 hours caught up to me, and I walked home at midnight. And then I slept for about 10 hours.
On Sunday, I managed to make the house lose power (yay hairdryers!) while no one from the host family was home, and then freak out about it. Once they got back about an hour later, they had the power on again in a minute (really, one minute) and said it was no problem. Apparently this is a very common occurrence. Yay Europe. So then I went into the center, tried to get into the synagogue during visiting hours and failed. Ended up having a linnerlike snack at 4pm with Roman-we ate at a Chinese restaurant, haha. It was actually pretty good. I went back yesterday for their fried rice (only 2.50 Euros).
Monday, I went into the city early (9ish) to try for synagogue open hours again. And it worked-I had to pay 3 Euro for the little personalized tour-the cantor’s wife led me and two Israeli tourists around and talked about the history of the Jews in Siena (and Italy). Apparently there are only 30,000 Jews in Italy. 15,000 in Rome, 10,000 in Milan, and only 5000 in the rest of the country. Siena has about 50 who go to the synagogue. Though it’s technically Orthodox, apparently they’re mostly non-religious and just come for the community and culture and all that. The very nice woman gave me her husband’s card, and told me to call to talk about coming to services. Apparently several American students generally come every semester-she says none of them are Orthodox either and no one has a problem. I might go to Rosh Hashanah morning service on Saturday, though I can’t go Friday night because I have my cooking class.
Then it was back to class, to learn what happens when prepositions meet articles in Italian (answer: nothing good). And then we had an expedition with the advanced class in which we took the bus to the train station (I know how to get there now!) which is next to the shopping mall (I know how to get there now too!). Inside the mall, we went to the grocery store PAM, and had to answer questions about fruits and vegetables and try to find the ingredients for a recipe. It was very fun. Then we went to the contrada dinner for La Civetta (Owl) in their contrada museum.
Tuesday we learned one of the past tenses, so I am halfway towards being able to converse in a useful manner (or maybe a third, I still need the imperfect past tense and the future).
Today we didn’t have to come to class until noon because we were supposed to go to the giant open air market in Siena and write down some stuff about clothes and household objects. And I bought way too much stuff, but it was fun and there were some great deals. Class today we didn’t do very much productive-one grammar worksheet and going over our market experience, and the rest of the time playing four games of Mafia. You may know this game in the U.S.-we generally play with the detective, the doctor, the killers and the normal people. Today we played with the wolves, the immortal, the vigilant person, the prostitute, and the normal people. The game when I was one of the wolves we pretty much annihilated the side of good. But the other three times I was a good guy I died in the first or second round-apparently I’m very suspicious….?
I will update with Florence pictures soon-they even have people in them! Things are going great, except for this silly rain. I’m definitely going to get gelato anyway though, because I am crazy. Miss you! Until next time.
That afternoon, I did some more exploring out beyond the Duomo (L’ Aquila and La Tartuca). It drizzled a bit, so I ended up going into a bookstore that turned out to be English-language. Now I know where to buy more British edition Harry Potters! Still not Book 6, though. Why is my favorite one nowhere to be found, in British English or Italian? I may or may not have gone through the La Chiocciola (Snail) and La Pantera (Panther) contradas, but I didn’t see any contrada paraphernalia. I did eventually find myself in La Selva (Jungle, with the rhinoceros mascot), and that’s where I took a photo of the fountain. Then I was back at the Duomo. So I basically walked around a third of the city, the district known as Terzo di Città.
Apparently, Siena is built on three hills, and the city has three parts, corresponding to each hill, to which the people have some kind of allegiance (though of course the contrada comes first): Terzo di Camollia, Terzo di San Martino, and Terzo di Città.
Friday night I hung out in the Piazza del Campo with one of my housemates, Roman, and some of his friends from the UC program in Siena, most of them from Santa Cruz. It’s nice being out in a big piazza with all sorts of people walking around-and there are all sorts. It’ll be a shame when it gets too cold (or WET-gah, rain) to do that anymore.
Saturday morning at 9:10am we were on the bus to Florence, though all of us had been out until 2 or 3 the previous night. Out of our program of 30, only six of us were alive enough to make it, haha-me, Mary, Fernanda, Alisa, Frank, and Harrison. A little over an hour later we were in Florence. After a cup of coffee as a pick-me-up, we met up with Fernanda’s friend Dylan, who is studying in Florence this semester. He took us around to some of the big sites, like the Duomo, Medici Palace, Ponte Vecchio, Dante’s house, the Uffizi. We didn’t go into anything, we decided that this would be more of a getting-ourselves-oriented-in-Florence trip. Plus we didn’t have any reservations. I am disturbed by the fact that I found the flatness of Florence disorienting. Though we eventually climbed up a massive hill to get a great view, and I felt better. This is a disturbing development. I may be suffering from the previously unknown condition of being-in-shape. Even Hill of Doom, Junior from my school to Piazza del Campo doesn’t make me want to die as much as it used to. I am becoming addicted to Siena’s Stairmaster-like qualities. Anywho, we got pretty tired by about 3 pm, so we took the 4pm bus back to Siena. The four girls decided to meet back in Siena for dinner at 8:30 (we had already told our host families we wouldn’t be home for dinner), and had fun at a reasonably priced restaurant off the main drag. Then we hit the Piazza del Campo, and I ended up wandering around the city a bit with UC people (thus the nighttime pictures by the Leocorno fountain). And then, of course, the last 24 hours caught up to me, and I walked home at midnight. And then I slept for about 10 hours.
On Sunday, I managed to make the house lose power (yay hairdryers!) while no one from the host family was home, and then freak out about it. Once they got back about an hour later, they had the power on again in a minute (really, one minute) and said it was no problem. Apparently this is a very common occurrence. Yay Europe. So then I went into the center, tried to get into the synagogue during visiting hours and failed. Ended up having a linnerlike snack at 4pm with Roman-we ate at a Chinese restaurant, haha. It was actually pretty good. I went back yesterday for their fried rice (only 2.50 Euros).
Monday, I went into the city early (9ish) to try for synagogue open hours again. And it worked-I had to pay 3 Euro for the little personalized tour-the cantor’s wife led me and two Israeli tourists around and talked about the history of the Jews in Siena (and Italy). Apparently there are only 30,000 Jews in Italy. 15,000 in Rome, 10,000 in Milan, and only 5000 in the rest of the country. Siena has about 50 who go to the synagogue. Though it’s technically Orthodox, apparently they’re mostly non-religious and just come for the community and culture and all that. The very nice woman gave me her husband’s card, and told me to call to talk about coming to services. Apparently several American students generally come every semester-she says none of them are Orthodox either and no one has a problem. I might go to Rosh Hashanah morning service on Saturday, though I can’t go Friday night because I have my cooking class.
Then it was back to class, to learn what happens when prepositions meet articles in Italian (answer: nothing good). And then we had an expedition with the advanced class in which we took the bus to the train station (I know how to get there now!) which is next to the shopping mall (I know how to get there now too!). Inside the mall, we went to the grocery store PAM, and had to answer questions about fruits and vegetables and try to find the ingredients for a recipe. It was very fun. Then we went to the contrada dinner for La Civetta (Owl) in their contrada museum.
Tuesday we learned one of the past tenses, so I am halfway towards being able to converse in a useful manner (or maybe a third, I still need the imperfect past tense and the future).
Today we didn’t have to come to class until noon because we were supposed to go to the giant open air market in Siena and write down some stuff about clothes and household objects. And I bought way too much stuff, but it was fun and there were some great deals. Class today we didn’t do very much productive-one grammar worksheet and going over our market experience, and the rest of the time playing four games of Mafia. You may know this game in the U.S.-we generally play with the detective, the doctor, the killers and the normal people. Today we played with the wolves, the immortal, the vigilant person, the prostitute, and the normal people. The game when I was one of the wolves we pretty much annihilated the side of good. But the other three times I was a good guy I died in the first or second round-apparently I’m very suspicious….?
I will update with Florence pictures soon-they even have people in them! Things are going great, except for this silly rain. I’m definitely going to get gelato anyway though, because I am crazy. Miss you! Until next time.