Orientation & Tour

May 06, 2013 10:00

After a solid breakfast, we headed down to CAPA for a brief orientation and walking tour. The staff is really great – especially Lorenzo. They are all extremely helpful and are excited that we are there. Most importantly, they seem to love what they do. The orientation just went over the basics of the program including a brief overview of what to expect when living in the city.

After the orientation, Lorenzo took us out to one of his favorite sandwich restaurants. As expected, it was a small deli just a few blocks away from CAPA. According to Lorenzo, unlike Americans, Italians value small sandwiches; that is, they savor the individual flavors of one meat and one dressing. Anything else would just get "messy". I ended up with turkey and pesto on a small bun. Great stuff. And I appreciate the minimalism.

After lunch, we had a quick meeting with an American cell phone company based in Florence. A few people in our group got a pay-as-you-go phone, but I didn't end up getting one. As long as one person in each condominio had one, I knew we were going to be fine. Believe it or not, I was enjoying the hiatus from a wired, notification-driven world. I mean there is enough WiFi around to catch-up on the Internet when you want, but rather than being interrupted by notifications, you choose when to reconnect.

One of the CAPA *girls* gave us a short walking tour of the area around the CAPA center. The purpose of the tour was to just get us more acquainted to the city. After today, I definitely feel like we have a better grasp. Yesterday it took us over two hours to get to CAPA; today we were there in about twenty minutes. Of course, starting off in the wrong direction certainly doesn't help.