its the little things

Today, I woke up at 9:30 am. I watched a movie, had breakfast; il bel far niente, the beauty of doing nothing.

Today's plan was to go to lunch with a Roman who just arrived in Florence to spend the year working. We discovered the Santa Maria Novella Church. We had tripe, yes tripe, sandwiches which were absolutely delicious, and a small glass of wine each, then two coffees (I'm getting used to coffee being expresso, not coffee) and a little chocolate, quello con mora, the one with blackberry.

My friend continued to help me get over my fear of speaking italian. I have been doing better as of late. At first, I was scared to make mistakes with locals. Now, I'm even more scared to make mistakes with friends, especially when they are fluent in english and italian.

Dopo una piccola passagiata, we saw a major protest. Groups of women were fighting for rights. As we walked on, our conversation mainly compared and contrasted everything Italian and everything American. It was nice to be talking to someone from Italy, who also was well aware of American culture, as my friend's mother came from New York.

We stopped into a tabacchi shop: he got a newspaper, "one of the only ones not owned by Berlusconi," and I saw scratch offs in displayed. I asked if it was big in Italy, and he said it was. After some verification, I asked for two euro scratch offs. My friend was very pessimistic, repeating the words, what are the odds. I ended up winning 5 euros! When I gave the ticket back to the vendor, she said I did not win anything. My friend spoke to her in Italian, she smirked, and I got my money. "I love to see their disappointment," he said as I explained the strategy of using the winnings to win more, carrying the money with you and using the same coins to buy other lottery tickets. He thought it was genius.

We realized we finally looped back around to where we started and parted ways. After a kiss on each cheek, and I was off for gelato with a friend from class and her roommate. 1,50 euro for a gelato for very generous portions! It was delicious. We talked about our planned travels and again the differences between Italy and America.

My favorite analogy about english and italian is to compare it to skiing and snowboarding. Skiing is easy to pick up, hard to master, while snowboarding is hard to pick up, easy to master. Its like english and italian to us americans.

On my way home, I picked up a nice, well I'm not sure of the name. Its essentially a flat calzone, the name starts with an R, something that starts with an R, but I see so many similar words on street signs and such that it all blends together.

After talking with family on skype, I went out for some soup. I was talking to the woman in front of me on line who let me go in front of her because I only had soup in hand. We spoke completely in Italian, and she didn't even know I was American. That's the greatest feeling.

Today was about the little things. I love it.