4. Free education.

Ciao from Siena, Italy!

The weather here has been very strange. It’s like a San Francisco winter: chilly and wet. The natives say that this weather is not normal for Tuscany this time of the year.

No matter. I’m here to live, and a little foul weather won’t scare me away. At least not yet. A lot of foul weather? Well, I am from California. That is to say, I don’t tolerate ugly weather gracefully.

Luckily, there’s much to discover and experience here in Siena. It may be a tiny city–46 sq. mi. with roughly 55,000 inhabitants. San Francisco? 49 sq. mi. and nearly 765,000 souls–but its history is rich and long. And, then there’s the language. A lot of my time is devoted to learning Italian.

Siena offers free Italian lessons to immigrants. The classes are excellent, because the teachers are top-notch. The second best thing I like about the school is that it is truly multicultural. In my classes I’ve met two Ethiopians, a Senegalese, a Turk, some Romanians, a Brit, an Uzbek, two Russians, an Indian, and two Martians. (Martians are NOT to be trusted! If you don’t believe me, you must watch Mars Attacks! Don’t say I didn’t warn you.)

Anyway, most everybody at the school speaks English as their second language, so it is fairly easy to communicate when our Italian fails us. What sets me apart from the group, other than the fact that Italian is my second-ish language (I briefly studied French some time back), is that I’m the only person who came to Italy simply because. Everybody else came to Italy for a better life: for work, for economic stability, and/or to send money back home to the loved ones they’ve left behind.

My favorite thing about the free Italian classes? Every Wednesday and Friday I am reminded how fortunate I am to have been born in a country ripe with opportunities for education and work.

~Janelle Renée

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