Carnevale a Venezia e un po' di lavoro

Ciao tutti,

Well, I’ve been very busy the last two weeks. Mostly with classes, which started last Monday, Feb. 4. Here’s an update on that, and then we can get to the fun stuff:

After a little bit of juggling, here’s what my schedule looks like (hint: it wasn’t supposed to look anything like this. Some things transcend location). For the first part of the semester, I’ll be spending about 18 hours a week in lectures. Sound like a lot? It is. Factor in that those lectures are in Italian, a language I’m not quite proficient with yet, and… Yeah. It’s going to be an adventure.

The classes I’m taking are Ancient History of Emilia Romagna (this region of Italy), Contemporary Italian Literature, and Modern African History. I know, I know, that last one’s a bit out of nowhere, but Rachel and I are both trying to fill some credits while we’re here. Hopefully that one will transfer! The history and literature classes will definitely count for our minor in Italian.

So far, things are going pretty well. Emilia Romagna is almost all American students – although there are a scant few Italians, a Spaniard, and an Australian as well. In fact, there are quite a few foreign students in all of my classes. I find myself wondering if we picked classes that are easily accessible to foreign students, or if there are so many foreign students here that all the classes are like that. My guess is a little of both – if we found out about the classes and thought they sounded manageable, chances are others did too. But there are also over 4,000 foreign students at Bologna every semester. So who knows! I’m considering it a benefit, for the time being. Being in a class with other non-native speakers makes me feel more comfortable, mostly because the professor knows there’s a large number of us and will be accommodating. At least, hopefully. We’ve had good luck so far.

The way credits work here is a little bit complicated and took us forever to figure out. Kudos to Rachel for doing most of the thinking on it and producing all of the results. I was a little bit too culture-shocked and jet-lagged the first week to be of much use. The way credits transfer to OU, enrolling (I use that term loosely – Italians don’t care much for such things like “enrolling” and “taking attendance”) in 24 hours here is equal to 12 at home. So to be full-time students, we have to take a combination of 6 and 12 credit hour classes that total to 24. What’s the difference between 6 and 12, you ask? Well, we were confused, as well. Could a 12 credit class be so hard that it could possibly be worth twice the amount of credit? Is it possible that we could spend 24 hours in lecture a week, twice what we do in the US, for the same amount of credit?

Well, no. See, the 12 hour classes are 6 hours a week all semester. But the 6 credit classes are 6 hours a week for half the semester. So instead of taking four of the 6 credit classes and being in lecture 24 hours a week all semester, we’re able to divide it up. Rachel and I have decided to take two 6 credit classes and one 12 credit class. This means, of course, that we’ll only have one class after our first exams in April.

I hope you don’t mind my technicality talk too much. This is, after all, our primary concern here – making sure we’re still considered full-time students by OU (and therefore being allowed to come back and retain our scholarships) has been a stressful and pretty complicated business. We have had some help from some advisors from Arezzo, the English-based OU program in Italy, and a study abroad coordinator here in Bologna. Thankfully we haven’t been completely on our own!

And now, the good stuff. This past weekend was the big finale of Carnevale. It technically culminates in Fat Tuesday (Martedì Grasso here), but the place to be is Venice the Saturday before that. 

Ciao, Venezia

Hard to believe it's a real place!

After much urging by our fellow travelers, Rachel and I joined some other exchange students on an 8:20 a.m. train to Venice. We almost missed it, but that’s irrelevant – we didn’t, and if we had it would have been my fault. I’m sure none of you are surprised. The train was packed. Of course we weren’t the only ones headed to Venice – there were families, students, you name it. The crowd, combined with our tardiness, had a pretty unfortunate outcome: we had to stand for the 2-hour ride. It could have been much worse – we were in one of the least crowded cars, so we at least had some breathing room.

It was way too early for this.

We got to Venice around 10:30 and walked with the crowd in the general direction of Piazza San Marco, the main square. Let me tell you, I have never seen so many people in one place. It was fascinating people-watching, especially with the costumes. Most people opted for just a mask, the traditional maschera, but dang, some people got decked out. There’s a sort of French revolution look that’s very popular, but there were also a lot of crazy, out-of-nowhere outfits going on.

My favorite costume of the day -- a mermaid-y thing. Who knows.

Venice was much too crowded to do the traditional sightseeing – this day was all about Carnevale. We spent several hours heading towards the piazza with the throngs, of course stopping for some pizza on the way there. There was a lot of window-shopping to be done along the way, so it was far from boring. We managed to pick up a few pieces of genuine Murano glass at a little shop. I won’t be revealing those, though, in order to maintain mystery for a few lucky recipients.

One of many souvenir stands

Venice was a really great day of wandering, people-watching, and window-shopping. The highlight of the day for us, though, was getting our faces painted. We just couldn’t resist!

Work in progress...

All finished, with my Venice buddies -- Abby and Rachel

After meeting up with some fellow Americans in the piazza, we headed back towards the station. Let me tell you – it’s hard to find your way back by following a crowd if there’s not a crowd anymore. The trick was going the opposite way -- the night crowd was on its way in, and looking a bit more rowdy than anything we’d seen that day.

We made it back to the station with plenty of time to grab seats this time (thank goodness) and had an uneventful trip back to Bologna.

Venice was by far my favorite trip so far. Granted, there haven’t been many yet, but I’m really looking forward to going back on a day when it will be a bit less crowded and maybe a little warmer. It’s a beautiful city, and I completely understand why it has the reputation it does. Luckily I have at least one trip guaranteed in March. Can’t wait!