FIRST DAY!

This morning I woke up around 7:15 and showered. The shower is absolutely disgusting. The nasty shower curtains that you need to pull down surround you, and drag on the floor. There's no plate thing, so water goes EVERYWHERE. It's disgusting. My towel was hanging up on a towel warmer thing that's up against the wall, and when I got "out" of the shower it was wet, so I kinda started off on a bad note.

I had a nutella sandwich and milk and then got dressed. I had borrowed Nicoletta's iron last night so my clothes were all ready to go. She said to wear a sweater over my button down shirt because here when you wear just a button shirt it looks really casual, so she recommended that I wear something over it. She was right.

I left here around 8:15 and got there by 8:25. I wasn't sure what to do, because the packet said "be there no earlier than just before 8:30, and wait at the front door." So that's what I did. At 8:30 there was a line outside the door, and I couldn't figure out if they were workers or just people who needed to go to the Consulate. I saw a few people ring the door bell on the door and then guards would open it and let them in. After a few minutes I saw a lady come out and I asked her in Italian if she knew what I should do. She was really nice and put down what she was holding and led me to the door, told the guard, and he asked me for documents. I gave him my passport (which I brought just for the first day) and after about 5 minutes a man named Tomasso came out then led me in.

Immediately he started introducing me to all of these people. They were all really nice and friendly, but I was bombarded with new faces and names so I just smiled and kept saying "Ciao, piacere, mi chiamo Giuseppe" and repeat. They brought me to the ACS (American Consular Services) section which is where I'll be working for now. I have my own desk/area, but everything is still out in the open. I was then set up with my very own STATE DEPARTMENT (state.gov) EMAIL ADDRESS (I was smiling like a little school girl when I got it)!!!!

After about a half hour this woman named Maria led me around the ACS and NIV (Non-Immigrant Visa) section, and told me all the passwords to the doors, which was pretty ballin’. She said: it doesn't matter who asks you, even people that work in here, never give anyone any codes. She said that codes to open doors are on a need to know basis only, and so if people need to know then they should already been given them! After an hour of being there a guy named Paolo who is the I.T. person brought me to the conference room where I had to take a 2 hour course on "cyber security." It was my first reality check of what exactly I was going to be dealing with.

After the course I met the two Johns, one who is the actual Consul (you should see his office!), the other who is the Vice Consul and in charge of interns. There’s also a woman who is the Consul General (boss lady) but she travels a lot and acts as the face of the US in the Florence area. Anyway, I found out now that the three of them who are considered "Foreign Service Officers" have to change posts every 3 years! I don’t know if I could ever move my someday family/only me and my dog somewhere every 3 years…
The Foreign Service Nationals is a cooler job. These can be Americans (unlike FSO which HAVE to be Americans) or Italian or any other nationality. There are I think 16 FSN's at this post, and they're all from either Italy, the US, and 1 is from the UK. Like I said, today I worked in the ACS unit so I got to work with passport renewals and the creation of emergency passports (for people who lose them or get them stolen). It was really cool and a lot to take in. Anyway, 2 American kids came in who had already lost or gotten their passports stolen (after a week)! Sucks for them but cool for me because after watching the first one, I got to process a new passport for this kid on my own!!!! (With the British girl watching but still!) It was awesome.

I also learned a fun/scary fact: about 70% of all the cases of stolen passports in Florence come from the train station.

At 1pm we have our lunch hour til 2, so I walked the 10ish minute walk home and made myself a sandwich. It was a nice and relaxing break, and then I walked back. The afternoon was slow because the Consulate is only open to people in the morning. The afternoons are for the most part spent processing visas, passports, responding to tons of emails, and answering phone calls. I did a lot of waiting around while they put my name into all of the systems, but by 5 the Vice Consul told me "YOU'RE IN THE CLUB MAN, YOU'RE ONE OF US!" That was one of the best parts haha.

Everyone was really great to me and I was really happy about how my first day went. I'm excited to see what the rest of the time has for me, and they seem happy to have me...especially because I'm working for FREE.

Oh, while I was leaving I made a huge moron out of myself. I was leaving the main exit and usually there are guards there who open the door for you, but for some reason they weren’t. Andddd for a good minute I couldn’t figure out how to open the door. So I had to walk back inside and ask for help on how to get out. Moron. Anyway, an interesting day had to end in an interesting way.

.Nicoletta's BF Giuseppe (what a name) came up from Palermo (Sicily) to bring her vespa (18 hour boat ride to Livorno from Palermo, then an hour in the rain on the vespa...must be love). He got here last night and is flying back tomorrow. He's really cool. They're both really interested in speaking English so they're helping me learn Italian while I teach them English. I took some pictures with 2 of my roommates and Giuseppe tonight so you should check them out on facebook. THEY SELL INDIVIDUAL CUPS OF NUTELLA HERE. WELCOME TO HEAVEN.

Giuseppe is a computer guy by trade so he helped me set up my phone and stuff whichhh…

FINALLY WORKS! Unfortunately I can’t make calls to the US with it, but ya’llllllllll can call meeeeee. For those interested: 001-39-327-17-08-419 – those are all the numbers you need to type, including the country code. I wasn’t really sure where to put the dashes because there are so many numbers.

I’m hoping to set myself up with skype or something in the near future, but a) the internet is still slow and b) I’ve downloaded skype twice and it freezes my computer. I don’t know, I guess I’ll try again.

OH – SIDENOTE: According to the girl roommates, New Lloyd is supposed to be kind of a douche. He’s away for the week so I haven’t really gotten to know him. But guess what? He told me that their names were Nicoletta and Giusy. FALSE. Nicoletta and “Nelita.” Uhhhh. I’ve been calling this chick Giusy (pronounced Jew-zee) for a week and she hasn’t said anything. I wonder if he even knows her name.

Another sidenote: I just figured out there are comments on my posts haha. THANKS! KEEP THEM COMING! At least I know someone is reading this!

OK, night cha’ll (said in the Paula Deen accent. I miss her).