The Beginning of My Christmas Vacation: Stockholm

After my Dante final, I started my winter vacation by going to Stockholm the following weekend. I still had a week of class when I returned, but my brain was more than happy to start its vacation on December 9th by visiting some very good family friends in Sweden: Kristina, Veronika, and Margrete Aspvall.

Friday, December 9th:
• I took a Ryanair flight to London Stansted and when I landed I had an hour and a half to catch my next Ryanair flight to Stockholm. So I rushed down the longest hallway in the world to passport control, hightailed it through the baggage claim area (I only had a carry-on), checked in at the Ryanair desk, and quickly made it through security...all in 20 minutes. My gate number wasn't even on the board yet, so I had a little time for a delicious veggie and hummus sandwich and a cup of tea for my momentary stop in England.
• I made it to Stockholm and hopped on a bus for the 45-minute ride into the center of Stockholm, where I was met by Kristina and Margrete. Veronika came to Kristina's apartment later that evening, and the 4 of us girls quickly caught up on each others' busy lives.

The path through a park to Kristina's apartment.

Saturday, December 10th:
• The four of us took the metro into downtown Stockholm where we wandered around Gamla Stan (the "old town"), avoided a protest and the police, marveled at Christmas decorations in store windows, enjoyed cups of tea and sandwiches for lunch, took an elevator up the tallest tower to get a view of Stockholm, and stuffed ourselves with an all-you-can-eat buffet of Chinese and Japanese food for dinner. After such a satisfying dinner, we practically rolled ourselves back to Kristina's apartment.

Gamla Stan

Santa wrapping presents in a store window.

Tea and Sandwiches with Veronika, Kristina, and Margrete (from left to right).

The lovely sisters at the top of the tower.

Chinese/Japanese buffet dinner.

Sunday, December 11th:
• My last full day in Stockholm, we visited the Vasa Museum. It was the perfect day to spend indoors since it was cold (0 degrees Celsius) and windy. I had visited the Vasa Museum when I was 9 years old with my family, but of course I didn't remember too much of it. The Vasa ship was a Swedish warship build in the 1620s, and on its maiden voyage it set sail from Stockholm, but didn't even make it out of the harbor. Two "big" gusts of wind blew it over on its side and it sank because it was too top-heavy and it didn't have an adequate volume below the waterline. It was finally re-discovered and salvaged in 1961, and the museum was built with the massive hull as the central exhibit.
• That evening, Kristina made us a lovely dinner of Swedish meatballs with mashed potatoes, and I was in heaven. I had been steadily growing tired of eating pasta almost every day, at least once a day, so some homemade Swedish food was quite welcome!

Me with the Vasa ship.

A stroll after the museum.

Ok, ok, Stockholm is gorgeous I guess...

Monday, December 12th:
• Veronika and Margrete had left Sunday evening to get back to work and school, so Monday morning I slept in while Kristina went to her class. It was so nice to just relax at the apartment before Kristina took me to the airport.
• This time, my flight was much more direct than going from Bologna to London to Stockholm. This time, I was on an SAS flight (with much more leg room than Ryanair!), I had one layover in Copenhagen, and I made it back to Bologna without having to rush through any airports.

I noticed one huge difference coming back after this trip that I hadn't felt before: I felt like I was coming home. I didn't feel anxious about getting back into speaking Italian and I didn't feel like I was walking up the steps to "the apartment I live in." I felt just as relaxed being back in Bologna as I had all weekend speaking English in Stockholm, and I was coming back to my apartment after a lovely vacation.

One Final Down...Two to Go!

Thanksgiving gave way to intense study-mode. I had my first Italian oral final for my Dante class on December 5th and leading up to it there was a lot of translating, many cappuccini in cafes, and decent doses of stress. I generally knew what I would be tested on: Dante's Divine Comedy...which really narrows it down. For a foreign student like myself, the professor required that I know about 5 or 6 chosen "canti" from each book (Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso). The most difficult task for me was understanding the story and all the references in English, and then preparing to talk about it in Italian. Dante's work is hard enough for Italian students to understand, and here I was trying to make the big picture comprehensible in English first and foremost and then learning the back-stories to many of the references, knowing I'd need to talk about everything in Italian.

Fortunately, I had the help of a wonderful Italian woman interning at our Study Center who was studying Dante. She held weekly seminars for all of us Californians in the class where she went through and explained the big picture and pointed out the significance of the tiniest details (in Italian). She gave us the ability to figure out how to study for the final--she was like our Virgil; the guide for our own journey through the hell of studying.

When the fateful day arrived, I felt like I was prepared in terms of knowing the material...but in English. Typically I try not to study the morning of the day of the test, but since my appointment wasn't until 2pm, I woke up at a reasonable time and studied/translated my notes into Italian for 3 hours beforehand. When I arrived at my professor's office at 2pm, along with the 3 other students waiting to take the final at that time, I knew I'd have to wait about 15-30 minutes for each student before me to disappear into the professor's office to take their final. What I didn't expect was that the professor took 45 minutes with each of the 3 students before me, plus allowed 2 additional students talk to him for office hours for another class. By the time it was my turn, I had been waiting outside his office for 2 hours and 45 minutes. The first 2 hours were good study time: I needed that extra time to solidify some details in my mind and figure out how to express myself in Italian. But the last 45 minutes were torture. I became increasingly nervous as time dragged on even though I felt more prepared. I've never been good at simply waiting because the anticipation ends up getting to me. There's only so long that I can stay relaxed and focused before taking my first oral final in Italian.

Finally it was my turn to go into the professor's office and talk with him about Dante. He was good at easing my nervousness (especially after I told him I was nervous) because he made it more like a conversation. He first asked me questions about where I went to school in California, if I've ever taken a Dante class before, and why I have an Italian last name. Then he had me talk about specific lines from Dante and I felt like I was answering all of his questions fully and with as much detail as he'd allow me to before he would cut me off and turn to another few lines for me to analyze. The very last question he asked me was to list, in order, the 7 levels of Purgatory (the 7 deadly sins). Well, seeing as I barely know them in English, and I hadn't memorized such a basic thing since I focused my studying on the more obscure details in Dante's writing, I started fumbling over my words and I couldn't answer his question. A pit in my stomach immediately formed when he started saying things such as "This is a really basic thing, and if you don't know it, then I have to question how much you actually know. You won't be getting a good grade if you can't answer a question like that, but remember you can always retake the exam in January." I was SO scared he was going to fail me and I'd be so ashamed and I did not want to have to study all that material again for January. And just as my brain was really starting to freak out, he asked if I would be ok with an A-.  Um, YES. I thought when he said "not a good grade" that I'd fail with something lower than a B. But in reality, he had high expectations for everyone and assumed if you don't get an A+, you'd be disappointed. So of course I immediately said "Yes, of course I'll take the A-!" and then I didn't utter a single word (for fear he'd change his mind) while he entered the grade into the computer.

In the end, I'm very pleased with that grade, but the strange thing was that he made me feel bad about "only getting an A-." It took me a day or two to not care that I couldn't answer his last question and to be proud that I got that grade for my first Italian final. It was a good beginning to my month-long vacation I've allowed myself before getting back down to studying for my last 2 finals (in late January and early February).
Stories from Stockholm and Tarn's visit coming soon!