If you’ve been following my blog, you’ll know I’ve been having a pretty amazing time abroad. I’ve had life changing experiences, learned to adapt to new cultures, traveled to exciting places and met wonderful people. Needless to say, my life has been nearly perfect these past few months, that is, until it wasn’t. Apparently, studying abroad is still real life—you know the info packets never say anything about new germs, paper work and bureaucracy or computer crises.
For the past few weeks I have been battling a stubborn “cold,” as I called it. When my illness refused to go away, and I started feeling much worse, I took up my last resort and sought out the school infirmary. The doctor, who happened to speak a little English, informed me that I had had the flu and as a result, developed an ear infection and a lung infection. I really started to panic when I heard her talk to the other doctors in Italian about sending me to the hospital. After practically begging her not to send me to the hospital, she hooked me up to some breathing machine I’m sure I’ve seen in an “X-Men” movie and gave me a whole bunch of medications to take. I take vitamins every day, I eat my vegetables and I exercise regularly, needless to say being “sick” is not something I am used to. But 4 trips to the infirmary and $100 worth of steroids and antibiotics later, I’m healthy again. New country, new germs I guess.
Throughout my 3 week long rendezvouses with the school doctor, I was also in the process of completing my residency permit in Milan, because apparently the loathsome process of getting my student visa wasn’t enough proof of my identity. Probably one of the most infuriating processes I’ve ever been through (and also quite expensive), I had to fill out hours’ worth of paperwork, present all kinds of documentation with 3 photocopies of each document and make multiple trips to the post office and the police station. Did I mention they also had to fingerprint me? And it doesn’t help that every time you go it takes 2 hours longer than it’s supposed to since Italians don’t believe in using the number system that they assign you; you literally have to elbow, lie and cheat to get into the immigration office. Every official system in Italy seems to be that way; they have the right idea, they just haven’t found an efficient way to carry it out yet. I mean, they had my official documents in an old cardboard box underneath the refrigerator…and there was a romance novel on top of it. The scariest part was probably the fact that no one in the whole station spoke English, and even though my Italian is pretty decent, I don’t seem to remember the chapter on criminal and legislative vocabulary in my Italian 201 textbook. For all I know I could have been signing my life away to the Italian government. That magical chapter would have especially come in handy when the police officers questioned me about my nonexistent criminal history—I practically shouted “niente!” across the whole station.
I think the apex of my #studyabroadproblems happened on Monday. A day I am dubbing “one of the unluckiest days of my existence.” My unlucky Monday began at 3 a.m. when my computer unexpectedly crashed. Thankfully, my generous roommate let me use her laptop at 4 a.m., when I was supposed to be registering for courses at my home institution in Florida (it was 10 p.m. their time). However, their server crashed and I actually wasn’t able to register until 6 a.m. Then in the early afternoon, while I was getting ready to run around Milan looking for a computer store, my apartment lost power and we were told it would be repaired in the next 2 days—expedience is not an Italian virtue. So after discovering that the first computer store had unexpectedly gone out of business, the next computer man told me my hard drive had crashed and that while it had to be replaced, he would try his hardest to save all of my pictures and documents. I walked out of the computer store on the verge of a mini-meltdown, and I must have been throwing myself one heck of a pity party because I didn’t even see the car backing out of the parking garage before it hit me. Thankfully I was fine, but the car launched me into the middle of the street where an oncoming car and a bicycle had to stop short to avoid hitting me. It kind of reminded me of playing “Frogger” when I was little, and how I always used to pause the game when my frog was about to get hit and use up the last lifeline. Let’s just say, I’m grateful that “the powers that be” cheat too.
In the end, everything worked out. Che sara, sara; whatever will be, will be. I am in great health, I have received my residency permit without unknowingly signing documents committing myself to a life of Italian bureaucracy and my wonderful Italian computer man was able to save all of my files. And so now, on what seems to be a day of luck (11-11-11), I pray to the “Frogger-playing powers that be” that the rest of my semester in Italy is a little easier than my unlucky Monday was. I know hoping for good luck while traveling through Italy seems pretty selfish; I mean c’mon, #studyabroadproblems much? I promise as soon as I get home I’ll start praying for world peace.
At least I didn’t end up in jail.