Al Dente Diary 🇮🇹

July 13th – 17th

This week was dedicated to our midterms so I don’t have too many crazy things to report on, I’m still having a wonderful time though!

Monday, July 13th

Today I had my Shakespeare (and acting) class at a stunning 16th-century Renaissance Italian garden! Giardini Giusti has these beautiful symmetric geometric hedges, a historic maze, and soo many tall beautiful cypress trees.

Over the centuries, famous historical figures like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe have visited its terraced hillside!

Our resident director, Josh, also joined the field trip because he usually tags along for all of the class trips.

Some context is needed here before I go into this next anecdote—my Shakespeare (acting) class only has two students, including me, so he really had to fight with the USAC peeps to keep it as a class for this semester. After our first class (the super awkward one where we had to stare into each other’s souls with a level of intimacy I hoped never to return to), Josh had reached out to Davlin, my only other classmate, and me to see how we felt about continuing the class in order to make the case to the central office to keep the course up and running for this semester. The people pleaser in me didn’t have the heart to say I didn’t want to continue the course (and believe it or not, I did think it was an easier A than the other option, Roman art and architecture, especially since it satisfies a more important credit—so regardless of preferences it is more conducive to my transcript) and Davlin also told him she was interested in continuing the class… so he did have to spend a few days making a case to the USAC officials about keeping it going and they agreed and here we are.

So with that being said… you cannot even begin to fathom the disappointment so prominently on that poor man’s face after knowing that he genuinely fought to keep this Shakespeare in Italy course going for two people and then seeing him discover that the first 30 minutes of the class were dedicated to doing breathing and relaxation exercises—and she made him do them too.

I have to imagine it’s fairly close to the feeling my mom had after she sent me to Italy for a summer semester under the impression that I’d be studying canonical works of literature and then she discovered that all that time, energy, budgeting, and scholarship money is now going towards watching three movies, doing breathing and relaxation exercises, and memorizing a monologue.

Oh, and it gets better… we also made the official USAC Verona Instagram page.

I mean at this point I don’t have any other choice but to embrace it so here we are. I’m in too deep now.

Tuesday, July 14th

Today the laundry machine ate all of my euros again and I had to go back to the front desk and ask for their help again because for some reason the washing machines here hate me.

Wednesday, July 15th

Happy birthday Chloe!!!

Today I literally just watched Romeo and Juliet during my Shakespeare (acting) class with my professor!

Davlin, the other girl in the class, was absent because she had to go to the ER to get her fractured toe wrapped up after someone literally ran over her foot with a vespa… so my professor and I bought snacks and coffees from the vending machines and just gushed over how cute Romeo and Benvolio are for two and a half hours.

It’s the 1968 version that stays very true to Shakespeare’s version… so there were a lot of men in tights who have no damn business being in tights.

Don’t make my mistake and Google what they look like as adults, you’ll just be disappointed and discouraged.

Friday, July 17th

Today was stressful and busy but oh my goodness we got through it! I had my F&C class in the morning and we talked all about current food issues—things like food waste, sustainability, nutrition and health, and food politics. Then I had to immediately book it over to the Roman Theatre with the Roman art and architecture students for a combined class field trip. We started on the tour with the rest of the class but ended up venturing off with Josh, the program director, towards the seating area of the theatre to practice our monologues… yes, practice our monologues.

I was assigned Juliet’s potion soliloquy where she confronts her anxieties about drinking the vial to fake her death… my professor made Josh and I literally yell that opening line “I have a faint cold fear, thrills through my veins” back and forth to each other for a solid two minutes, loudly, in front of however many other people (classmates and misc. tourists) were also there touring the historical monument. Despite all of my qualms regarding that entire experience, I definitely have that opening line scarred into my brain for forever now, which will be helpful for when I have to recite the whole damn thing for a grade.

And the day did not end there—both my Shakespeare class and the Roman art & architecture class ended a few minutes earlier than usual because we were so far from our apartment and a bunch of us needed to race home to catch a train to Switzerland in time! Weekend updates are coming soon!

Arrivederci !! 💚🤍❤️