Even though I have been in Siena for about a month, I only started taking my classes last week. I chose each of my classes from a small list compiled based on the general interest of the students. My program only contains about twenty students and a handful of professors, which does not exactly allow for an entire newspaper of options. Although I am nervous about dealing with the inevitable stress of college away from my usual support system, I am excited to finally begin learning. As I’ve mentioned, all my classes are taught in Italian, so they will all count towards my Italian minor, but they are also all fascinating in their own way and will add to my cultural understanding of both Italy and Siena as a whole.
The first class that I am taking, four days a week, is Italian. I was somehow placed in the advanced Italian class, where me and four other students manage our way through the two hour course, only speaking in Italian. Although this class is more of a necessity than anything, it can also be kind of fun. We’ve shared songs with each other, already watched two movies and also spend time using the language to get a better grasp on the culture. For example, a week or so ago I had to give a 10-minute presentation on a famous, modern Italian (I chose Samantha Cristoforetti, the first Italian woman in space). This class is honestly very similar to the way that Italian courses are taught at Susquehanna, and I can already feel myself improving.
I only take my other three classes twice a week for an hour and a half each, which makes them a lot more digestible and also leaves me with ample free time. My second class is History of Italian Cuisine, where we are learning about the origins and impacts of food patterns and diets in Italy. This class was one of the more popular options as just about every student in our program is taking it. Our professor keeps in mind that we are all in varying levels of Italian and breaks the lesson down so that it is easy to follow and also allows us to work in groups to help each other out. So far, I have found this class to be very interesting and I can’t wait to learn more about why certain dishes exist in certain places throughout the country.
My third class on Monday and Wednesday is Cultural Anthropology, which I briefly mentioned in my last post. This class is very small with only five other students, but our professor is so personable and full of life that the room hardly ever feels empty. Because this topic is bound to be very complex, we are starting out with the basics: geography, which is a slight nightmare for someone as directionally challenged as me. But it’s so interesting to know the logic behind certain things becoming a staple. My professor told us that the key is remembering the small things that can have an entire history behind it: like how because cacao was such an expensive and hard to come by commodity in Italy, they started making chocolate with mostly hazelnuts and a little bit of cacao, hence Nutella. I’m excited to see how these small things grow to have much larger impacts.
My last class of the week is History of Italian Costume, which is the class that I was looking forward to the most. In this class we are learning about the ways that fashion reflects and is reflected in Italian and European culture going all the way back to ancient times. This class includes a trip to Florence to look around the Gucci Museum, as well as multiple trips to museums around Siena to look at fashion in art. As someone who casually really loves clothes, I think that getting a more in depth understanding of fashion will allow me to appreciate it more in my daily life.
Along with these four classes, I am also required to take a reflection course for an hour and a half once a week. For this class, all the students in the program were split into two classes, where we do exactly what it sounds like: reflect on our time in Siena. When we first arrived in Siena, we were each given a small journal, and about once every other week we are given prompts to guide us in our reflection. It’s nice to see other students’ perceptions of our time here and realize that I am not alone in some of the things that I have had to learn to adjust to.