25 + 2 Things Italy and the ADA Have Taught Me

1. When traveling somewhere that requires a train transfer, be sure to buy your ticket for the final destination when you start your journey. If not, you probably will not have enough time to buy your second ticket and you will probably have to chase after the train.
2. Do not cross the train tracks. You will get arrested and you will get your passport taken; if not, you will just have to run away from the police and hide in a bathroom until they leave.
3. Avoid traveling in large groups- you will want to punch something.
4. The yellow validation boxes will become your best friend.
5. So will any Kebab place you happen to encounter.
6. Bring lots of Vitamin C- Italian germs will want to devour your soul.
7. Don’t come to Italy if you don’t like old things, art, or visiting churches.
8. Speaking of churches- yes, that is someone’s jawbone you’re looking at and no, they don’t think that’s weird at all. In fact, they really like that sort of thing.
9. Yes, Scott McGehee does look like an older Harry Potter.
10. Yes, that is the music professor playing Beer Pong with his students.
11. Ricardo’s cooking will make you think you’re seeing God.
12. When asked why something is the way it is, Dory’s response will always be, “Well, you see in Italy there’s a law…”
13. While all Italian men may look gay, they’re not. They’re just European.
14. Showering is useless here.
15. When in Venice, you will get lost, you will ask for directions, and they will always tell you to just go straight, cross the bridge, and it’s on your left.
16. When in doubt- look at the audience.
17. Even the walk to the grocery store has the most beautiful views you’ll ever see.
18. There’s no such thing as too many pictures.
19. If you’re not a wine drinker- you will be.
20. The aqueducts are really cold at night- unless you’re there with someone else- then it’s only a little cold.
21. Make sure there is something really exciting to go home to, because you probably won’t want to leave. Christmas helps a lot.
22. Sometimes being around other people is the last thing you want to do, but sometimes it’s one thing you need the most.
23. Sometimes laughing is the only thing you can do- and sometimes it’s the best thing you can do.
24. It is possible to laugh and cry at the same time.
25. Take life one day at a time
26. Enjoy what you have while you still have it.
27. Don’t be afraid to take risks- sure, you could fail miserably and end up hating yourself for the rest of your life, but then again, it could turn out really well…plus, you never know who it will bring into your life.

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"And in the end the love you take is equal to the love you make."
~ The Beatles, In The End

Nothing is more satisfying...

...than consuming olive oil made from olives that you picked.

Webshots: Random/Past Few Weeks, Assisi 11.15, Firenze 11.16
Facebook: Olive Picking/Tramonto 11.9, In-Between Face, Assisi 11.15, Firenze 11.16

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One of the very nicest things about life is the way we must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to eating.
~ Luciano Pavarotti and William Wright, Pavarotti, My Own Story

Clearly I'm terrible at this.

Clearly. Considering that last time I wrote was about two weeks ago I would say that yes, my hypothesis is correct. Oi vey.

Okay...quick update on my life. Last Saturday (November 8) a bunch of people went into Florence to go to the Uffizi. Sweet. Before that we stopped at the Accademia to say hi to David and the Prisoners. I heart Michelangelo. While at the Accademia, Liza and I discovered a name for our character we made up (ask to meet her sometime, she's great). The Uffizi was snazzy- we got to see Botticelli's Birth of Venus and La Primavera (which in my head I always translate to English and then I want to call it Rite of Spring. Sigh). I'm also in love with Botticelli's Madonna and Child with Six Angels, of which, unfortunately, I could not (or rather forgot to) find a postcard of. Sigh. We aso got to see Michelangelo's Tondi and Da Vinci's Adoration of the Magi. Cool beans.

After the Uffizi we walked around for a little bit- I bought myself a mask from the mask store that Pete, Zach adn I discovered way back in September. Yay masks.

SUnday was a lazy day. I spent most of it lounging aroudn the Villa pretending to do Philosophy reading. That night, I went out to dinner with Pete, Vanessa, Staci, Liza, Rich, and Natalie. We Went to this Belgian beer and Pizza place- it was yummy.

Monday nigth we went to see a show in Roccastrada, adn by Roccastrada I mean we thought it was in ROccastrada but really it was in Grossetto. Sigh. At least the guy in Roccastrada was cool and elt us see the theatre. Anyway the show as really amazing- it was jsut three actors using full masks the entire time, no dialogue. It was really astounding to see them use theur bodies in order to illustrate the different characters- it made me want to get into the studio and practice.

Friday afternoon we went to a wine tasting, and I actually drank wine and liked it. That was a first. We had a wine called PoggiodiPonte, which was made in central Tucsany from SanGiovesse grapes. We also had another one that was Merlot/Cabernet and it was really bitter and gross. Clearly SanGiovesse grapes are superior to French grapes, or maybe I'm just biased. Anyway- wine, thumbs up. Also, I'm a lightweight. The end.

Later that night we went to see another show- this time in Arezzo. It was a Dario Fo piece (if that name means anything to you) and I did not understand a darn thing in it. It was a one-man show and I thought that it was going to be more movement-oriented, but no- it was ALL text. And not just in Italian. Nope. It was in 'mariner speak', which is a combination of Italian (dialect, if you will), French, and Spanish. And it was all spoken REALLY quickly. I could pick up a word or two here and there, but for the majoirty of the show I was lost. Oh well.

Saruday (yesterday) a bunch of us went to Assisi, which was absolutely beautiful. The old part of the city is up on a hill and has the most beautiful views I have ever seen. Pictures will be up soon. We went to the Basilica di San Francesco, which was kind of a given but hey, you know. We got to see St. Francis' tomb, which was really beautiful and moving. Plus, there were monks EVERYWHERE...I heart monks. I think they are so precious. We walked through the town a little, too. We stopped in the Temple of Minerva, which is now a church. We also went to the Basilica of Santa Chiara, who was a hardcore follower of St. Francis. And we go to see St. Francis' sock.. Oh yeah. Liza and I also discovered that pullig our scarves up over our face kept us rather warm, although it looked mildly politically incorrect. Oops.

Today (Sunday) I went into Florence all by myself. Yup...I'm a big girl. I just kidn of wandered around in teh general direction of Santa Croce, which was my ultimate destination. I meandered off to Dante's House, which was kind of cool to look at even though I didn't go inside. I also went to the church where Beatrice is buried- you know, the chick that Dante wrote all of his poetry about. Yeah. Her. Anyway, next to her grave is a basket filled with notes that peopled have left asking for her help in love. Precious.

Santa Croce was next on the list. 'Twas pretty. I saw a lot of dead people. Not really...I just saw their tombs. Michelangelo. Galileo. Dant. Machiavelli. Marconi. Ghiberti. Pictures soon.

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“Remember tonight.. for it is the beginning of always.”
~ Dante Alighieri

Well fudge.

So I haven't written for awhile. Sue me.

In all seriousness, I have had so little free time in the past week and a half- and when I do I don't have the energy to think of anything remotely intelligent to say. Such is life at clown school. Anyway, two weeks ago was my fall break, which meant excursions to Verona, London, and Milan. 'Twas much fun, despite the fact that I got sick AGAIN while traveling...it was really nice to see KC, Julie, and Hanna though. Pictures from that can be found at the following links...

Facebook: Verona1, Verona2, London1, London2, Milan
Webshots: Verona, London, Milan

Last week in the Villa was pretty hectic- we had our last few classes of Commedia, which meant class for about 8 hours every day. It was fun though. We started working on improvs with larger groups- 3 or more characters- which was really difficult and challenging but in a good way. Then that weekend, Vanessa, Natalie, Liza, Jesse, and I went to Rome to have playtime with KC, Hanna, anf Julie. We did St. Peter's, Castel Sant'Angelo, the Spanish Steps, Trevi Fountain, the Parthenon, the Colloseum, Palantine Hill, the Forum, and the Cappuccin Crypt. It was a lot of fun (and way hotter than we expected it to be). Pictures are in the process of being uploaded, some are already up though so here are the links from that.

Webshots: Halloween, Rome
Facebook: Halloween, Rome1, Rome2, Rome3

Additionally, there is a video from Commedia that I will post as soon as I figure out how to do that.

*ETA* I finally got around to doing some work in Photoshop...it's only a few things but hey, they're the first things I've done since I got here.
Facebook: 1, 2
Webshots: 1, 2

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It is my pleasure to sleep and even more to be stone.
As long as shame and dishonor may last,
My sole desire is to see and to feel no more.
Speak softly, I beg you, do not awaken me.
- Michelangelo Buonarroti

Here we go...

I leave tomorrow for fall break! I'll be heading to Verona, London, Milan, and Perugia during my break, so if you want to talk to me or feel like reading some new blog entries....I won't be here and there won't be any. Sorry. Expect lots of updates and pictures once I get back though. I'll be staying with Vanessa's family when I'm in Verona so that will be really fun. I'll be staying with KC, Hanna, and Julie when I'm in London so I'm really excited to have playtime in the city with them. I'll only be in Milan for a day and a half, so I'll probably only do the Duomo, Duomo museum, La Scala, and window shopping. Then I'm coming back to Arezzo on Friday night and going to Perugia the next day for the CHOCOLATE FESTIVAL. That's all.

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The only way of catching a train I ever discovered is to miss the train before.
~ G.K. Chesterton

Oops My Bad.

So I haven't written for quite some time (oops, my bad!) and now I'm writing because I really do not want to read Aristotle right now. Or do any other kind of work right now. But I just had a moment where I looked at our calender for the upcoming week and out of habit flicked through the rest of the packet with the calender for the rest of the semester in it...and we don't have much time left! I don't know..I just got this really weird feeling in the pit of my stomach, and I don't want to have to say goodbye to anything I have here...the villa, my classes, or Italy itself, but most of all I don't want to have to say goodbye to my friends. There are a lot of people here that I'm going to miss horrendously when December 14th rolls around, and I don't even want to think about what's going to happen when I have to say goodbye to them.

I went to Venice last weekend, which was pretty gosh dern awesome. First of all, it was organized by the Accademia, which means it was free-tastic (and by free-tastic I mean transportation and housing was free, which isn't too bad). The only thing I had to pay for was food, which I surprisingly didn't spend too much on. Let's recap- we left really early Friday morning and got there around midday. It took us awhile to find our hostel because 1) Venice is rather difficult to navigate and 2) Kevin was leading us. After we checked in we had the majority of the afternoon off, so some friends and I wandered around, got some panini, and window shopped for masks. We wandrered right on over to St. Mark's Square, which is huge and amazing and the Basillica is even more astounding. Venice was part of the Byzantine Empire, so the architecture in completely different than anything I had ever seen before. San Marco is beautiful, but we didn't have time to go inside because we had to meet up with the rest of the group to go to the Goldoni Museum. Hence more trekking around the island of trekkers.

We (finally) found the rest of the group at the Chiesa dei Frari and headed over to the Goldoni Museum, which was okay. It was small (it used to be his house) and I guess only interesting if you do theatre (Goldoni wrote plays for Commedia troupes). Anyway after that Liza, Ann Marie, adn I went to the Chiesa di Frari, which was beautiful. It's where the tombs of Monteverdi (a composer), Titian (Renaissance painter) and Canova (sculpter) are, so it as really cool to see their tombs- Canova's was beautiful and apparently originally built for Titian. Crazy. Anyway funny story- I couldn't remember who Canova was at first (I recognized the name) but then I realized that he did one of my favorite sculptures and that I've used it in one of my photoshop thingies.
Silly, huh?

Anyway after the Chiesa we got dinner, which was really good if not expensive. It was pretty late by this point so we headed back to the hostel, which took quite some time becasue it's Venice nd nearly impossible to navigate. Anyway that was day one.

Day two (Saturday) meant early morning wake-up and class. We took a vaporetto (water taxi) over to Giudecca, which is an island next to Venice that is infinitely less toursity- like, people actually live there and don't depend on tourists to make money. Class was cool- it was really nice to be in a different space, which I think brought a different energy to the group. After that a few of us hopped on a nother vaporetto witht he intentions of going to the cemetary but, alas, the cemetary was closed so we ended up on Murano, which is famous for it's glass industry. We didn't stay there long, only long enough to go in a few shops and eat some gelato. After that we heded back to the hostel to get ready for dinner. Vanessa and I decided we didn't want to go out with a big group, so instead we had girl date, which was fun. We jut kind of walked around and ended up at various toursity poitns (mainly the Rialto and St. Mark's). Then we sat on the steps that led down into the canals and had a relly nice chat about life. Yay for girl dates.

Sunday meant semi-early wake-ups and trudging over to St. Mark's with the eexpectations that we wouldn't be able to go in due to Mass being held. Much to our surprise, there was a line of people outside, so we jumped on the line too and realized that it was the line for the museum, which is located on the upper levels of the Basilica. It was a really wonderful experience, because not only could we go out on the balcony, which gave us a really great view of the Square, but since Mss was going on we coul dhear the choir singing too. It was really beautiful to be able to hear the choir and stand there in awe of the mosaics that cover the ceiling of the Basilica- that memory will definitly stay with me for the rest of my life.

Later that night we took a train over the Padua, where we spent the night and went to the Mask Museum the next day, which was pretty snazzy since it's filled with masks made by Sartori, who was like THE mask-maker of all mask-makers. I just wish that we had been more time to walk around and actually enjoy the masks rather than having to listen to some woman talk about them(in Italian, which half the group doesn't understand) for two hours. Anyway the masks were still pretty cool but I was ready to get home after that. The only thing I was really upset about was that I didn't get the chance to go to the Basilica di San Antonio, which I really wanted to go to because 1) it's pretty and 2) half of my family is named after him. Anyway suffice it to say I was really glad to get back on the train and sleep for a little bit on the way home.

Other than Venice not much has happened inthe past week. Marathon Commedia has been fun if not really frustrating, but I just keep telling myself it's something to work towards. Additionally, I just posted a LOT of pictures so here are the links.

Facebook: Florence1, Florence2, Florence with Pete & Zach, Scavenger Hunt
Webshots: Florence with Pete&Zach, Venice (only half of which are currently up- I am now in the process of uploading the rest).

Additionally, my death rattle of a cough is finally starting to go away. And it only took about four weeks.

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But friendship is precious, not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life, and thanks to a benevolent arrangement the greater part of life is sunshine.
~ Thomas Jefferson

Long Days Journey into Night...

I'm starting to realize that the harder the week (or day) is, the better it will end. Last week felt like it dragged on forever, since we were so busy and we barely got any time to rest. However, the weekend I had was definitely worth the wait.

On Saturday, Pete, Zach, and I went into Florence for the day. It was really nice to spend time with them outside of class, plus I needed boy time (I miss my Cuddle Crew!). Pete had yet to venture to Florence, so it was fun to show him around the city. We started out at the (Whoa) Duomo, which, for every ounce of decor there is on the outside the inside is equally as bare. Seriously. Thank God it was free, because I would have been upset had I paid 6 euro to get in there. Nevertheless, it was still pretty cool- if you go down into the basement there's an archeological dig (which we didn't see cause you have to pay) and Brunelleschi's tomb. Brunelleschi designed the dome of the duomo, and it was kind of a big deal since it was the first dome to be built since ancient times. Go Brunelleschi.

After that we walked over to Basillica di San Lorenzo. Pete and I posed for some pictures out front. We headed in and proceeded to surrepticiously take more pictures, since we technically weren't allowed to. We got to see Donatello's grave (the artist not the turtle), which was pretty cool. While we were in the Old Sacristy this little kid knocked over one of the ropes that keep people from walking over things...suffice it to say, it was loud. And we ran away.

After that we grabbed some lunch, wandered through the Central Market, and found this really neat mask shop. The shop was closed, so we decided to go to Santa Croce until it opened. On the way over to the Basillica we stopped at the Loggia dei Lanzi to show Pete the pretty sculptures. By the time we got to Santa Croce it was closing, but we're definitly going to go back, because Galileo and Michaelangelo are buried there. On our way back to the mask shop we stopped in the Bargello (we snuck in as it was closing so we didn't have to pay teehee) and got to see Donatello's David. Pretty awesome. After that we went back to the mask shop, which turned out ot be really cool and now I want to spend all my money there. We ended up talking with the owner and his friend, who teaches anthropology in Tokyo. Snazzy.

Sunday was a pretty lazy day. Monday night was stressful as hell, since I had the write my first paper since last semester, and I pretty much ended up rambling in circles. Today I woke up feeling even sicker than I have been lately. I almost fell alseep in Philosophy- thank God I had already made my contribution to the discussion (Kafka's the Hunger Artist is a comment on capitalism- take that Scott McGehee!). Movement helped a lot though- I only did the warm-up and sat out for the rest of the lesson, but I think it was good for me to get the blood flowing for a little bit, even if it did knock what little energy I had left completely out of me.

Siena/Florence Pictures on Webshots (these are from a week and a half ago)
Siena Pictures on Facebook

More should be coming soon, I've been having trouble with the internet and Facebook is being difficult. Last weekend's Florence trip will (hopefully) be up tomorrow. Maybe.

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Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.
~ Pablo Picasso