Ciao! Buon Giorno! I’m finally all settled in here in Siena, Italy! It has been quite a week. I am still exhausted and finally slept through the night last night. Just to clarify, I am 6 hours ahead of the east coast. I have never really experienced jet lag before, but I think I’m just about recovered.
I flew out from Norfolk at 1:20 last Monday, the 16th of January and arrived in Rome, Italy at 8 am (2 am on the east coast). Unfortunately, one of the students in our program was heavily delayed and so we waited on our bus for about 7 hours. I proceeded to chat it up with our bus driver, who spoke no English and I no Italian.
A 3 hour drive to Siena later, I find myself at the home of a very old Italian couple, Graziella (GRAT-see-EL-laa) and Livio (LEE-vee-o), who speak not one word of English. With my background in Spanish, lots of gestures and pointing, and “grazie” and “si” on my part, we get by with some communication before dinner.
Luckily, Christina, who stayed with them like me 4 years ago and now works with a program like mine in Siena, came to dinner and acted as translator and explained a lot to me. She was so wonderful and they treat her like their own daughter. I’ll be seeing her every Sunday for dinner at the house and probably throughout the city frequently. 
I live on the top floor of their house in the Tuscan countryside. Basically, I’ve got the hook up, as I essentially have my own apartment. I have a large bedroom with a twin and full size bed (they normally have 2 students with them) table, wardrobe and closet and couch, full bathroom (though the shower is slightly medieval, I must say. But at least its hot!) and fully stocked kitchen with lots of food to prepare my own breakfast and a table. I even have my own large balcony overlooking the hillside. Graziella packs me an Italian style sandwich and some fruit for lunch everyday and I eat a full course Italian dinner at their house every night (I’ll touch on their eating style in a minute). I am really so blessed.
Okay, so the food. Yes, incredible, as they all say. But what you DON’T discover as a tourist is their daily dinner routine – ristorantes don’t show you how its done. At dinner, you eat a first course of a pasta dish and bread. So far, I’ve had spaghetti with marinara (yes, this better than your canned marinara in the states), pasta with clams, tortellini stuffed with prosciutto soup, spaghetti and meat, and 2 other types of pasta soup. Then as the second course, there is meat, vegetables, and sometimes cheese. My first night, we had a battered chicken with fried artichoke (holy smokes, the artichokes were to die for).This week we’ve also had fish and potatoes, chicken wrapped salami things, pork, more chicken, prosciutto, salami, salad ( just lettuce. They don’t do complicated salads here I guess), salsa verde, olives, tomatoes, and caprese salad (lettuce, mozzarella slices, and tomatoes). Of course, we have water and vino (wine) at every meal. We finish off the meal with a piece of fruit, usually oranges, mandarins, or apples, maybe bananas. I usually go for an orange. Tonight, (Sunday dinners are bigger, with their daughter and grandchildren and Christina present too), we had a dessert called cinci (CHIN-chee). You couldn’t stop eating them. They are basically large sweet fried chips with powdered sugar sprinkled lightly on top. Need I talk about the gelato? I think the incredibleness is self-explanatory.