Scandicci Walk

No. 14158

Once upon a time, I blogged as a way of avoiding writing my dissertation. With that “incentive” now thankfully behind me, I don’t have as much impulse to blog. However, Harding University has graciously allowed me to teach at its satellite program in Florence, Italy — and living in Florence for the next several weeks may indeed encourage me to resume, at least for a while.

I’m with a good group of 29 students. We each made our own way to New York, from whence we flew to Pisa on Tuesday night, Sept. 13. It was an exhausting flight for me, as I never sleep very well on crowded airplanes.
We nevertheless arrived all in one piece on Wednesday. Kyle met us at the Pisa airport and rode with us to Harding’s 15th century villa, on the outskirts of Scandicci, a suburb of Florence. We got settled in to our new — well, early renaissance — digs, had a nice Italian lunch, had numerous orientation sessions, and took a trip into Scandicci for gelato (Italian ice cream). The students walked, but Kyle thought it best if I made a practice drive to the hospital, just in case I need to drive a student there in the future. I managed to drive to the hospital — in a strange car, with a strange stick shift, in a foreign country — without actually needing to use the services of the hospital when I was through, so that was good. Kyle and I then joined up with the others for gelato.
Today, we walked to Scandicci, and Robbie gave us a tour of the town. We visited Caffé Mario to order — in Italian — our first cappuccinos. Fortunately, the proprietors of this little establishment are quite used to the linguistic butchery of Harding students, and we managed to get our drinks in spite of our mispronunciations.
After walking around Scandicci some more, we ate supper at Bottega dí Panino. I had chicken and mozzarella on schiacciata bread, with peppers, onions, mushrooms, and diavola (devil) sauce. It was good.
Afterward, I drove a stick-shift van (not the car I tried out Wednesday night!) full of students back to the villa. This was not without some adventure, involving me gently bumping a scooter which was too close behind us, driving part way with the parking brake on — not surprisingly, the van handled much better after one of the students suggested I take it off — and missing the turn back to the villa. I’m officially blaming Katie Lambert for that.

The missed turn was not without its reward, for it enabled us to take a scenic route home — as in, Tuscan scenery. Having deposited that group of students, I drove that van and Robbie the other, back to the restaurant to pick up the remaining students. Robbie, perhaps acting on the theory that discretion is the better part of valor (or at least the better part of directing HUF), kindly offered to drive this particular group of students back. I suggested we take the same scenic route back. We even stopped to take pictures.
Upon returning, we had a party with silly games. I think the thing I enjoyed the most was glancing around and seeing the pure joy on the faces of 29 Harding students. The thing I enjoyed second most was getting to drink Coke Zero afterward, the availability of which doubles my chances of surviving Italy.