Wednesday, October 3, 2007

One Less Bell To Answer

That cord in the shower, you know the one when you are on vacation that seems to be in your way when you are taking a shower – well we have one too. We pulled it. It our case it just rang the same buzzer as our doorbell. 

The other day we went to friends' house in Perugia and they had bells in the bedroom too (though they just looked like a light switch, not a hanging cord). You might want to ring for something if you're sick is what they said. I wonder why this doesn’t seem popular in the US?


One Less Bell to Answer was a big hit for the 5th Dimension. The song was included on the group's 1970 debut album "Portrait". 

Monday, October 1, 2007

Cleaning the Front Door

I was peeking out the window from our 2nd story into the neighbors 1st story kitchen entrance. It was early in the morning and the brooms, brushes and buckets were just outside the door and the owner had just cleaned the entry way into the house. In Italy, there seems to be this daily routine of cleaning the entry from the public to private space. Restaurants and other public places clean the sidewalks and entrances and private homes do as well. As you walk the streets of Firenze in the morning, there is water trickling down sidewalks and streets with the faint smell of cleaning products. I guess it keeps the entropy of the city in check.

There is also this weird type of rag that is sold in stores that is meant for cleaning floors that you often seen old ladies pushing around with a stick cleaning the threshhold. It’s like a precursor to the swifter (which we have seen in the local grocery store).

I laughed at the neighbor’s cleaning, but about an hour later I was doing the same thing. Sweeping outside our door and swooshing a bucket of soapy water on the stones leading up to our door to keep them clean and tidy.

Maybe the cleaning of the entry is noticeable because that is usually the only interaction point between public and private. A house could have inner courtyards and and other outside areas but you can’t tell from the outside in a town like Firenze. Or maybe doorways get dirty here?

Submitting the Permesso Di Soggiorno

At the language school, an assistant gave us the final bit of information we needed to get the permesso di soggiorno submitted. Here is the list she gave us that helped:

  1. moduli compilati
  2. fotocopia di tutto il passaporto
  3. fotocopia certificato scuola debitamente timbrato dall’Ambrasciata o Consolato
  4. fotocopia assicurazione
  5. fotocopia disponibilità economica
  6. ricevuta pagamento bollettino di 27,50
  7. marca da bollo da 14,62 da applicare sul modulo 1 di prima pagina

Item 1: Is all of module 1. The yellow kit comes with two modules, we only filled out module 1. The second module is for working in Italy. For module 1 only the first 3 pages had anything on them, but we submitted the empty pages too. 8 sheets of paper total.

Item 2: Copy of all pages of the passport – even blank ones. Do full sized copies, not ½ sized pages. We did that and there was some question about it (but they accepted it), so stick to full to be on the safe side. A typical passport will have 24 pages, when you put 2 pages per copy it comes out to 13 photocopies (because of back and front cover pages), so 13 sheets of paper total.

Item 3: We did not do this because we are not on a student Visa.

Item 4: Proof of insurance. We copied a sheet demonstrating our travel health insurance plus our regular health insurance card (now on Cobra). 2 sheets of paper total.

Item 5: Proof of economic means. We scanned a credit card and a letter from our financial institution. 2 sheets of paper total.

Item 6: This is a payment receipt. We did not have this and the assistant gave us the form. You can get it at the post office I’m guessing. This form is three connected receipts where you fill out your name and address three times. The three pieces are later separated. One piece becomes your receipt, one goes into the permesso package, the other stays with the post office. You count the receipt as 1 sheet of paper.

Item 7: You unpeel the marca da bollo (like self-adheseive stamp) and stick it to the front page of module 1 in the space provided. You can buy these a tobacco shops with a black sign that have a certain term on the sig…I forgot the term, maybe “valorati”?

When you count all the pages (in our case 26) you write this in the space provided on page 1 of module 1. The number of pages is important. Then you got to the correct post office (not all will accept the completed kit) and submit the kit. In Firenze, the central post office on Via Pellicceria near Piazza della Repubblica is one of the offices to do it at. We were past the 8 days allowed, but not sure it’s that big of a deal. When you enter the post office on Via Pellicceria first notice what a beautiful building it is and then take a ticket for the “amico sportello” / the friendly(?) window and wait to be called. In our case it was immediately even though the post office literally had 100+ people waiting. We had to go separately to submit our kits, but went one after the other. Each of us handed over the yellow kit envelope with just the items listed above. Remember to remove all the instruction pages that come with the kit. You pay 27,50 euro plus another 30 euro and after a flurry of writing and vigorous stamping you get a couple of receipts – one is essentially your temporary permesso di soggiorno. What a precious receipt because it is necessary for us to stay here legally! The real permesso di soggiorno card may come long after we leave, but that’s okay.

First Day of Class

Even though it has been years since we have been in class we still got butterflies walking into the language school. “Am I going to make friends?” “Why do I have a big zit on my forehead right now?” “Am I dressed cool enough?” Etc.

We signed up for the super-intensive course (3 sessions per day) at Centro Machiavelli (http://www.centromachiavelli.it/) in Santo Spirito. We walked in and immediately sat down to take a test for about 1 hour. Then we sat (individually) with a instructor and corrected the test and talked with him so that he could size up your speaking/listening comprehension. We both did about the same on the test we think and we’ll be in the same level. Of 17 students starting, we were the only super-intensive “C” course students . There were a number of Japanese students, a couple of Spanish students, and at least one other American student, and several of undetermined nationality.

Every two weeks, a new batch of students comes in, and combined with the old students, everyone is leveled. After taking the test we had a general introductory meeting for an hour and then got the afternoon off. (We needed it because there was a lot to do.) We worked with an assistant at the school on getting the final paper work together for our permesso di soggoirno.

The test had 13 sections, progressing from simple to hard. For example there were sections on:

  • filling the blanks with appropriate nouns
  • matching adjectives to nouns
  • filling in present tense verbs in a story
  • given a few words, construct a sentence using the words
  • filling in past or imperfect tense in a story
  • reading a passage and answering some questions
  • writing a letter to a friend telling him you can’t come to his birthday party and why
  • writing a letter answering a for-rent ad asking for more information
  • writing a short resume

There were a couple of sections that I was clueless on. In fact, I got up to section 8 just fine and then it got hard for me. My knowledge of the language was run out of its boundaries.

Jogging in Florence

This morning we got up at around 8:30am and went for a jog. Jogging is more popular than I would have guessed. (I’m glad Mark insisted we packed running gear.) We see lots of joggers daily in Firenze. Especially on the south side of the Arno, with its shady streets and more residential feel, jogging is actually fun. Anyway, we went for a 10km jog. We could tell it was 10km because today was the day for the “Corri La Vita” (combatti il tumore al seno – walk for breast cancer, I think) and the course was being set up with signs for a 10km and 6km run/walk. Without intending to we ended up doing the 10km loop. We jogged from our apartment right up Costa San Giorgio to Forte Belvedere and through a back entrance into the famous Giardino di Boboli. The man at the entrance thought we were runners in the event (however, we were several hours earlier). We ran through the park and out the back side and made a huge loop back through the south hills of Florence to San Miniato al Monte and then to the Piazzale Michelangelo and then home again. There are hundreds of routes through the hills and this was just one of them. We are hoping to explore more of the routes in the coming months.

Hanging Out The Laundry

It's the second full day in the apartment and we've been catching up on laundry. We have the Hoover Ladytropic HX 44S / Zerowatt washer/dryer unit. It sort of dries. Clothes come out steaming and lightly damp. They definitely need more drying. We’ve been hanging them out on the line outside of our 2nd story window. They dry up nicely. It’s different than just relying on a dryer because now we have to start thinking about the weather and the timing of putting laundry out and taking it in.

The clothesline is right over an adjacent apartment entrance. The lady that lives there does not like low hanging items we were informed. Apparently some bed sheets put out by the property manager of our house went missing. Hmm. Guess, we’ll keep this in mind. Hope she can’t jump high.

Coin

Went to buy some household things at Coin in central Firenze. The basement has "bargain" items (well not really). We walked out with three bags of stuff which we carried straight through the heart of the main piazze on the way home. We had a bag (with a comforter in it) that was 4 feet by 2.5 feet and bright red. It was fun navigating it around all the picture-snapping tourists. The weather was beautiful and everyone was out (because it is European Heritage Days) with free admission to museums as we would later find out.

Later we passed by the Giardino Bardini and got in for free for some great photos of the city. The garden is really close to our house.

Taking the Trash Out

What if you had to take the trash further than your garage or curb? Would you use less? I think so. In Firenze, you take your trash to the nearest neighborhood garbage bin. Ours is located about 100 yards away. (There are also bins for recycling: paper, plastic/glass, and garden/kitchen waste. Each bin is a different color.) In just a few days, my thinking started to change. Every time we buy something I now think about how to get rid of or recycle packaging. We have two tiny trash cans: one under the kitchen sink and one in the bathroom.

We started taking plastic bags with us on shopping outings (stuffed in small day pack) because if you go shopping you could get charged for a bag (borsa) or worse, get a cheapo one. So, if you have a good strong one, bring it. Reuse. Canvas totes don’t seem hip here, yet.