Day 35
My final two exams after a full week of no sleep and not having time to eat until night time were painful. Well the first was fine but by the second, I was just checked out. Hopefully I did ok.
Of course today I finally got the notification from the Apple Store saying my computer was done, the day I leave for over a week. I was supposed to call a number to tell them I'd be late to pick it up but a) I don't speak Italian and my limited language skills really don't even cut it in person when I can resort to charades b) I don't have minutes on my phone plan so it would be expensive to be on hold for hours c) I'm terrified of the phone. Pretty sure I have a phobia. So, being the crafty devil that I am, (honestly I have no idea how I did this) I got one of the CAPAS staff to call for me and tell them if be able to pick it up in early March. Huge sigh of relief! I'm so grateful for people taking pity on me!
Side note: before I left, I got pulled into a meeting on my roommate situation and hopefully something's finally being done.
I needed to go back to the leather market to get the sunglasses I'd seen last week. I needed sunglasses plus I'd fallen in love with them the more I thought about them. This was the first pair I couldn't get off my mind:
My friend also needed a suitcase (Ryanair has really tight restrictions on luggage so my roommate and I decided to bite the bullet and pay for a suitcase for both of us to split) so she came. On our way, I tried a dough ball with a "surprise" which turned out to be salami inside. It was covered in salt and surprisingly delicious. We found it right next to Dante's church. This was crazy because my midterm was all about Dante and after the exam, I was just wandering around Florence and accidentally stumbled on his part of town. It just underscored how cool it is to be here and studying art history and literature- even and especially if they're not my favorite subjects.
The most fun part of my day by far was having to go back to the TIM store because my cell phone service was nonexistent. The language barrier was in the way which made things extra enjoyable but the employees were also really annoyed with us. We experienced firsthand the difference between our cultures on the value of time. Everything moved painfully slowly and no one really cared that we were wasting our precious time that we could be using to pack or sleep. It took and hour to diagnose a really obvious problem: apparently it's common (and legal?!) in Italy for the pop-up ads to siphon money from your phone credit if you click on them by accident. Even if you clicked on the ad weeks before, as soon as you add credit, it disappears. And if you don't have credit, the Internet doesn't work. It was a pretty easy fix to call in and put us on the "black list" but what I don't understand is if this happens to everyone with a phone in Italy (which the Italian man next to me confirmed happened to him, and I know had also happened to a lot of my friends), why aren't new users automatically added to the list? I don't understand. And I guess I finally have had my first taste of the inefficiency Italy is known for. It was unbelievably frustrating. Now TIM hates us and we hate TIM.
When I got home and saw my bed, I flopped into it and didn't feel like moving for the next three forevers. This didn't really work with my schedule because we had to catch a bus to the airport in Pisa at 3 am, but I just laid there without moving for awhile before I found the energy to pack and shower. 
I also found an hour or two to nap which may have made my lack of sleep feel worse rather than better. Because after only sleeping from 4-7 last night, sleeping from 12-2 was really rough to wake up from.
Before I knew what was happening, I was rolling out with my roommate and friends past the Duomo and Santa Maria Novella and boarding the bus. 
And then my data stopped working again!
No comments:
Post a Comment