Living and Learning Italian in Siena

I am currently in Siena, Italy, and I am just now wrapping up my third week here in the city.  I’m here a month studying at the Dante Alighieri language school (www.dantealighieri.com). 

Siena is an incredible city.  I come from a place with lots of people of Spanish and Italian descent, and honest-to-God, Siena feels like home—the way the people move, the way they talk.  Everything here is just so familiar.  I absolutely love it here.

At first, Siena is easy to get lost in.  Italian cities with Roman heritage almost always follow a straight grid pattern, but medieval Siena’s streets curve and turn and loop because of the hills it’s built on.  But once you learn landmarks and how the roads curve around the Palazzo Pubblico, you can wander and wander and still manage to find your way back to the apartment.

The temperature has been bizarre.  My first week here (starting around June 10), the temperature was moderate during the day and then plummeted at night into the 40s and 50s.  For a Southerner like myself, you might as well need a parka.  But the last two weeks have been increasing stages of sweltering.  Sunday, we hit 100.  The good news is that the heat here is a dry heat with low humidity (compared to US South).  And Siena gets a good breeze, so even though I am rocking an apartment without air conditioner, there have really been only one or two afternoons where I’ve really missed it.

I didn’t plan it intentionally, but I am here for the July Palio, so I’ve gotten to enjoy all the contrada festivities here.  (I’m living in tortuca, the best contrada ever.)  There are dinners and processions, and so many other amazing things.  It’s a fantastic time to be living in the city, even though it’s frustrating to have hundreds and hundreds of tourists pile into the streets.  As it gets closer and more and more foreigners arrive, it’s easily become ‘just another day-tourist’ instead of someone living in the city. 

I highly recommend the Dante Alighieri school.  All the teachers I have worked with have been absolutely amazing.  All of my teachers have been fluent in English (as well as other languages), so even though the classes are all taught in Italian, they can answer nuanced questions you might have and don’t have the vocabulary to articulate.  They are incredibly patient and all very good teachers.

Students come in all levels, from absolute beginning to highly advanced.  You can a placement test on DA’s website before you arrive, and you start at your level.  (There are specific Mondays absolute beginners can start, so make sure you check their website for those dates.) 

The pace of the class does kind of depend on the class size and type of students, but it’s been a fantastic experience for me.  I’d like to come back next year and take more classes while doing some research in the area.

When I get home to my scanner, I plan to edit this post and attach a ‘Student’s Map to Siena’ that I’ve made since coming here.  It’s not really a very good street map, but it’ll show vital stores and landmarks and places that are really good if you are planning to move to the city for a little while and need to survive.  Hopefully it’ll help.

Until next time…

My Goals Here

Just a quick blog introduction… 

I like to think I am an average graduate student.  I never feel like I know enough.  I secretly panic over why the professors-that-be let me into this program in the first place.  But I work hard, and I like to believe that, hopefully, one day, I’ll be able to be a professor.  Or at least have a doctorate diploma to hang on the wall of my cardboard box.

But I don’t have the diploma yet, and there are a lot of times I find myself looking for advice or at least other students’ experiences to draw from so I can prepare myself for what’s next for me.  I’ve learned that’s not always easy.  My program is very small, and I am the only one studying medieval Italian history.  Really, when I started, there were only two other students doing medieval history at all--one was only a year ahead of me and we became great friends, the other was getting ready to head to Spain for dissertation work.  Since then, we’ve added two new students in medieval history.  Slowly but surely, right?

And even if you do have the people in your program to ask, not everyone is willing to give a straight answer.  Sometimes, people are reluctant to admit their mistakes or that they were not prepared for everything grad school threw their way.  And trust me, sometimes, it throws a lot.  The reality is that there are a lot of people like that, no matter how big or small your program is.  It’s not all their fault.  A lot of times, the competition is forced onto them by the program.

Because of that, though, I decided to start this blog to help graduate students in history, especially Italian history, learn from my experiences--and my mistakes.  I am trying to present a non-biased, balanced view of the experiences I have had, the bad ones and the good ones, so people can form their own opinions.

This blog isn’t for everyone. 

Some people, who are wiser and more experienced than I am, might know all of this already and skip this blog entirely.  I know very little, but I’m a fast learner and I’m always willing to try something at least once.  I’m writing this blog as someone who can (usually) admit when she was wrong.  

That said, this blog has (will have) a lot of general fun facts about how absolutely delightful (and not) grad school can be, but a lot of the time, I’ll mention programs and experiences relevant to medieval historians because that’s what I am and that’s what I know.

I also know that many people will never read this blog regularly, or at all--really, that’s not want it’s for.  What I do hope for is that it will pop up in a google search when someone really DOES need this information, and I sincerely hope that it will help them out.

So, until tomorrow...arrivederci!