A Student’s Life here at the University for Foreigners, Siena

Many friends have asked me to ‘’enjoy myself’. There are those who say how much they envy my ‘’vacations’’.

Sure, I spend my Saturdays visiting other towns or cities, but my weekdays are far from vacation-like.

This is not a complaint, but some of the horrors we tolerate here sure deserve mention and consideration. In fact, a friend back in Singapore commented, ‘’I don’t think I could ever do this again!'' when I told him I had to share a room with 2 other people I have not met.

The heat is scorching; the weather is 34 degree Celsius. The rooms and other parts of the residence have no fan, nor air condition. Imagine staying in your room trying to study or even sleep in this condition. We are literally trapped in this breezeless heat.

This residence that they put me in is the furthest from civilization. If I take the bus from town, it’s literally from the start of the bus journey to the end of the whole journey.

After 9.25 pm, there is no more bus home. Either you walk home, which I often do (45 minutes!) or you wait till 1 am for the last bus. In fact, buses are infrequent, and it sure teaches you to be patient and punctual.

At my residence, there are 2 floors of ‘’work room’’ where there are proper desks to do our homework or to log on to the computer. But the wifi connection is uber slow, unreliable, and breaks often. There are only 2 power points, especially on the lower floor where the connection is slightly better. So if your computer battery runs low, tough! The 2 lucky chaps who have been here earlier than you and who have been hogging the power points will not let you have them. And this place is full of mosquitoes. So, while suffering the slow connection, you get eaten mercilessly everyday. I have lost count of the number of bites or scars on my entire body.

Once I decided to cover myself with jeans. This helped a bit, but it also meant I was dripping with sweat as I worked.

And this lower floor with reasonable wifi connection also happens to house the one and only TV in this entire residence. So, if you want to do your homework but someone else wants to watch TV, tough!

And now the room. The cover of the shower’s tap keeps falling off. The main light to the room keeps flickering.

This morning I discovered ants on the floor. Other days I discovered parts of the bathroom door falling apart. On day one we realized to our horror there is no drainage; so after each shower, the whole bathroom will be flooded, even though we try to shower within the tiny ‘’shower area’’. We decided to mop up after every shower. After each mop in this temperature, we would be so soaked in perspiration we need another shower!

Worse of all, the bathroom emits a stinking odour. We are sure it’s not the product of us 3 girls, who are pretty paranoid about cleanliness. My roommates actually bought disinfectant and all kinds of room freshener to mask the smell. And just imagine 3 of us having to share the bathroom every morning and then sharing the kitchen with 35 others and still trying to make it to school on time every morning. Or imagine what happened the other day when one of my roommates decided to sleep at 9 pm (!) and requested that I turned off all lights!

The kitchen. This is the only place I would be so proud to own. Very well designed and equipped with a full suite of cupboards, microwave, oven, stove and two fridges, cutlery, pots and pans, plates and cups, and a dining area. The only problem is the way students chuck their stuff haphazardly and misplace what you have in the fridge, or sharing the work (cooking area) during dinner. Not everyone has manners. There was a girl who, without even a gesture or sound, moved the tap away towards her so she could wash her apple, while I was in the midst of washing a plate! And the beloved mosquitoes. Just standing there spreading some jam on my bread, or making a coffee, will get me bitten real bad.

Another piece of Italian logic: each room has only one key, even though there are 3 of us. So either you get locked out sometimes (especially when she is having a shower and you have just returned), or you have to wake the other person up if she sleeps early.

We don’t all have the same schedules and obviously do not stick together. We are in different classes and some have classes near the train station, which is nearer the residence, while I have lessons at the historical centre.

It is well noted in all sorts of surveys that the poor spend a large proportion of their money on food. It’s not because we eat a lot, but what money we have, it all goes to feeding ourselves, with little left for anything else. So it is so common to see us lugging heavy supermarket bags of food after school, to bring home for dinner. Some even hurry home to cook a late lunch at 3 pm, to minimize spending on café or canteen food.

For me, I stint on shopping, food, drinks and ‘’going out’’, preferring to use the money to pay for bus or train tickets to go to other cities on weekends. Today I packed a fruit, some bread and biscuits as I spent my afternoon in Pisa. Other European tourists do the same too. It’s usually the Americans (again!) who mindlessly go to the touristy eateries near the sites to indulge and get fleeced.

Many of us are from developing countries – especially Eastern Europe and the newly ‘’democratised’’ countries that were part of the Soviet block. Many of them are very young, barely out of university. Hanging out with them reminds me once again to be thrifty. The occasional times we decided to go out for dinner, we actually walked from one café to another scrutinizing the menu placed outside, and comparing prices, before deciding on the café.

So, to answer the questions of many of you: I have yet to eat at an osteria, let alone a simple trattoria. Once, after a meal, we simply sat at a nearby park to chat (it’s free!), instead of going to a pub. We do like to hang out a Meetlife Café near our school though, because it’s cheap and good, and cosy. It’s full of materials to read and even has a display of dictionaries of various languages, including Chinese. It’s truly a Uni’s café.

During the break, we do not have anywhere within the Uni to go to for a drink, except for this café and a few other eateries nearby. The school canteen is far away and is open only for lunch, not drinks.

Communque (as they say in Italian – a word used to close a conversation), we are all here for one purpose – to learn and enjoy the language. Putting up with some of these horrors is part and parcel of a student’s life here, and perhaps a way to make me realize how spoilt we all are in Singapore, I guess.

When in Rome

Do as the Romans do. So, when in Siena, eat as the Senesi do!

These fresh peaches are crunchy, gorgeous and delicious! Best of all, they are so inexpensive, unlike the criminal prices we pay in Singapore.

Buon appetito!

Simple but Effective

I like the way the Uni communicates with us. Each time there is a message, an announcement, or a piece of news, they would physically enter our class and announce the message verbally.

The news bearer, usually a Uni admin staff, would knock on the door, excuse herself for interrupting class, and tell us the news, or pass on the message. She does this for all the 6 or more classes that we have for this course.

The first few times, it was to inform us about the activities that we could participate, eg, the free movie screening on certain afternoons, the free concerts that we could attend, and the excursion to Pienza and Montepulciano that we could join.

Other times it was to remind us to sign up for the excursion, or to tell us about a poetry contest that we could participate. Sometimes it was some other admin stuff for holders of various scholarships.

I suppose you can view it from different angles. You could say they are ‘’inefficient’’ or too lazy to create a mailing list to send us emails. Or to print out the message and stick them on notice boards.

For me, I think it’s the simplest, fastest, most direct, and face to face way that the modern world has forgotten. Email? Not every one is so equipped with laptops. Not everywhere is so well connected. Not everyone is a slave to emails. Notice boards? Yes, possible. But what can beat a face to face encounter, where students can ask the news bearer questions when clarifications are needed?

I am all for going back to basics. Kudos to the admin people, for remembering that we are humans first, that it is verbal exchange that makes us human!

The Merry Hunt

I met Lynn the friendly girl from Malta at the canteen today. She came over to join me and Deimante for lunch.

She told us that she did not go to class today. She had overslept. She had taken the regular bus that takes us to the Uni but for some strange reasons the bus did not stop where it usually does. She had to wait another half hour for another bus. It took her almost 2 hours to go to the Uni. By the time she got there class was over.

After lunch, on our way home, we wanted to go to the supermarket. She wanted to go to Conad, near the centre; I wanted to go to Pam, near the train station. ‘’Which is better?’’ she asked. “The best is actually Coop, not far from our residence – lowest price and wide choice,’’ I told her. “OK, let’s go there,’’ she said.

The last time I went to Coop, it was by accident. I literally stumbled upon it. I’d wanted to go to Pam, got lost, and was directed to the Coop, all on foot from the city centre. Since then, I realized that I could have taken the bus that takes us home, descend earlier, and walk there. Today, I asked Lynn, ‘’do you know which bus stop to descend?’’ “Si, non tipreoccupare (don’t worry), ‘’ she said. To my surprise, it turned out that the bus stop she knew was the one at our residence!

‘’It’s really near, we can walk there from our residence,’’ she said, as we descended from the bus. So we weaved in and out of the blocks of Uni, as well as other, residences. “I’m not sure of the way, ‘’she said after a while. Before you knew it, we were lost, had to ask a few passersby, and even had to clamber down some steep grassy slope.

‘’It thought you knew, that you’d followed Kaisa and Xiao Peng the other day?’’ I asked. ‘’No, I meant we dropped off at the same bus stop and heard them talking about going to the Coop and saw them walking in that direction,’’ she explained.

Ah! You see, Lynn is so much more proficient in Italian, having studied it at Uni level for many years (in fact, she’s in a higher level than me here in Siena), and when she speaks very fast, I have a tendency to miss what she has said, or have to ask her to repeat.

Most of us (not all though – the other Singaporean who got this scholarship and a girl from Egypt – speak English to everyone even though others reply them in Italian) have this tacit agreement to speak in Italian, no matter how badly or slowly we speak, and even if we all know English. That’s what we came here for – to practise the language. So even though Lynn speaks good English, we never use the language, except for the occasional ‘’desperate’’ situations when we are totally stumped and could not think of a substitute Italian word, and even gestures fail us.

After many flights of steps and a lot more walking in the sweltering heat (it certainly didn’t feel that ‘’near’’!), we finally found some warehouse-looking building and took a peep. It sure looked like parts of a supermarket, the backend operations, so to speak. We circled the area trying to find the entrance, and went up and down some staircase which led to 2 locked doors.

‘’What a day for me! It’s a day of getting lost, first with the bus incident, and now the supermarket!’’ said poor Lynn. From the road where we stood above, we saw a guy below sawing a piece of wood and Lynn shouted ‘’mi scusi, mi scusi’’ many times but he just could not hear us. Lynn asked me to try and I also shouted but could not be heard. So we walked to the other side, nearer him, and Lynn shouted, ‘’scusi, scusi,’’ again, to no avail. ‘’Can you try again,’’ Lynn asked me. This time I tried, ‘’signore, scusi!’’. Again, he totally ignored us, bent on sawing his piece of wood. Finally Lynn and I looked at each other and with some synchronization, screamed, ‘’signore, scusiiiiiiii !!’’

This managed to startle the poor signore so much that he jumped. Luckily he did not drop the saw on his toes. Lynn and I tried our best to hide our chuckle. Lynn asked for directions and the nice chap climbed out of the woods (pun not intended) and walked us to the main road to point us to the right direction.

It was only then that I realized that Lynn and I had been referring to a totally different Coop branch! The one she had heard of is this one, while the one I had chanced upon was another one.

When we finally reached the entrance, Lynn said, ‘’we should have just gone to either Conard or Pam, at least we won’t have to walk all the way back carrying heavy bottles of water!’’ I realized what she meant – she’d bought 2 bottles of soft drinks, cups and cups of yoghurt, food, sausages, snacks, etc. ‘’Are all these for you, or are you sharing with the other Maltese?’’ I asked, somewhat tactlessly. It turned out that they are all for herself, while I only had a bottle of water, a box of tissue, and 2 other items.

While inside the supermarket, I wandered off to the fascinating pasta section to marvel at the gazillion types of pasta they offer. Lynn came to me, saying, ‘’we better stay together and not lose each other, after all this!’’

A Passion for Fusilli

One of our housemates, Xiao Peng, from China, loves to eat pasta. On the first day of class, which began at 2 pm instead of the usual 9 am, a group of us went to a nearby eatery for a quick lunch, after we got our paper work done early in the morning.

Most of us ordered either a slice of pizza or a sandwich. He chose some fusilli. While eating, he asked us, ‘’is this easy to cook?’’

One evening, as I polished off my plate of fruits for dinner, he came to the dining area holding a bag of fusilli, and asked me in Mandarin, ‘’do you know how to cook this?’’

Oh yes, I replied, and proceeded to explain. Somehow I was stumped for so many Mandarin words. Like ‘’boil’’. Another Chinese girl had to contribute the word, as I substituted it with Italian. Then I tried to explain draining – this time even the Italian word escaped me.

Long story short, I managed to explain the boiling, draining and the heating up of the ready made Barilla sauce with a lot of hand gestures, while he nodded his understanding and confirmed it with Chinese phrases. I even helped him get the water boiled and gauge the amount of fusilli he needed.

When I returned to the kitchen much later, I saw him busy stirring the pasta in the frying pan with the sauce. ‘’How come you are still cooking?’’ I asked. It turned out that it was his second batch – he must have enjoyed cooking and eating it so much that he decided to make more for our two other housemates.

‘’Please eat some with us, c’,mon, join us, ‘’ he urged. Though I have already eaten, I decided to try some. ‘’Not bad, considering it’s your first attempt!’’ I told him. He smiled and said, ‘’I wish I had my camera with me, I want to post a photo of me cooking on Facebook!’’

I guess the Chinese love to share food. Just look at the way they usually eat – from a common plate or bowl, and at a round table. It is a simple but strong form of camaraderie. My non Chinese housemates have offered me a piece of whatever they are eating, but never asked me to join them or share their dishes.

But Xiao Peng made me feel very at home, urging so many times, ‘’c’mon, eat some more, eat some more!’’ and even went off to pour me a drink to go with the pasta.

The Chinese girl did the same, urging the Korean guy who joined us at the table to share the extra amount of pasta. Very soon they all started helping themselves to each other’s food. The Korean had made some salad, and fried an immense amount of fat pork to go with it. I gamely tried his salad, and the coleslaw that the Chinese girl brought, but balked at the white greasy layers of blubber which they all seem to relish.

Since then, Xiao Peng has been making fusilli daily for both lunch and dinner. Our exchanges usually go like this, with him beginning, ‘’you’ve had dinner? Bread again?’’ And my reply would be, ‘’Yes, sandwich again. You? Pasta again?’’

I told him, you can buy other types of pasta too, those with other shapes, for variety. ‘’But I somehow prefer fusilli, ‘’ he said.

Today, he saw me at dinner. Have you eaten, he began our ritual. Yes, and you? I continued the ritual. Yes, noodle (ie, pasta) again, he smiled. But I spied some penne the other day, and am glad he has added some variety to his pasta repertoire!

Flesh Parade and Bitches

I used to think many Singapore girls have no taste. Some may be pretty trendy, but they are mere slaves to fashion, and have no sense of style and do not dress appropriately.

Well, it looks like these women will find their kindred spirits here at the Uni. The way many girls dress here is vulgar and akin to soft porn. In addition to micro mini and plunging necklines, you see bra straps (not even properly adjusted but twisted) as part of their tube top ensemble. One obese Indonesian in my class actually revealed her entire bra (together with her rolls of flab stacked one on top of another) the other day with her garb, a frumpy looking floor length dress that swept the floor wherever she wobbles to.

Yesterday, I met a young Hungarian girl dressed like a slut. And her bitchy behaviour matched her attire to a T. Her posturing, gestures, and the way she talked were also perfectly coordinated with her dressing.

She bitched on and on about a girl who had guessed her age wrongly. “Do I look 28?!! Or even 25? Is she mad or what? I could not believe it when she said that, and when I saw her wedding ring, I joked back, ‘you must be even older, signora!’ Yes, I called her signora deliberately, to drive home the point, ‘’she bitched on.

“Excuse me, do I really look 28?’’ she bitched again, her hand flipping back her long hair in disgust. I was tempted to tell her, it’s not the age that counts, it’s your behaviour. No one has any respect for, or even likes, a bitchy slut, whether she is 17 or 28.

While waiting for another girl to arrive at our gathering, she started her drama again. She was in a hurry to move on to our destination, and showed her impatience while the others suggested waiting a while longer. ‘’Maybe she has not received our sms,’’ they said. Her attention grabbing gestures and affectation must have caused some of us grief and one of us decided to send another sms to the girl to tell her that we’d moved on, and that we would meet her at the destination instead.

While waiting for the concert to start, our Hungarian drama queen started to bitch about the reply she had just received. “What does she mean? I don’t understand her confusing sms,’’ the drama queen repeated a few times. ‘’Excuse me, wasn’t my sms very clear?’’ she ranted. The rest of us tried to explain that since the girl is from a different culture, and her Italian is not very good, perhaps she misunderstood the message. ‘’Excuse me, I was very clear, what’s so difficult about my message, you heard what I wrote…’’ and she repeated what she had written, and read aloud what the other girl had replied, ridiculing her bad choice of words.

Barely had she recovered from her rave there was another sms from someone else over the same matter; and we all had to help her interpret the messages, because all she could say was, ‘’excuse me, what kind of reply is this, I don’t get it, my sms was so clear…’’

She spent a good 15 minutes over this sms issue, dramatizing her messages and others’ replies. I watched in amusement this diva and the reactions of her friends who were all trying to help. Finally, I asked point blank, ‘’if it’s so confusing, isn’t it faster and clearer to just give her a call and ask what she means, to avoid miscommunications?’’

She looked at me silently for a second, and then opened her mouth with her favourite words, ‘’excuse me? She was the one with the confusing message, you saw mine – it was so clear!’’ Finally, it was the sensible girl from Finland who took the initiative to call her.

Is it any wonder that, after this episode, most of us chatted among ourselves and ignored her while waiting for the concert to start?

What a pity. She does look good (even if too scantily dressed for school), and has a good figure too. But her behaviour and dressing undid the beauty that God has blessed her with. And she’s still young – obviously way below 28, the number that sparked off her mood that evening. I shudder to think how much bitch-ier she will be by the time she reaches 28 and beyond.

Ferragosto

Saturday, 15 August; it’s Ferragosto in Italy.

What luxury. I woke up at 10.30 am, after 8 solid hours of sleep. Yes, I actually made sure I counted exactly 8 when I set my alarm clock the night before. The last time I slept for 8 or more hours, I must have been a baby.

Well, it’s the famous Ferragosto, the day the whole of Italy is either trapped in chaotic traffic, or frozen into frenzy by local holiday makers. This is an Italian holiday, related to the celebration of the middle of summer and end of hard labour in the fields. Later, Roman Catholicism in Europe adapted this date to commemorate the Assumption.

Today, shops, museums and public facilities are either closed or semi functioning, while harried locals battle impossible traffic as they drive to beaches and resorts for holidays.

I had wanted to go to San Gimignano, a popular Tuscan hill town (‘’Medieval Manhatten of Italy’’), near Siena. But apparently no bus goes there today.

Ah well, I guess I will take the opportunity to sleep in, and recover from the past 2 consecutive late nights.

Last night, we went to Il Campo, the heart of Siena, hoping to catch the prova (trials) of the Palio. But we missed it, and stayed back for a band performance instead. The concert started at 10.15 pm but we ‘’choped’’ seats at the 3rd row (first 2 being reserved for VIPs) since 8.30 pm! By the time the concert ended and we made it back to the bus stop, the last bus available was at 12.30 am. It was a long and winding journey; but at least we made it to a bus stop not too far from our residence and walked back at 1.30 am, exhausted.

And the night before, we had gone to Montepulciano to visit la Cantina di Redi, the cellar of the famous Montepulciano wine. This visit was organized by the University.

It sure feels like back to school days again, with 2 Uni staff herding a huge troop of restless students. What’s more ‘’school-like’’ was the low cost – the15 Euro we paid covered transport, wine and snack tasting, a sandwich and Coke or beer for dinner and a ticket for an open air theatre which already costs 10 Euro. The wine tasting felt like a holy communion, each of us holding a plastic cup waiting patiently in line for a drop of red wine. And the prosciutto sandwich was as hard, dry and spartan as the stones on the paved roads of Europe. Not a leaf of lettuce or a sliver of tomato or dribble of olive oil added to the bone dry bread roll.

The school excursion started at 3 pm after class and we made it back after watching a traditional open air theatre at 1.30 am, again, pooped. The receptionist burst out laughing when she saw a bus load of sleepy-eyed students stumbling into the residence. ‘’Go back to bed immediately and sleep well, Ok,’’ she told us.

The next morning, it was a miracle I managed to wake up in time to have breakfast and rush through my homework before class began punctually at 9 am! Of course, my brain was not functioning properly and I made the exercises look more difficult than necessary. I actually was stumped at a large chunk of the exercises and decided to just wing it during class. It was only when the teacher went over the exercises that I realized all I had to do was convert and conjugate the verbs, and not try and rationalize the arguments.

Today, I am going to do as much of my homework as possible so that I can stake out a good vantage point at Il Campo tomorrow for the Palio. I have two essays to write, a bunch of grammar exercises to complete, and some research to do, in preparation for my oral exam on the 28th. Daunting, (the research and oral), but hey, how can anyone not think of the Palio first?

Il Palio is the most spectacular festival in Italy, which dates back to 1310. It is an intense and colourful bareback horse race, held every 2 July and 16 August. Before that, there are weeks of trial runs, parades, feasts and fever.

People think it’s a festival for the tourists. But for the Sienese, it’s not for visitors; they consider it very much THEIRS. The Sienese are born into each contrade (‘’neighbourhood ward’’); they are baptized within the same contrade and are buried within the same contrade. There are 17 contrade in Siena, of which 10 will be chosen to compete at the race.

The race depends very much on drawing lots – the horse one rides, the order one is lined up, even the jockey chosen to ride for each contrade, all depends on lots. It’s the horse that wins, sometimes with no rider! The jockey’s main job is to hang onto the horse’s bare back and thrash the other horses or riders with the whip. Sometimes the rider, or even the horse, goes flying out of the track.

The prize? The palio – a banner painted with the image of the Virgin Mary, in whose name the race is run – and the honour of the contrade.

The race will start at 7.30 pm but the city centre and surroundings will be closed by 4.30 pm. My friends and I plan to be there by 3 pm to soak in the feverish atmosphere.

But first, it’s back to school work….