The MONDAY

Staying in an apartment in the heart of Florence has the tendency to make you feel like you are on a permanent vacation: there are tourist everywhere, people are always in the street snapping pictures (I shamelessly follow suit so that I can document my time here), and on your way to school in the morning, you see at least five temporary stalls filled with plastic David replicas.

Monday the 14^th of September, however, was a MONDAY and, with that, I would like to say that I stopped seeing Florence as a long-term vacation.

Just the day before, I had been Skype chatting with my best friend who informed me that the weather in Colorado had been utterly dreary all weekend. I told her that Florence had still been rather warm, and that I was jealous of the cooler weather.

Monday in Florence featured the first real day of rain since my arrival. The heavens must certainly been enjoying themselves since the streets were a sea of umbrellas all day long.

The rain didn’t actually bother me, but I ought to have taken it as a foreshadowing of events to pass! After class that morning, I trekked out to the main post office to purchase stamps. I selected from the ticket dispenser what I thought was the proper ticket. I waited my turn very patiently, and walked up to the proper window armed with my Italian phrases when my number appeared on the screen.

Everything seemed to be going along smoothly until the postal worker spoke back to me in Italian that I did not understand. My confidence withered and I quickly asked the lady to repeat the phrase in English. She pointed to another window and said, “stamps.”

I walked quickly away from the original window, not really understanding what just happened, but too afraid to ask the lady to explain AGAIN to me what she had said. Plan B was to ask another customer what was going on. An Italian girl my age, thankfully, spoke English, and was able to tell me where to wait.

I waited for about five minutes, all the time being ignored by the postal teller at the proper window, when the Italian girl told me that it might be easier to go to Tabacchi to purchase stamps. Wonderful, I thought. That option might be less intimidating and more fruitful!

I trekked out into the rain once more and spotted a Tabacchi across the street. I walked up to the service man and said in perfect Italian, “I would like ten stamps.” Much to my chagrin, the man pointed out the door of the Tabacchi and said, “post.”

I internally sighed and walked out the door. Now, I would just like to add that, in retrospect, the excursion was not particularly eventful that that there are much worse things that would more officially constitute as MONDAY experiences. However, when you are in a foreign country, know very little of the language, want to accomplish a simple task, and are met with reprimands and directions in words you do not know, what I have described above can be rather hair-raising. Therefore, I decided after the Tabacchi trip, I would save my stamp errand for another day. I had experienced enough of a Monday in a foreign country.

So, the moral of the story is that if you are ever in doubt of that fact that you are LIVING somewhere where people typically vacation, just go in search of a MONDAY. MONDAYS do not discriminate between countries and will provide you with the grounding experience you are looking for.

I would like to add, as a post-script to my story, that I successfully got stamps from another Tabacchi the following day!