Evenings in Ferrara

So having been kept busy from morning to morning with 6 hour intensive italian classes, naturally during the afternoons and the evenings we all have been doing our best to explore Ferrara and blow off steam. The best way to do this?

Passegiata a mercoledi:

In the evenings in Italy after dinner, everyone heads to the center piazza to mingle and socialize, and in Ferrara the biggest Passegiata night is mercoledi (wednesday), and for us young people every other night is also for festaggiare or partying. This past wednesday was the first night we had a chance to go and it was shoulder-to-shoulder. Most people congregate around the Cathedral and the surrounding bars. We've met a bunch of italians, but university here has yet to start so most college kids are still out of town. As you can tell from the pictures below my candids need a little work so I have borrowed a couple of my friend's much better photos. . .

The Spritz

Living in Italy has done wonders for building my my cocktail knowledge and unlike in the U.S., Italians like to keep it simple. There are 2 typical drinks here-the Negroni which I have already talked about and the even more popular Spritz.

Every bar you walk into people are most likely drinking a spritz, it is made with Aperol Liquor (no, I have no idea what that is) which looks like a less red Campari, and white wine. When ordering you can ask for either still or sparking wine (ferma or frizzante). It's delicious and not quite as hit or miss as a Negroni.

Internet problemos, the beginning of the semester

Hi, long time no post.

It's been a very hectic 4 days. To make a long story short, our directors had to do some last minute adjustments to our living arrangements and it turns out that I am in a home stay with another girl from my program, Natasha. Our italian mama is Carmen. She she speaks no english, provides us with 2 meals a day, and does our laundry. Pretty great deal. Her house is beautiful and in the medieval part of Ferrara, it's only a 20 minute walk to class, but after class is over, pretty much everything else is also 20 minutes away so it ends up being a lot. Tomorrow I'm renting a bike.

Today was our first day of class, we have two weeks of intensive italian classes, as in 6 hours a day. I was quite nervous this morning because I'm in the "advanced" class, but it turned out fine. I understood (mostly) everything but speaking still needs some work.

Considering the amount of time we are having to spend in class plus our non-english speaking italian parents, I better be damn good at this by december.

Everyone in my group is great, there are 16 of us and we all get along well. We all have each other's phone numbers and we all meet to go out so it's great.

I haven't taken a lot of pictures in the past few days because we were in orientation from 9-11 and then we've been settling into our homes.

New Pictures to come. . .