Funny Tid Bits from my first week in Italy

These stories are a collection of things I wrote on my computer while I waiting to have access to the internet for the first week. I thought you would enjoy. :)

January 20: (Settling the Score with Orvieto)
When we arrived in Orvieto we were given a map (a very blurry, not-so-accurate, almost coloring book-like map) and we split into groups with our guides so that we could take our luggage to our apartments. Our guide took Lindsay and I down some ally-ways, through some arches, to the left, to the right, to the right, left, right, and AHA there it was, no problem. Then she proceeded to leave us there alone and told us to meet at the Study Center at 1:00 and she prceeded to give us “easier” directions on how to get to the Piazza where the Center is. Well it went “go right, go right again and then straight and I PROMISE you’ll see it.” Well we found it within minutes, by a stroke of luck. BUT after the welcome lunch at the Study Center we wanted to show some friends where our apartment was. We couldn’t find it … we had the map… this had an arrow pointing to our apartment and street name… we enlisted the help of Ryan, Eric and Josh… we couldn’t find it… and to make matters worse… all the doors look the same (basically) and so we weren’t even sure if we’d recognize our door if we came upon it… so Lindsay just began stabbing her key in every door we passed… didn’t work….by this point it has become so absurb, because we were following exactly what this “map” was saying. Well an hour…. YES an hour later... we finally gave up and went back to the Study Center and asked for help. Well our guide had some troubles too but we finally found it…we were close but the map was missing a street because there are no street names on the map, so you just have to take an educated guess. But anyways… we got some really good laughs out of it and some really strange stares from the locals too. So I’m keeping score and right now it stands : Orvieto – 1 , Maggie and Lindsay – 0.

January 21: (Lesson learned)
Lesson: When you look for it, you won’t find it. When an Italian gives you directions, you won’t find it. When an English speaking Italian gives you directions, you will spend more time looking for it, but you DEFINATLY won’t find it.
I learned this while we were in search of the supermarket, called Coop. One of our instructors from the study center, Serena, gave us directions in class. They went as follows: “Get off funicolare, to the right, go …*random half Italian-English words* .. train station, through an arch… go straight. Its very easy to find.”
So we got off the funicolare, walked straight ahead to the train station, took stairs that went under the station and opened into a parking lot, walked through the parking lot, saw a tunnel that went under a road (aha! “the infamous arch”!), walked through a park with a lake, starting to get a little worried, walked across a bridge, more worried, walked about 100 more feet and stopped to ask for directions. “Dove le Coop?”. Non engliase! But we caught the word possimo, which means to pass through (thank you Italian language book that Eric carried with him), followed her hand motions and finally back tracked about a kilometer and we found a supermarket. However, it was not the Coop. But who cares at this point. So we went shopping.
We boarded the funicolare again at 5:30, which was about 2 and half hours from when we first left. The Coop is only located about 2 blocks from the funicolare. (We did find it on our way back, by the way). PS the Funicolare is the train that runs up to the top of the city.

January 24: The Market
So the market takes place on Thursday and Saturday mornings here from 8:00 am to 1:00 pm. So today I decided to go to the market. Let me tell you something about the market. Its very overwhelming and very intimidating. You kind of have to push your way through the crowd and if you want something from a stand you have to push old ladies out of the way. (Don't underestimate old italian women, they are fiesty!) Then they yell somethings at you and give you a bag. Well the point is to fill your bag with whatever you want and then you give the bag back and they weight it and charge you. The good news is this is fairly inexpensive. I bought 3 oranges, 3 bananas, a zucchini, an onion, and 2 potatoes for under 3 Euros. (about 4.50). But I need to work on communicating with the venders, because I pretty much avoided the meat and cheese vendors because I couldn't communicate well enough to tell them what I how wanted and how much I wanted. Next time I'll brave that. There was also one stand that I was sooo tempted to buy from. I call the man who owns it the "candy man". Its a stand that sells all sorts of nuts, dried friuts, gummy candy and hard candy. So tempting. Next time, next time!

January 25: Night Life in Orvieto
Last night we finally got a chance to experience Orvieto night life. On the weekends there are lots of people out and about that are younger and closer to our age. There are also several bars and cafes to go to, but we noticed that they don’t usually start to get busy until 11:00 or midnight. The first place we ventured to was called Emerson and it was mostly a karaoke bar. It was very small but they had good drinks. It was a little different from you typical karaoke bar though. It had a t.v. in the corner that scrolled the words to the songs, but instead of show casing one person who choses the song, the machine played random songs, or by request and the whole bar would chime in and sing along. However, chiming in had its consequences. The fun loving women who were the “karaoke superstars” would find you and insist that you sing with the microphone if you knew the song. And they wanted to you to sing loud and proud! They loved it! And of course half of their songs were American songs so whenever the group of us knew the song, they wanted us to sing. I got stuck singing (very loudly and very badly) to “Beautiful day”. And when “YMCA” came on, they insisted that Meg and I sing along, but we didn’t know the words and the scroll wasn’t on so instead we made up the words and since they didn’t know English, they couldn’t tell anyways! After a few drinks at Emerson we headed to a quieter café called Vin Caffe. There were more people there that we knew so we got a couple bottles of wine for the evening. This café was nicer because they served you appetizers along with your wine. We received nuts and chips and then a little while later we got a plate of bread topped with some salami. Overall, it was a good night in general and I then got lost on my way home and I'm not exactly sure how long it took me to find my apartment. This town is tricky!