Gearing up to go home..

Yes, it has been a while. A lot has happened in the last 5 months, including several trips and the end of the year art show at Cal State, so let's get started!!

January 2007

Once Dad left and Christmas break was over, we settled back into school and finished up the last month of the semester. Finals were tough, but nothing we couldn't handle. And of course, the mid-January trip to Northern Italy was fantastic. :)

Northern Italy!

This trip was wonderful. I think for the first time the variety of cultures within this country became very real to me. Northern Italy has a lot of the money and influences from the bordering countries. Architecture is more worldly, in that different art movements from neighboring countries made a stronger impact. Every city up there seems to have a sweet
slur to their italian, making it that much harder to understand. :)

One of our first stops, and somewhere I've always wanted to go and never thought I would, was Paduva. The famous artist, Giotto, did some incredibly famous frescos in the Scrovegni Chapel. Unfortunately, we were only allowed inside for 15 minutes, only after going through some de-ionizing to protect the frescoes. And of course, no pictures inside, please.

Here's a shot of the outside of the Scrovegni Chapel.

Also, as we were leaving, it started snowing!

Verona!! The home of Romeo and Juliet and ancient Roman ruins! Wandering around Verona was lovely. Here's a few shots from there..




This is the Roman arena found right in the middle of town there...

They are doing some renovation so we didn't get to go inside :(









Here I am, adding John and my name to the graffiti outside Juliet's supposed home. The tunnel was black with all the names and hearts on the walls.

Verona's main piazza. There is an open market here. It's also close to the homes of some of the most influential Italian families, including Gran Cane (Big Dog) whose family harbored Dante when he was exiled from Florence.

Vicenza was beautiful! We stopped off there to see Teatro Olympico, which is one of the first indoor theaters, completely made of wood. It is entirely in-tact and really breathtaking.


Because of the shape of the theater, I didn't get a good full picture, but here is one of all of us listening to a lecture















Just a cool picture as we were getting off the bus













The whole trip to Vicenza was a little sketchy since the Italians up there aren't too happy with Americans right now. Apparently we are expanding an air base up there and they are really upset about it. They were pretty rude with us, so we were some-what happy to leave.






There were many other amazing points to this trip, but i'm only going to mention one more: CHEESE!!!! We had the fantastic experience to visit a Gran Padano cheese factory!! Gran Padano cheese is like Parmesean, but because it is made in a different area, they have to call it something different. Either way, it was GOOD!! There are all kinds of pictures of it on my Flickr account, but for now, here are a few of my favorites....




Me, Kelli, Courtney and Terri...
So excited about the CHEESE!!!














This is me trying to eat a very, very large wheel of cheese.











One of the many endless walls of cheese













Also in January, we got a new roommate!! Her name is Katrina and she is Russian. Her family lives in Portugal and she is here studying interior design. Cool!

Okay, so that was January!! Wow, right?? But wait!! There's MORE!! :)

February 2007

February was another eventful month because it brought another visitor from home: John!!

John came out to visit for about 10 days and we had an incredible time. We traveled up to Venice for Carnivale and down to Rome so he could get his gladiator fix. The rest of the time was spent in Florence hanging out and enjoying our free time. :)

Here's a few of my favorite shots from our time together..





In the Colosseum. Woohoo!!















John eating his first gelato. He always got the frutty flavors.

On top of the Duomo in Florence. It was a beautiful day!

Making the most of Carnivale at the top of the Rialto bridge in Venice.

There are, of course, more pictures from our trip on my Flickr, including lots of pictures of the costumes we found at carnivale and fantastic pictures of us jumping on the roof of Hadrian's Mausoleum (now Castello Sant'Angelo), but for now we must move on....

March 2007!

This month brought the greatest school field trip of them all: Southern Italy!!! Pompeii, Napoli, Amalfi Coast, Capri... beautiful every where you look with fantastic food and
wonderful culture!!




Here is the view from our hotel room in Amalfi. It was such a fantastic little sea-side town with the biggest lemons I've ever seen in my life!!

One night my roommate and I left the door to the balcony open and enjoyed the sound of the water on the rocks.. it was lovely :)









Kelli, me, Terri, Sincere and Courtney enjoying a nice evening on the roof of the hotel in Amalfi!













This is how they grow the lemons in the south there. The terraces go all along the hill side..












At the top of Mount Vesuvius with Big Dave, Sincere, Courtney, Kelli and me...













From the top of Mount Vesuvius... you can see Pompeii and Napoli down there...













Excited to be in Pompeii!!!

If the clouds weren't so thick that day, you would see Vesuvius directly behind us...











This is the whole school hanging out in one of the theaters in Pompeii..














From left to right: Damian, me, Amarie, Terri, Sincere, Kelli, Courtney and Lindsay. We are on our way to Capri!!











Beautiful sunset over Napoli at the end of a long day. :)












Okay, guys.. That brings you up-to-date through to March. There is much to tell about April, when Mom, Jen and Harry came to visit and the art show we hosted this week. This is getting to be a long post, so I will leave you with this and catch up on the rest in a bit, okay?

If I don't get back here in the next week and a half, wish me luck and pray for my safe return to the states!! May 20th and I'm home sweet home!!

Buon Anno!

At last! The holidays are over and the new year has come.

So much has happened! Let's get started..

-Mid terms are over! After all the stress and studying, we all got through it right in time to focus on the holidays. Dad came out to visit for Christmas and we had a great time!! My family did a wonderful job of making this Christmas feel as "home-like" as it could:

There were the traditional Christmas Eve pajamas from Gramma....

And this I couldn't believe: they sent my family's Christmas-tree star!!
Having that important piece of home on my little Charlie-Brown Christmas tree was so awesome..

Altogether, Dad and I had a great Christmas together..


I know I said this before, but thank you so much to all my friends and family who sent cards and presents and emails. It really did make my first (and hopefully last) Christmas away from home so much more bearable. It was still hard, but I will never forget how special and missed you all made me feel.. thank you.

- So, I was in the grocery store the day before my dad came and I was picking out tomatoes in the produce section. The Italians are very weird about their produce and who touches and how, so I shouldn't have been as surprised as I was when an older gentleman came over to me and said, "Signorina, per favore usura un guanto" (please use a glove), as he handed me the little plastic bag-glove provided by the market. It was kind of embarrassing, especially when I looked around and realized everyone else was wearing a glove and looking at me with side-ways, disapproving looks. So I put on the glove to pick out one more tomato and I wore it until I was completely out of the produce section (I wouldn't have dared to take it off anywhere near the produce after that)... And I will never again touch a piece of fruit without a glove... at least not in Italy...

- Dad and I did a lot of traveling while he was here. We went to Venice (a first for me!) and it was beautiful!! I loved it!! It was confusing to navigate with all the canals and strange alleyways, but it just kinda added to the charm and mystery of the island. I decided that I must go back, hopefully during Carnivale in February, when they dress up like masquerade and have a huge party for 10 days :) Anyway, here's a couple pictures of Venice..


- So funny moment for me: About a month ago, I was walking to school and realized that there were huge piles of leaves all along the side walk. They were red and orange and all kinds of shades that you don't see in Southern California. So I kicked them up and walked through them for about 100 yards down the side walk. Some people in the park were looking at me, and I laughed and thought to myself, "You would be doing this too if you never had before.." Maybe it wasn't an "Italy-specific" moment, but it was certainly a first for me. I loved it. :)


-My New Years wasn't all the razzle-dazzle as I might have hoped. Well, the first 5 mins were, at least. I got ready to go out with a couple of my friends and I was feeling pretty good. I was wearing nice clothes, got myself all pretty and great... and as I was walking out the door thinking, "oh how nice it will be to come home to this cozy little apartment tonight", I shut the door and locked my keys inside. Right now, I'm the only one out of my roommates who is even in the country right now, so this was more than a little bit of a problem. I went out that night anyway and the whole night I was very angry and upset about this whole key thing... I knew that tomorrow was a holiday and it would be close-to-impossible to get ahold of my landlord (who doesn't like to answer his phone even during regular business hours). On top of this silly lock-out business, the streets were over crowded with people and loud, unsafe fireworks (they were dropping them from the windows into the crowded streets! One went off about 2 meters from me and I could feel the vibration in my chest. The news yesterday said 8 people were injured through the night and one guy lost 4 fingers!!) Anyway, it was a very miserable night.. when the clock turned 12, I was walking down an empty alleyway with my friends, trying to get away from all the commotion. I spent that night at my friend Kelli's house and the next day tried to get ahold of my landlord (with no luck, of course), so I spent the next night at my other friend Varpu's. I only just got back into my apartment today and after cleaning up the place and myself a bit, I took some time to make sure I don't forget my keys and lock myself out for two nights ever again:

with a coat hanger and some pliers, now I have a nice little key rack right on the door.



Anyway, I hope this works. My roommates have had some trouble with remembering keys as well, so hopefully we can all benefit from some kind of order to the keys...

-I uploaded a LOT of pictures onto flickr today. I have even more (if you can believe it) but downloading them takes some time. Hopefully I will be totally caught up in the next day or two. You will notice that none of the new pictures have captions, and for that I am sorry. However, if I added captions, I would never get them all up (there are so many!) and I would rather you all see them with no captions than not at all. Anyway, if you view them through the "sets" on the right hand side of the page, it should at least give you some indication of where they were taken because of the set heading and little blurb. Anyway, enjoy the new pictures! The newest sets include pictures of: My Apartment, Rome, Urbino, Siena, Perugia and Pisa. The ones of Venice aren't quite up yet, but they will be. :)

January is going to be fun... We are going to the opera, La Boheme, on the 23rd, and then another trip with the school to Verona and Northern Italy on the weekend of the 26th. Then in February, the Fall semester will be over (I know, it's strange) and John will be coming out here to Italy for a visit on the 10th. This is going to be a lot of fun! In the meantime, I have a lot of homework to catch up on and a lot of painting to do!

During the holidays here, there has been a word written on almost everything that I'd never heard before. I couldn't find it in my Italian dictionary and when I did find out the English equivalent, it didn't clear up what it means exactly to the Italians. I see it on street signs, in window shops and then today, even the little old man who opened up my apartment said it as a response when I wished him a "boun anno." All I really knew was that this little word makes me feel warm and fuzzy and full of good thoughts -- but I didn't even know why!! So I went inside (after being let in) and looked into it even further. Turns out, it is a word they use to express goodwill, best wishes and good luck. I suppose they use it now mostly during the holidays, especially the new year, because of the feelings of fresh excitement and new adventure...

So, now I will share this new phrase with you. To all of you back home who have just finished up your cozy holidays with your families, to you who have reached out to me so warmly and with such love, and to anyone who looks to this new year with excitement and adventure: "Auguri"

Mid-Semester Crazies...

Ah! We are at mid-term right now (while everyone back home is going through finals..) and things can get kinda crazy. I had an exam for the Dante class last week and some more exams this coming week for language... and then I'm off for Christmas break!! My dad is coming out for the holiday and I'm really looking forward to that. A few of my friends are going home for the break and the more I listen to them getting ready to go, the more I'm confident that I needed to stay. Although, I'm sure my dad coming out helps that decision quite a bit. :) He will be leaving on New Year's Eve and I plan to spend that night right here in Florence with some good friends. The whole break is going to be quite a treat. The spring is going to bring ALOT of excitement with more trips, another opera, and more people coming to visit. So, I think I will just kick back and enjoy this while it's here :)

SO, yes, some very exciting things have been happening since I posted last.

Rome!
In mid-November the school made a trip down to Tarquinia, Cerveteri and Rome!
We saw some incredible sights, including all kinds of Ancient Etruscan sights as well as TONS of Roman ruins (of course... ) It got me very excited about going back to Rome quite a bit. It's a great town..

this is the gang, sitting on the Spanish Steps...


The Roman Forum
It was so gigantic! This picture is taken from Palatine Hill
We were trying to get to the Trevi Fountain, took a wrong turn and ended up
at the Pantheon, which is the only building I was really itching to see.
I was walking along, eating a piece of pizza, looked up, through an alley,
and I almost dropped my lunch. It was spectacular. And gigantic.
I had a friend take a picture to document that moment of pure elation....



The Trevi Fountain.
Had I been wearing a long black ballgown,
I don't know that I could have resisted wading in it..

The inside of the Colosseum.
Totally awesome. What else is there to say..?

The Vatican at night.
I didn't go inside this trip, but I probably will next time.
By the way, when you go see this for the first time and think to yourself,
"It's not that big at all...."
just wait.
Then after you've been walking towards it for about 5 minutes
and you are no closer than you were when you first saw it,
reconsider your previous assessment of its size...

Cerveteri!

The Necropolis (city of the dead)... it was literally a city for the dead.
There are thousands of tombs in a little valley, all bee-hive shaped with grass on top.


I was the only one gutsy enough to lay down in the tombs.
It wasn't that bad. But i might call down to the concierge for an extra pillow next time..
Sincere and Courtney, about to enter one of the tombs


At sunset, the care takers of the necropolis set off an alarm to warn anyone inside the park because they close and lock the gates at night. If you are stuck inside, then it's going to be a creepy night.
When we saw the sun going down, we were practically running back to the exit..



and then there was..
Thanksgiving!

We had Thanksgiving with some of the close friends...
(and yes, there was more food than that...)


Varpu, Sincere, Cameron, Lacie, Me, Kelli...
I believe Courtney took the picture...
Kelli, putting the finishing touches on
her fantastic green beans

Varpu, Courtney, Me, Sincere..
getting ready for a movie!

For those of you who feel that was not nearly enough pictures, I agree. However, there are hundreds of photos and I'm trying very hard to get them onto the flickr account. I will keep everyone posted on when I get the rest of all these pictures up.

Meanwhile, I'm getting ready for dad to show up for Christmas. Florence is certainly ready. There are little markets and tons of lights hung down just about every street. It really is beautiful. My roommates and I have decorated and we are ready for Christmas!

I've very much enjoyed the cards, letters and emails from home.
I miss you guys very much and it feels good to know that you miss me too...

Happy Holidays... or.... Buone Feste!

It's been a while...

Yeah, I havn't posted in a while, but it has been rather busy.

I got back from London with Sincere and Courtney a week ago and we had a fantastic time!! London is my new favorite city. It felt like a place I could call home very easily. However, the exchange rate is terrible, so I guess that means I won't be moving there any time soon. :) We also went to Milan for two days before that and that was pretty great, too. We loved that city a lot -- especially all the trees! Florence has zero trees along the roads in the center, so we enjoyed the all the green in Milan. :)

In Milan we saw some pretty great stuff: the Duomo, a cartoon (pre-sketch) of Rafael's School of Athens, and the Castle Sforzesco. The school is taking us there in the spring, so hopefully they will get us in to see The Last Supper. All the photos of Milan are up on my flickr page and they have their own set on the right hand column.. :)

London was a great experience. It was almost like a home town I'd never been to before. And everyone spoke ENGLISH!! That was a treat. In Florence, when you are standing in line somewhere, you are always thinking in your mind of what you are going to say and how to say it correctly. In London we found ourselves doing the same thing and then realizing they all speak english. Even in our fake English accents that we use only with each other, we found ourselves saying, "Si!" and "Grazie!" Our brains wouldn't give us a break, I guess. The weather in London was kinda cool with, of course, fog and a little bit of rain. It was perfect. The tube was very efficient and totally easy to use. I saw just about everything I wanted to see except the London Tower, Tower Bridge and the London Bridge. And of course, there are TONS of museums that I would like to go back to someday. We didn't make it to Stonehenge like I'd hoped, but I'll save that for the next time I'm there as well. :) I have all the pictures of London up as well, so go check it out! They have their own set on the right hand side of the page. There are pictures of The Globe, Abbey Road, St Pauls, the Eye.. everything.

Oh! And make sure you check out the Movie Premiere picture set on there as well. I had pretty good timing one night and ended up meeting Jude Law and Robin Wright-Penn at the premiere of their movie, Breaking and Entering. We got their autographs and a couple pictures.. so go check it out..

I started classes this last week. I have two italian classes, one for conversation and reading and the other is just grammar. Hopefully it will help my italian... I sure need it. :) I'm also taking a class on Dante's Divine Comedy, which I'm very excited about. Dante lived in Florence (and later, banned from Florence) and many of the places in the Divine Comedy are references to real places in or around Florence and Tuscany. In December we are taking a Dante Walk to see some of the significant places from his life and works in the city. The Accademia classes start tomorrow morning and I'm kinda excited and nervous. None of the other Cal State art students signed up for this class, so I'm a bit alone in there. I hope I understand everything the teacher is saying, or that I meet up with someone who speaks english. :) Anyway, wish me luck, I'll keep you posted on that...

This morning my friend, Varpu, and I learned a little lesson about paying closer attention to the bus system. We have been attending a small group at the Pepperdine University building for Sunday night worship, but there is an actual church building just outside the city that we were looking to worship with as well. She has been once and I have yet to go. My other friend gave me directions for taking the bus so, today, we thought we'd give it a shot. We got on the bus at the right time and all.. but we reached the end of the line before we realized we got on it going the wrong direction. Oh well. Next week, I guess... and I'll make sure to go the opposite direction. :)

The weather is getting much cooler. Almost overnight, the temperature has dropped dramatically. We've been keeping warm with hot tea and blankets at night. Hopefully we will be okay throught the winter since the heat is too expensive to turn on! Now I wish we'd picked an apartment with a fireplace!!

Okay, well, I have class early tomorrow and I want to be ready for it!
I have more pictures to put up from other day trips in Italy and I'll try to get those up soon..

Some news and a little story

A lot has been going on. Most important thing that has happened, if you don't already know:
I MADE IT INTO THE ACCADEMIA!!!!
I'm excited, humbled, greatful, anxious.. just very happy to know that I'm going to have a year of learning from an institution of great tradition. Actually, everyone from Cal State who went through exams made it into the Accademia, which was a first since the Cal State Florence program was founded. We did a lot of celebrating. :)

In other exciting news, I have regained access to my Flickr account (after much sweat, blood and tears.. and a simple email to Flickr Support...) Also, by the kindness of my friend, Nick G, I was gifted a Flickr Pro account, which really just means more pictures for all of you. Thanks, Nick. It was a thoughtful thing to do..

I'm currently working on a huge batch of pictures to upload for all of you (I've had a few requests for more..) but I have little free time to work on it. The next three weeks are going to be busy, as I am planning a lot of activities between now and then, "then" being when the semester offically starts. This week, I have a small cooking class Wednesday, maybe going to a fair in the suburb of Florence on Thursday, the opera "Barber of Seville" on Friday, and I just started planning a trip today for the world-famous chocolate festival in Perugia on Saturday. (phew!) Next week, CSU has finals, I have a very small paper due, and then Friday, after my written final in the morning, I hop a train to Milan with my two roommates, Sincere and Courtney. We will stay there through the weekend and on Monday, we are taking a plane to London to stay there 5 nights before returning through Milan that Saturday. Like I said... it is going to be a busy 3 weeks. I'll try to get pictures up before stuff really starts happening, because after this month, I'm going to have even *more* pictures to post. haha... life just doesn't stop around here.

Okay, I need to go, but those pictures are coming soon. To close up this post, I'll leave you with a little story about my Saturday adventure. Enjoy!

"The Debacle"

This weekend I had quite an adventure with a group of my friends here. We thought we would be so American and go out for some good, old fashioned outlet shopping in a town near by to Florence. Little did we realize that we would be unable to purchase anything, since this outlet is full of Puma, Prada, Gucci and other designer labels. So we found ourselves content with looking (not touching!) at all the pretty things and drinking cappucino during the incredibly rainy weather.

Toward the end of the day, as we walked through the down-pour to the bus stop, on the side of a road with no sidewalk, up-hill, as cars are whizzing by, we begin to long for the bus. It was fun day, but really, we are ready for it to be over. We get to the bus stop, read the sign, and realize that earlier we misunderstood the bus schedule. There was no bus coming just then at 645. Instead, it was coming at 920 that evening. To add to the problem, there was a major accident on the autostrada and traffic was completely stopped. So now, there was a possibility the bus might not even come.

Sincere, Courtney, Malen, Becca, Damien, me, and Terri on the side of the road... not really sure what is going to happen next...

So, to make the best of a bad situation, we decide to stick it out and have dinner to pass the time. We ate a lot, and continued to order small courses to keep the table as long as possible. With our bellies full, we walk back to the bus stop and maintain our post at 845 (just incase the bus is early). The air is now decidedly colder, our feet are still wet and there is little-to-no light on this dreary road side. So we wait. And wait. And wait... and receed into the depths of tired delirium to which we had already entered during dinner. Things become very funny that really aren't and we slowly lost all hope of a returning bus...

If we worked this out, so far, mathmatically
(don't check my figures, I'm an art student for a reason...),
then we would get:
(7 tired International Students x 1 long rainy day (12 hours)
+ 14 cold, wet feet)
divided by 7 good senses of humor - 1 SETA bus =
the following video, documenting our complete pandemonium

Get this video and more at MySpace.com

Now before you start to worry for our sanity, know that the bus finally did come... but not until almost 10pm, after we were completely hysterical with laughter and so tired, nothing was really even funny anymore. And so we get on the bus, happy to be warm and going home.

Until.......

The bus didn't take the autostrada back. The traffic was too bad, and the driver had to make up for lost time. So instead, this behemoth decided to take the tiny, windy, down-hill, mountain roads at a speeds which were not safe for any vehicle. Shaking, rolling, tipping the whole way down, all of us quickly became ill. Now this wasn't your run-of-the-mill-I-might-be-a-little-uneasy car sickness. This was pale-green-woozy-gross-I-can't-believe-I-just-paid-for-a-nice-dinner nasty inside sickness. Trying so hard to calm our breathing and just fall asleep to get through it, we fought to the bitter end. However, one of us did not succeed, and as Courtney took clothes out of a Puma bag as fast as she could, everyone else readied themselves with ears, eyes, and noses covered. Shortly thereafter, the bus pulled over and Courtney disposed of the now-very-toxic Puma bag in a trash can. Once the bus finally reached its destination, we exited, and sat on the first pavement we could find, happy to be on the solid ground again. The walk home was slow and labored, and we don't really remember even getting home.

Although taken in jest,
this picture was taken when it was
"too soon to be funny yet"

Sure we had a great time shopping, but that's not the part we are going to remember.
And I can guarantee its going to be a while before any of us get on another SETA bus.

Pisa

I completely forgot my password to Flickr and can not retrieve it in anyway. Believe me, I spent all weekend trying their little "forgot password?" methods and I had no luck what-so-ever. Well, I wasn't too excited about Flickr anyway, because in order to get all the features I wanted to take advantage of, I would need to pay for a year subscription. That's no good. So I'm looking into new sites and also considering just using another site I'm on, since I have free gallery space available to me there... Bleh.. point is, no additional pictures until I figure out something else. :)

Court, Sincere and I went to Pisa this weekend, which was really awesome. We took the train, about a one hour ride out of Florence, and walked around the city for the day. There really isn't much to do in Pisa, except look at the tower and take silly pictures. So, we layed in the grass, got lost in the city for a while, found a park, and just meandered around the town. It was absolutely perfect. Here's a couple pictures (I can still put some on here, but they wont be on flickr)

This is my obligatory "leaning" picture

this is us, laying in the grass, under the great shadow of the leaning tower...

and then we tried to be all artsy with the reflection of our glasses...


Just some pictures of the buildings...
the duomo of Pisa and the tower in the background...
the baptistry that sits infront of the duomo...
Even the cappucino seems a little crooked there...


I have some more entertaining pictures, however, the internet is going weird again and I should get these up before it crashes...

Hopefully, in the next weekend or two we will be going to Lucca, a small town not far from here which is rumored to be a smaller, more rural Florence. It sounds like my kind of town :)

Oh and by the way, write me letters, leave comments on this blog, or drop me an email. Even if you think you don't have anything interesting to say, believe me. It is interesting to me. I miss you all and anything you say will be so comforting and appreciated. :)