4th Week of Classes

This week of classes was good, we really didn't do too much new stuff. We made gnocchi and faggioli and tiramisu last night for cooking class and I thought I was going to explode. It was one of the best meals I have ever had, maybe the best. I am excited to come home and cook for everyone. Today is a national holiday in Italy. I did not want to go anywhere really today so I decided to take the weekend to explore and see the sites of Siena and try to find anything cool that no one really knows about on the trip. I was exploring to the south of the city and I ran into some lost 40 year old married women. They had turned the wrong way out of their hotel and were trying to get into the walled part of Siena. I hiked them the 2 miles back and took them to Il Campo, where they bought me an expensive lunch at one of the restaurants on Il Campo. There was the Campo Comedian messing with all of the tourists today. He is a random guy that has a lot of props that squirts people with water bottles and all sorts of weird things, it was really funny. We parted ways and I have been exploring since, I have found some cool picnic areas and some other cool restaurants that I will try out in the next few weeks. It has been getting warmer and warmer here so we are finally hanging out in Il Campo with all of the Italians our age. I am finally getting to be able to converse in Italian so I can almost hold a very elementary conversation. Keep sending emails, I want to know how everyone is doing.

Urbino, Remini, & San Leo

This weekend we took a class excursion to three coastal cities of Italy. We had to get on the bus at eight on Friday morning, the day after Brian, my roommate’s 21^st birthday. I got up a lot easier that he did. We took a four hour bus ride to Urbino, where most people sleep, but Italian buses are smaller than American buses so I have a little trouble getting comfortable but on this ride I did fall asleep, but woke up with a horrible crik(?) in my neck that I still haven’t gotten rid of. We arrived in Urbino and took a little walking tour of the city, which reminds me of Siena quite a bit. We went to the home of Raphael, the master, and also my favorite ninja turtle. We got a break for lunch and we found this gorgeous hill that overlooks the entire town, which has a giant palace that we visit. Since I am not an art history major, nor do I know much about art, I cannot appreciate all of the hundreds of Madonna with Child, Annunciation, and Crucifixions that we see. The palace was cool and really big. We got to go underneath and check out the older stables and how a castle like that was really like a small city with all of the servants and people that kept it running. We left this city after I consumed a gyro, reminiscing of Greece, when I realized I was there a month ago. We took a two hour drive to Remini, a city known for its beaches and clubs. We got to our hotel, where Hanks and I were roommates, and ate a big 3 course meal, and plenty of wine. We took full advantage of both of the fames of Remini, going out to a cool outside bar and then going night swimming in the frigid Adriatic Sea. The next day we went and saw a classic Roman Arch, a medieval church, and a Renaissance temple of a man that reverted to Paganism and made a whole church to himself. There was a market outside after we were finished but most of us were excited to get to the beach in the daytime. We spent a few hours there, building a sand castle and getting sunburnt. After eating a good pizza for lunch, we took an hour drive to San Leo, a community on top of an intense rock formation. The town was quaint with a really old tower. It was ridiculously windy up there and some people got windburn while listening to the lecture. We walked even higher up to the castle on top of the rock, La Rocca. It was impressive and had a torture exhibit, with pictures and diagrams. It also was the place where a famous alchemist was interrogated by the Inquisition and eventually killed. It had a huge exhibit with a lot of old chemistry stuff and how they did these kinds of things in the 15^th century, which you can imagine I was enthralled with. We left here all very tired and I grabbed some road Coronas. I really enjoy these excursions because there are some really cool people on this program and sometimes its hard to hang out in Siena because we all live all over the city and I don’t really like hanging out with big groups. I think that it will get better and better as time goes on though. I just wrote this and the previous two because I am procrastinating writing papers, which I excel at. I have loved hearing from many of you and would love to hear from more.

3rd Week of Classes

I know that I don’t update this blog very often but it is very inconvenient because AHA isn’t open that often and people are always waiting to use the internet and the wireless connection is shoddy. We are working on meeting some kids from the University so that we can use their wireless password. As for school:

Cross-Cultural Studies: This class is cool, we’ve only had two meeting and we just kind of learn about how things work in Siena. We have a paper due today about a gender or sexuality difference that we have seen here in Siena that confuses us or strikes us as different from the American way. There isn’t really any homework for this class, so I don’t really do too much with it.

History of Art and Science: I thought that this class would be the coolest by far, but unfortunately the Professor just kind of asks questions of us about the reading and doesn’t really teach too much. We have readings every once and a while but we have to journal about every excursion that we take and also about every reading, which naturally I have not done and will have to do at the last minute before the first round is due on Wednesday. Hopefully the class picks up because I think that I will go crazy if it doesn’t because class is two hours long and my patience doesn’t last that long. I usually just doodle, I’m getting pretty good at drawing things in the room.

Art History: I really like this class. Our teacher is a funny little man who knows everything about everything art. Almost too much sometimes. He swears a lot and knows what he is talking about is boring when we are just sitting in class so we get out a lot and walk around and study the Art of Siena. We have a paper due on Wednesday about a painting or art work that we have seen that we really liked. I don’t know how I am going to write two pages about it but I think I’ll be able to.

Italian: I really enjoy this class because our teacher is cool and we learn at a pretty good pace. I was allowed to join the second level class, but then I realized that I didn’t want to do all the vocabulary catch up and dropped back down to level one. We have homework every day, which takes like 15 minutes. We have quizzes every Thursday, which I have gotten one question wrong so far so its not all bad. We have learned all the basics, verb conjugation in the present, introductions, ordering in restaurants, getting hotels, household things, and basic vocab for walking around in Siena. The best part of the class, different from the US is that we always have questions about how to say things because we have to use it every day. I’m learning quickly and have just been asking the teacher for other tenses and more vocab so I don’t go stir crazy in the 2 and a half hour class.

As you can see I rarely have homework so most of my day is spent walking around and just relaxing in Il Campo or a park. Hanks and I work out every week day, then I have cooking class every Thursday night. Last week we made our own tagliatelli noodles with a basic sauce, a quiche like thing with potatoes spinach and zucchini. We also made bruschetta as an appetizer. We made this delicious apple cake for dessert that was amazing. The lady that teaches us teaches completely in Italian which we can all pick up on pretty quickly, even if we can’t speak it back yet. This week we made risotto with saffron in it with a beef broth. Then we made kind of a beef meatloaf which is the best I can describe it as. For dessert we made a custard cake. I love making everything completely from scratch and then eating it at the end. The lady buys like 3 bottles of wine for the six of us so we just sit back and eat through our 4 course meals. We get there at like six and leave around 10 or so.

Rome

We decided to go to Rome for the weekend. There were about 12 of us and we stayed in two different hostels. I was in the M&J Place with Emily, Piper, Kelsi, Danielle, and Nicole. We had a roommate that was about our age and one that was a really old guy. We got in late on Friday night because the bus took about 3 hours, so we just did the American thing and went to McDonalds, which was delicious. Piper gave me a cheeseburger to buy her a McFlurry with her own money so that she didn’t look like a whale. It didn’t make sense to me but I was fine with it. The next morning we woke up early and started down towards the center of classic Rome. Our hostel was conveniently located next to the central train station which is only about a mile from Rome, so it was an easy walk. We went to the Coliseum first, which was pretty amazing. I got left behind because I did the audio tour because I am a huge nerd. They also had a very cool collection of Roman processional things from around the time of Christ. I knew that the Domus Aurea was very close so I went to find that next. I did a project on the Domus Aurea for my Classics class in college so I was very excited to see it. I was disappointed to find that there is not much written about it in the place that it is because the emperor Nero, who built it, was a huge jerk who pretty much catalyzed the fall of Rome, and there wasn’t much of it left. After that I went over to the Roman forum and attached to a tour group so I could hear tons of stuff about it. We walked through the old palace of Augustine. The coolest fact about this place was that his dining room was absolutely enormous with a moat inside it which surrounded an island with a big tree on it, I hope to put pics up on Facebook soon. But next to this dining hall, there was a giant pit which used to be filled with water and slaves would stage mock naval battles for intermissions from courses. It used to be considered rude to reject food from the emperor so they had a vomitorium right next door where people would go puke and rally. After walking around all these rooms and hearing more about the vestal virgins and everything I made my way over to the museum of the risorgimiento, which is a relatively contemporary museum that was dedicated to a United Italy. There were a ton of cool pictures and a movie that I watched about Italy until World War I, after which this place was built. A lot of Romans hate it because it sticks out above everything else and is bright white. It was pretty interesting with a Tomb to the Unknown Soldier in the front above which is an absolutely enormous Memorial to Vittorio Emmanuele II, who is seated on a giant horse. I walked over to the Teatro Marcello, which looks kind of like the Colisseum but much smaller. Then I walked over the smallest inhabited island in the world, which I was skeptical about, but whatever, it had a gelato shop that I stopped in, but didn’t buy anything because it was so expensive. The other side of the Tiber river was very quaint and had some cool shops to walk around in. I got to enjoy it at my own pace because of my nerdiness at the Coliseum too. Then I walked around some more and saw some cool fountains, my favorite one over there was the Fountain of Pope Paul, which also had a gorgeous view of the city that I have video of that I hope to put up on Facebook or youtube or something soon. Then I took a wrong turn looking for the statue of Garibaldi and walked through a cool little park. I made it to the statue, which also had an amazing view of the city. I was pretty tired by then and wanted to walk back to my hostel, which was now like three miles away. I walked past Vatican City but did not go in because we planned to go the next day. I went back across the river over a cool bridge with statues every twenty feet. Then I stopped by Piazza Navoria which was like a big open air market. I met some kids who were from New York. One kid had gotten hit by a Gypsy and was trying to talk to the police about it. I think that the cops just didn’t want to do anything about it because they were pretending the didn’t speak English, so I stepped in with my sketchy mix of Italian and Spanish to help them out, even the cops didn’t do anything. The next stop was the Parthenon, which I wanted to get an audioguide to but they were holding Mass soon so I had to leave. Then I saw the Palazzo Montecitorio which had a really cool obelisk with a procession of people going to the top wrapped around it. Right about here my camera died so I did not get pictures of the Fontana di Trevi, which you should look up because it is gorgeous. After that I went to the Fontana di Tritone, where the girls saw a really crazy man. Then I went to Piazza della Repubblica, which had a cool fountain that I sat by for a while and rested because it was a really long day of walking. Then I made it back to my hostel and took a little nap because that night we decided to go out on a Roman pub crawl. We met at the Spanish Steps which were really cool then proceeded to the first pub, we got free pizza and beer there, so we took full advantage. I took second place to Hanks in the beer chugging contest so we had a clean Carleton sweep. We went to two more bars after that then ended up at a club. The club was fun but I decided to leave by myself and proceeded to get lost on the streets of Rome for three hours, eventually wandering in at about 3:45 when everyone else was getting back from the club. The next day we woke up at 7 to get over to Vatican city. We were disappointed to find out that the Vatican Museums are closed on Sundays so I will just have to make it down some other weekend. The Vatican is absolutely unreal though, we got there really early so there was almost no one in the piazza when we were there, it has an unbelievable amount of statues and cool fountains in there though. We went inside and my breath was taken away, the amount of art that is jammed inside the main hall of the cathedral is unreal. I think that Pope John Paul is lying in state there but I couldn’t tell if it was wax or not. We stayed for mass which was all in Latin and we had to stand so it wasn’t very exciting. Then we went outside and hung out for a while and the Pope came out his window and gave a blessing in like eight different languages. By then the piazza was full so it was an amazing experience with different groups cheering for every language. After Vatican City we went and so the fortress that the Pope goes to if Rome is under attack, we almost went in but decided not to. After that we went and got lunch/dinner at Hard Rock Café. Kind of lame, but I needed something with big portions and something that wasn’t either pasta or a panino. Then our time in Rome was up and we took the bus home.

2nd Week of Class

The second week of class was pretty awesome. On saturday we went to Florence and visited their large cathedral. Florence is the rival of Siena so it was funny to hear our Sienese guides talking about the art. The statue of David was in front and it is impressive. It was gigantic, a lot bigger than I thought. We stayed after the excursion and walked to a cool Chinese place. We were all a little cranky after we got back so we decided to go to the bar. We ended up having a great time and Piper and I tried Absinthe. On Sunday we went to the soccer game which was really fun and there were some awesome plays. The crowd was lively and singing the entire time. Hanks bought an entire soccer outfit, which only 5 year olds were wearing so that was pretty funny, I just bought a scarf. The week has been good so far, I don't really like my Art and Science class it has potential but the teacher is a little scatterbrained. Our cross cultural studies class is interesting and we get to go to the university and meet with italian students who are learning english and we help each other. I really like Italian and almost moved up to level II because level I was pretty easy, but decided against doing that much work. I love art history the professor is really cool and he knows so much. On tuesday we went to il Duomo and he explained so much of the art to us. Looking at it closely opens up so much more of the stories that are behind the art. There was usually only one giant window that shed light inside the cathedral, so there was a lot of new testament were the light would be, then farther away was the old testament, and further away was pagan art, so it is an entire progression of the rise of Christianity. Today we went to the crypt and the museum of the cathdral, which were cool too. We got a great panoramic view of the entire city and Tuscan landscape. We are going to Rome tomorrow and it should be amazing. I have my cooking class tonight, we are making our own noodles and a bunch of stuff. I would still love to hear from anyone so give me a shout out.

First Week of Class

This will be short because I am on my 15 minute break from Italian. Class has been good, we have been mainly walking around Siena for class and learning tons about all of the art and architecture. The city is split into 17 different contradas inside the walls. Each of these contradas is represented by an animal and colors, so as you walk through the city, the colors and depictions on the wall change. Italian is pretty easy so far because it is so similar to Spanish. Hopefully we pick up the pace soon. If anyone actually reads this besides my family, not that I don't love to hear from them, I would love to get some emails of how things are going wherever you may be. We went out last night for Nicolas's birthday so that was fun, the bartenders are starting to know us, our favorite place is Masgalano. I have been working out with John a lot so I am pretty sore, but its good.