Summer In Siena: Turquoise by the Eye

Hello!!! I am almost done with my first full week of school and man it has been busy!!! My schedule is constantly changing- I have not had the same two days in a row. But I am loving it here! The culture and the people are absolutely wonderful! In Siena, there is a huge horse race twice per year called the Palio. I will fortunately be here for one of those. In this horse race, ten our of seventeen contradas race. Our school is located in the Tortuga or Turtle contrada and therefore we will be rooting for them!! In the weeks leading up to the Palio there are marches, music and other festivities.

While in Siena, I am taking a spoken Italian class, an Italian Sign Language class (LIS) and an Italian Deaf Culture class. Italian has been interesting so far. I am really trying to learn Italian quickly, however, it is not absorbing as much as I would like it to. The girls I live with are only here for two more days, and after that it is just me and Fulvia. She struggles with English as much as I struggle with Italian so it should be interesting for sure- as my teacher at home would put it, google, translator in this case, is my friend!!! LIS has been very very interesting. My teacher does not know/use Italian, English or ASL. That means, for us, that we are forced to use the very few LIS words we know and gesture everything to him. It has been quite the learning experience already for sure. When someone enters the field of sign language, at some point they may acquire a "sign name"- if you have a short name like Bob or something, you are not normally given one because it is so easy to fingerspell. This sign name can only be given to you by a Deaf person, so it is quite the honor to get one, and once you get one it is usually for keeps! Well, I FINALLY got mine! I was waiting patiently and in Siena, Italy I acquired my sign name!! :) It is the Italian sign for Turquoise near my eye. It was well worth the wait and I love it!

Italian Deaf culture has been similar to my American Deaf culture class that I took last semester so far, but I am excited to get into the similarities and differences of American Deaf and Italian Deaf cultures. In this class, we will have a ten minute presentation that is to be done all in LIS and we are required to have a Powerpoint to go along with that written in Italian- that can give you a little bit of an idea of how much they expect us to learn in 3 weeks!! With a schedule like ours, going non-stop, I think it is possible. Today I was at school from 9-7! That happens twice per week, but I guess it has to when you only have 3 weeks to learn two languages.

Not only are school days long and intense, we also have various activities throughout the week. This week Brianne and I signed up for a cooking class that was done at a local restaurant. It was so much fun! We got to make all different kinds of pasta-- tortellini, tortelle, ravioli, gnocchi, spinach pasta and regular pasta. We also made biscotti for dessert. Then we went upstairs after our long session of cooking and they cooked and served our food to us along with wine. Not only did we eat our two kinds of stuffed pasta, they also made us two pastas of their own for us to eat. One had wild boar in it and let me tell you, it was DELICIOUS!! So good! By the end of the meal, I was so full it hurt! I cannot believe how much I ate. Then they brought up the biscotti along with this after dinner dessert liqueur to dip the biscotti. So yummy, but so filling!!