YA-12: Welcome Week!

The first week of the semester, Welcome Week, is technically over (save for a postponed event next Saturday due to bad weather yesterday). It has been pretty cool, especially because we’ve been busy with activities and inductions. So here’s what we’ve been up to.

On Monday I was woken up by builders on a rooftop across my bedroom window. It was fairly annoying tbh, but at least it made me get out of bed and do things. I managed to run some errands in town like getting tickets for the Welcome Week events (which took a while because the queue was massive!). I then headed to Fieravecchia to find the building for the Beni Culturali department where I was going to have my Cinema module. They were having their registration session when I arrived but there was a guided tour at midday so I waited for that. Dan and I skipped the tour and directly asked where the Aula di Musica was – easy peasy. I then came back home for lunch and later on met with the others in the Piazza to make our way to the Rectorate for the Welcome Meeting at 3. The Aula Magna in the Rectorate is quite small and we barely fit inside so we used up the last few seats and a lot of people had to stand around the sides or sit on the floor… Not great. During the meeting we were given some really general information like when the registration session for each department would take place and they talked about the CUS for sport, Monte dei Paschi for opening bank accounts, the ESN group (despite technical difficulties and lack of accompanying power point). I didn’t really learn anything new, but we did realize how many new Erasmus students there actually are. I managed to meet my Buddy Marco, who’d been busy with exams up until now. He seems nice but is quite busy with his degree.

I then went back home to do some chores and have some tea before the Welcome Happy Hour. With the ticket came a drink and free buffet at Parsifal Guinness Club near the Piazza. I’d never been there before but it was quite good. They kept bringing pizza, pasta and random bits of food out on a table and we were all mingling as you do at an Erasmus event. I met people from all over: Germany, Argentina, Chile, Austria, France… and, clearly, Spain and England. It was a good night. I went home at around midnight after meeting loads of new people. I feel kind of in a bizarre spot though, because I hang out with Brits and speak English close to being native, so people assume I’m just English. On the other hand, I’m Spanish so I have no trouble speaking Spanish but I feel like I don’t get along as well with Spanish people because they just speak Spanish all the time which is limiting. I don’t know, I’ll see how the situation unfolds; I’ve barely started the semester.

Tuesday was an extremely chill day as I did not have any events to attend during the day. I was going to phone Lara but she couldn’t talk that morning so instead I slept in, read some more of ‘Lolita’ and watched YouTube videos whilst wrapped in a blanket. Productive. After lunch it was the Erasmus tour of Siena at 4 but the weather was horrible. We did walk around new parts of Siena which I hadn’t been to, which was surprising. I saw Fonte Branda and the escalator on that side of the city to go up to the Duomo level. Not bad at all. The guide was quite funny, but the weather sort of ruined the afternoon. After that I just came home, napped and skipped the gym – I was feeling a bit down, not going to lie, I think I might actually have a little bit of Seasonal Affective Disorder, because when the weather is bad I’m more likely to feel sad… I hope the weather improves soon.

That night we were going to Vainilla, which is a club outside Siena. Our bus left at 1am so we met for pres at Ivo’s house at around eleven and I then went to Piazza del Mercato to find Vero and the Spanish people at midnight, before joining the Brits again to get the bus. It was packed! Carnival themed so a lot of people were fancy dressed which reminded me so much of home… I miss the Carnival, it’s so much fun! The bus ride was quite long, about 20’-30’, but the club was in a massive building. It was packed and took me forever to find people I knew, but I had fun nonetheless. The music was quite good and we ended up taking over a platform with seats which we made our dancing location for the night. It was fun but by four I was ready to go home. We made it back to the bus and managed to get seats as well as crave some MacDonald’s to appease the drunken munchies. However, at 5am in Siena everything is closed so no fries for us. I went home, had some cereal and went to bed. 

Again, Wednesday was a pretty chill day. I was so tired from the night before so I slept in until midday and then phoned Lara and we talked for a bit. I then got out of bed and ready to venture outside and run some errands including hiking to Pam to do the grocery shopping. I did some bulk cooking; I went to Power Pump and ended up even more tired, but glad I’d done some exercise. Before bed I watched ‘Hacksaw Ridge’ with Dan which is a pretty good film although it was kind of hard to understand the accent… And then I skipped the Beer Competition and night at Al Cambio which was the Wednesday ESN event in favour of getting some proper sleep to be ready and functioning for the next day.

On Thursday the Dipartimento di Scienze Sociale, Politiche e Cognitive (which is my department) had their induction session in the morning so I met with the others and we made our way to San Niccolò for the session starting at half ten. I was surprised by the amount of people there. Alright, the engineering students were also present, but there were a lot more students than I thought. Jess and I didn’t learn anything new, as the information session was the same as the one we’d had earlier in the month, but we did meet some new people. There was a tour of the building, popularly called ‘il Manicomio’ because it used to be a psychiatric hospital, at midday so we stayed and did that which didn’t take long. The building is a maze though, so I know I’ll still have trouble finding the classes in there if I decide to follow the Rhetoric course… I had lunch back home and then headed to Fieravecchia for my first lesson: Storia e Critica del Cinema. The Aula di Musica is a small room with a piano, record player, and a few rows of chairs. Not extremely musical in my opinion… The group is quite small which I appreciate and the teacher was really nice. He asked the Erasmus students – we’re three, a Scottish guy named Duncan, Dan and I – to go see him in his office over the break and he made sure to explain to us the contents and assessment process. He even reduced the reading list for us! I really like the module thus far. After the lesson we met with Emilia and Nat to have some coffee at MeetLifeCafé and then back home I did a tonne of module research after finding out my Rhetoric module doesn’t start until May. I’d like to replace it with something starting now, so I’m going to go to Storia degli Istituzioni Politiche tomorrow with Jess and see what that’s like.

On Friday I woke up to the horrible news that someone had stolen some of my old Facebook profile pictures to make a fake account. I spent the day reporting the fake account and going through all the privacy settings in my account… Facebook replied saying the fake profile did not infringe their code so they couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t believe it. I got a few other people to report it and eventually the profile didn’t come up anymore so I hope it has been deleted… But the photos are stolen now anyway, nothing I can do now… Aside from that nasty episode, the day was quite good. We had our first Lingua Francese lesson in the morning. The teacher was also quite cool but the French level is super low. I’m not required to follow any extra lessons as my level is obviously higher than the required A2. But I am going to follow the module despite this fact, since the content sounds interesting and it is, after all, a 9ECTS module which is fantastic. Then Megan, Jess, Dan and I went to the mensa for lunch – it was packed! I had spinach tortellini which were really good and a potato and octopi salad with some chickpeas. All worth it. We then had a final cinema lesson to be done for the week. We had the film screening of ‘Stagecoach’ by John Ford. Fortunately, the other students in the group agreed to have Italian subtitles put on, because otherwise I don’t know how I would’ve followed…They spoke really quickly and it took me a while to adjust and not rely on subs. I really enjoyed the film too, which was great. After that I popped into Conad on my way home and did some chores before Crossfit with Megan that evening. The session was good.

I then went home, took a shower, and while I was finishing my shower the rest of the people started arriving in our flat for pres before the Party at the Rectorate (Friday’s ESN event). Pres was fine, we were quite a bunch at one point and lacked a couple of chairs plus I was concerned about the music and the neighbours, but that’s just me… We then headed to Via Pantaneto to grab some food before the party and happened to bump into another outdoor party in Contrada del Leocorno. There were loads of people gathered outside the church and the music was really good, so we danced there for a while before actually heading to the Rectorate party. The one at the Uni was quite good. We arrived at midnight and it felt quite empty as people were hanging out in isolated groups, but as soon as the doors opened to the public it got so packed you could barely move around! I shifted between the Brits and the Spanish, and ended up hanging out with Vero because I’d lost most of the people I was with… I ended up going back home at half three, after grabbing a slice of pizza on the way. Not great for socializing, but I did have a great night.

Yesterday I didn’t do much. I slept in and did some house chores. After lunch I went out to bring some medicine to Jess and Megan who’d been ill since the night before and had been throwing up. It took me a while to get there because there was a cycling event that had cut off the main streets, but I finally made it to the rescue. Once back home I didn’t do much else; I finished cleaning the house, did some work and took a shower before video calling the parents and then tucked into bed to watch ‘The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian’. Proper throwback.

Today I haven’t done much either. I slept in late and then finished my fourth entry for the University of Bath Placements’ Blog, which you can read here: http://blogs.bath.ac.uk/hss-placements/2017/03/05/year-abroad-iv-moving-to-siena-italy/ After lunch I met with Jess in the Piazza, having to avoid another cycling marathon, and we waited for Nat, Emilia and Chris to join us in the Palazzo Comunale to visit the Museo Civico. The museum is free for Siena students which is great. It is a massive building full of frescoes and some artwork, but quite empty. I expected it to be a bit better, not going to lie. Since we finished so early, we headed towards Il Duomo to have a look at what we could do there; we ended up going to the free exhibition (first Sunday of each month) at the Museo Archeologico and the Museo della Città. They were quite interesting. The building is an old underground hospital with bone pits and dark corridors and the exhibition was fairly good – a lot of Etruscan and Roman objects, mainly funerary and decorative. Once we were finished I decided to go home because it was quite cold and I worked on my blog a bit before joining Nat, Emilia and Chris for dinner at Il Pomodorino. This time I tried the Villana pizza which is a pizza bianca made with pear, pecorino and parmesan. Good combination but the cheese got a bit overwhelming at the end. And now I’m back home finishing the last words of this post.

Next week we’ll have proper lessons so tomorrow morning I’m trying my potential third module out. We’ll see how it goes. I hope to get in the swing of things soon because so far it seems like I have quite a lot of free time… I also have a couple of weekend trips planned soon, including Pisa and Perugia so I will keep you posted.

A presto!

Zoe