First, I’d like to give you a tour of my apartment! I made a video for you, but it costs too much money to upload so I can only hope that these pictures show you enough to give you a general feel for our apartment. I live in a villa with 8 other BC students (4 boys, 4 girls besides me), but Cailin and I have an apartment to ourselves within the villa. Cailin and I have a bathroom, kitchen, and bedroom. It’s a really awesome space for only two people. Then we have a common room downstairs that we share with all the other BC kids.
Immediately after moving in one of our program directors (aka our mothers while we’re here) Betta took us on a walk of our neighborhood, showing us the essentials like the grocery store, pharmacy, bank ATM, etc. Then we headed to our welcome dinner (#2!) for some delicious authentic Parmesan food. Oh my goodness was it delicious!!
The next day we got a brief tour of our new home… Though the tour was extremely boring and aimed at kindergardeners (we had just taken a 3 week art history course and could’ve taught our tour guide a few things), on day 1 I already knew that I loved it here and my opinion still hasn’t changed.
The people at the bike shop are such awesome people, so much fun to talk to and learn Italian from. I’m the lucky one who’s chain fell off going over a cobblestone within the first 24 hours so I got to go visit a second time. But I didn’t mind because I love that shop! And despite my fear of falling off a bike (because of a pretty bad fall many years ago), I’m absolutely loving riding a bike everywhere!!! At first it hurt to ride and I was walking around with a sore tailbone 24/7, but now that I’ve been riding my bike for almost two weeks I’m doing a much better job and am no longer hurting! woohoo!! 😀
I loved Florence and the city life, but Parma is home… I felt that as soon as I got here. It’s small enough that I can see people waving to others that they know on the street, but big enough that it takes me 45 minutes to bike all the way from my house to the other side of the city. I have room to explore and meet new people without feeling too overwhelmed or like I’m in a place that’s unauthentic. I have to speak Italian to everyone, but if I have trouble with a word some hand gestures, charades, and maybe an English word or two will get me by. There are so many people here that are excited to help students out with Italian phrases and culture that you’d really have to try hard to not learn anything!
If this doesn’t make a person want to live there, I don’t know what would. Your apartment is spectacular. The weather looks fantastic. The food…everything is perfect! Miss you, Lyssie, but so happy for you.
Alyssa, it looks as if Parma is everything you hoped it would be. Enjoy!