The Trinity, spring break, tombs and Mr. Housley

It looks like I jinxed the weather with my last post! Since Monday it's been rainy and gross, not to mention humid. And I don't know if it's my volumizing shampoo or the climate here, but my hair is going insane. It's incredibly frustrating, especially since I can't wear my hair in a ponytail because it's still too short.

This week was generally uneventful. Classes go on, as classes are wont to do; for my Wednesday site visit we went to the Church of Santa Maria Novella to study Masaccio's fresco The Trinity, which is generally considered to be the first Renaissance work. It was very impressive but I don't feel like typing out why, because it has to do with the alignment of the shapes and figures and other things like that. I can tell you, however, that it is the first painting to be done using one-point perspective — you know, the technique we learn in third grade with the vanishing point and horizon line. Masaccio uses it to make it look like the fresco is another room in the church. It's so strange to think about something like that not being the norm at the time. Our TAs said that people in the 15th century would have been so unused to seeing illusionist paintings like that that people occasionally tried to reach into the room.

Santa Maria Novella is right by the train station, so after the site visit, I went there to buy my tickets for Lyon! Everything went off without a hitch, except for the fact that I switched the airport I'm supposed to fly into with the train station, and my tickets run out 45 minutes outside Lyon proper. This just means I have to get back to the train station, and I hope they can change it. I'll be staying with my friend Camille in her house in Lyon for the first weekend of break, before leaving on Tuesday to go to Vienna, where I'll be on my own for a few days before meeting up with Sarah. It looks like Prague is going to end up being a no-go — Sarah and I are both champion procrastinators, which means in this case we kind of screwed ourselves, as tickets out of Prague are close to $400. Instead of Prague, we may go to Salzburg, or Venice, or Zurich or Istanbul or Beijing or you know. It's a week to go and we're still deciding. I hope I'll be better at planning before I get out of Europe.

Tomorrow I'm off south on a two-day trip to visit five Etruscan ruins, with my favorite class and my favorite professor. I am exceedingly excited, as is my entire class. Two of my closer friends are in that class, so it should be even more fun than normal. And Mom, the flashlight you made me bring will come in handy! Professor Ewell said we should bring a flashlight if we have one so we can better see the tombs. (Etruscan tombs are arranged in necropoli, and, for the most part, are carved out of bedrock.) We'll be staying in Tarquinia overnight, which is right by the ocean, and Professor Ewell said they have excellent seafood, and that he'd make reservations at a nice restaurant for any of us who want to go with him there. I think we might all end up going, because we all adore him and think he's the smartest man alive. If any SMA girls are reading this, he's like the Mr. Housley of Syracuse in Florence.

I'm finally caught up in my pictures! I just today realized I had yet to post pictures from the last day of my trip to Mantua/Padua/Venice. With this post, I'm all caught up on both posting and pictures, and therefore entirely ready to fall behind after the trip this weekend.

My first post as a true adult

Today was one of the first truly warm days in a while, and I took advantage of it — I write this from the Piazza della Vittoria, a small piazza just down the street from my apartment with the Filippinis. I was so excited by the sun that I took all my homework outside and sat on two benches and did it here in the piazza, along with a healthy amount of people-watching.

This weekend was also beautiful, the first truly nice days in a while. It was so warm that Liz and I were able to leave our window open all Friday night without even getting chilly, which has never happened before and was certainly an enjoyable experience. The only downside is that Italian homes do not have screens, so I'm making friends with a lot of mosquitos. If by "making friends" you mean "luring in and killing." Which I do.

As some of you know, I missed my bus to Siena on Friday, but I'm not worried. There's another trip I'll be able to go on at the end of March, and since I slept through my alarm again, I clearly needed the sleep. I slept half the day away, then woke up and took my Italian translation of Neil Gaiman's Stardust out to this same piazza and did the same thing I did today: read and people-watched, with a short break to duck into a caffè for food. I was still exhausted at night so I stayed in.

Saturday was much of the same. I was late to rise, and didn't really do much until about eight at night, when I went with a few of my friends to Pizzeria Spera around the corner and had literally the best pizza I've ever had in my life. After that, we went on to a small bar and had a few drinks to celebrate me turning twenty one, even though that technically didn't happen until Sunday. And Sunday, while pleasant, was low-key; it was obviously a school night so I didn't want to go out, and the joy of being able to buy alcohol has worn off since being in Italy. I imagine I'll be annoyed when I get back to the States and have to start presenting my card everywhere.

Oddly enough, the 24th is Gabriella's birthday as well, and after dinner she surprised us with champagne and a two layer cake with Chantilly cream that she had made herself. It was beyond delicious. For the after-dinner coffee, she brought out the rest of the cream and we put it in our coffee, which I guess is something they do here. Liz and I aren't complaining.

I also got to learn some fun swear words because Lorenzo was watching the Milano-Palermo match during dinner.

Life here goes on. I was just thinking the other day how strange it is that in some ways, I now know Florence better than I know Portland or Oberlin. Portland is understandable to me; it's... I don't know how many times larger than Florence, but it's a lot of times. And I rarely walk in Portland. But for Oberlin I have no excuse; I don't even know where some of the biggest buildings are because I am rarely very far from north campus.

Florence is small but I know the street names and the piazzas. I generally know which direction I'm facing. I know how to get to several key points and I know where the bars are, I know where the ATMs are. I know which busses take me which places and I know which bars have the best midday sandwiches. It's a strange feeling to be so familiar with a place after just five weeks, but I guess as I've said, Florence isn't that big, and I've been spending a lot of time wandering.

I can't wait for it to be warm all the time.

This weekend I have my first trip I'm really excited about -- a trip with my Etruscan and Roman art class to five Etruscan cities. I love the professor and two of my better friends are in the class, so I'm excited to go for more than one reason. That's from Friday to Saturday; Sunday, as always, I'll wake up in the afternoon and proceed to procrastinate.

I can't believe it's week six of classes. The amount of time that has passed is beyond me. Midterm exams are next week and while I'm not worried, I'm also not sure how much of that is because Oberlin's grade policy is pass/fail. We'll see. These will be my firsts tests in all my classes, and it'll be interesting to see what they're like.

And two weeks from then, spring break! Sarah and I have finally decided on travel plans — we're going to Vienna and Prague together, after I spend a few days in Lyon with my friend Camille. We'll actually be meeting up with our good friend Ben in Prague, and then he'll catch up with us in Italy a few days later and we'll get to spend another bit of time together. After that week back, Sarah and I are jetting off to London for Easter weekend — it's really hard for me to imagine what it'll be like being back in a country where English is the main language! Hopefully we'll get to see our friend Andrew Mooney for a bit while we're there. And then it's back to Florence for me and back to Córdoba for her.

The bulk of my really exciting weekend trips — Pompeii, Sicily, Paris — happen after the break, so I'm obviously really excited to get back, oddly enough.

And now it's time for more reading. Expect another update when something interesting happens.

Rome and more and more

And once again I'm far behind in my blogging! I keep telling myself I'll do better and then I simply forget.

I guess it's about time to talk about my Rome trip — from last weekend, the 8th and 9th.

To start off, it was an incredible trip. I've tried to explain the feeling of being in Rome to people and to my private journal and I am unable to properly express myself at all. Rome is old, and gorgeous, and to be surrounded by the history and know that I am walking around in the city that used to rule the world is a staggering feeling. I loved every second of it. It was absolutely my favorite two days since getting to Italy.

We all met in the train station at 7.30 in the morning to get on our train to Rome, and once in the city, we started off the first day with a visit to the Vatican Museum. This museum apparently has over 10,000 rooms, and as our tour guide joked, "We're going to take you through all of them." They didn't, obviously, but we got the highlights: the Hall of Maps, the School of Athens, key sculptures in the scope of Western Art. The Hall of Maps is, predictably, a hall where the walls are covered in maps. The School of Athens is a fresco by Raphael that depicts Plato and Aristotle talking, and the rest of the wall is taken up with all the prominent minds of the history of the world. It is... staggering. It's impossible to describe the feeling, and you can either look up the fresco yourself or check it out in my photos. The fresco is massive and part of the fun is trying to pick out who everyone is; you can find Michelangelo easily enough, and possibly Pythagoras and it's thought that Raphael included himself as well.

Of course, the highlight of the Vatican Museum was as we exited through the Sistine Chapel. While the chapel was beautiful and overwhelming, what was more overwhelming for me was knowing that I was seeing something for myself that had been thought of as a masterpiece since it was creation. Being in Rome was a constant exercise in feeling like a part of something bigger; I was one person who came to see the same things people have been coming to see for hundreds and hundreds of years. There is nothing like that in the States and frankly, there isn't a whole lot like that in the world, comparatively. It is an incredible feeling. I snuck pictures of the Sistine ceiling because I object to the idea of it being copyrighted, and I think it is one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen, which should come as entirely no surprise.

Directly after that we went into St. Peter's Basilica, which is, without a doubt, the most lavish thing I've ever seen. It's extremely hard to describe how big everything is. The ceiling was huge. The basilica was huge. And "huge" doesn't begin to describe the amount of space involved. There were sumptuous decorations everywhere and I saw the seat the Pope sits in, and I saw the Pietà, and I don't know how much more there is to describe to you without the use of the pictures, which should now be uploaded.

After that we had a long break for lunch, and then we were bussed to our hotel by about 4 PM. I ended up rooming with two girls I didn't know very well but who I ended up really liking, and at night we went out to walk around the city. We got dinner at one of the best restaurants in Rome; I had veal with prosciutto on top, some kind of green vegetables and apples, and I'm fairly sure was one of the best things I've ever eaten. We also started off with an appetizer of cheeses, so we all felt refined carefully cutting and eating cheese by itself like we were some kind of cheese connoisseurs.

In the morning, we got up bright and early for a long walk through "Ancient Row," — the Colosseum, the Roman forum and the Pantheon. And here is where words actually fail me. When I came to college, I wanted to be a Roman archaeologist, and these ruins are why; they are overwhelming and I think I haven't ever seen anything as beautiful. The designs and construction of such massive, beautiful buildings, combined with the history that happened right there, was almost too much to digest. I was standing where thousands of Romans watched their countrymen die in gladiatorial battles, or where they walked every day; I sat on the stone on which Antony is said to have laid the body of Julius Caesar. I can't begin to describe the feeling, which makes me feel like a failure as a writer, but since I can't even enunciate the feeling in my head, I don't feel so bad. Suffice to say I took over 500 photos and the best of them are posted, so maybe you'll get an echo of the same feeling of being there.

In the afternoon we went to the Borghese Gallery and saw the Bernini sculptures, which were — guess what I'll say here — some of the more beautiful things I've ever seen. Bernini is an absolute master; on his sculptures, fingers dug into flesh and you could see the skin pull and the body move. It was incredible. Our tour guide (who, incidentally, was the best one on the trip) would talk about the statues and then turn and look at them for a moment and each time he'd go, "It's... it's rock, guys." And no one laughed, because we were all in awe; it is rock. I can't imagine the skill it takes to make something like that and I wonder whether sculptural prodigies today still exist or if they'll just never know it because it's a different world. Either way, Italian art is overwhelming. I also fell in love with a painter named Caravaggio, who was from the Venetian school rather than the Florentine and known for painting things on a black background. If you and I have the same taste, look up both Bernini and Caravaggio if you don't know who they are; you won't be disappointed.

I returned to Florence after the Borghese. Considering we were only there for two days, I'm pretty happy with the amount I got to see. I love these school trips; I wouldn't have even known to go to the Borghese if I had gone to Rome by myself.

The week of classes was, as always, underwhelming. I'm frustrated in all of my classes because I'm used to Oberlin classes and Oberlin people, and being in an environment where the professor will ask questions of the class is met with a minimum of four people raising their hands to answer, rather than the complete silence that reigns here until one brave soul answers with a question: "They couldn't be true fascists because of religion...?" In my Italian class we're still doing review after a month, and that is frustrating too. I didn't come here to be challenged in my classes, but I guess I am still just surprised at the differences.

This weekend I went on a mandatory field trip for my Masterpieces of Art class to Mantua and Padua, and frankly, Mantua was a little bit boring. We saw some notable pieces but nothing really spoke to me. Padua was a little better; we looked at the church of St. Anthony and the Arena Chapel, and those were beautiful, but we only spent 20 minutes in each one so I found it supremely frustrating, especially with how much I was struck by the Arena Chapel. The Arena Chapel is a chapel built by a man named Scrovegni to serve as a place of worship for his people and also as a final resting place for his father's body. Scrovegni's father was a usurer on a massive scale; he is actually the usurer that Dante meets in the Seventh Circle of Hell, so by building the chapel and dedicating it to the Virgin, he hoped to redeem his father. The chapel is completely covered in frescoes by a man named Giotto, who was one of the main men in the precursor to the Renaissance — the chapel was finished in 1305. There is one panel of his frescoes, the Kiss of Judas, that struck me flat, to be honest. Judas is coming to kiss Jesus and give him away, and Jesus is looking Judas right in the eyes and I just saw in his expression what I feel Giotto must have been trying to convey; Judas is about to betray Jesus, and I saw Jesus saying "I know what you are doing and I know what is to come and I am unafraid." I was staggered that 700 years after it was painted, something could still be so evocative and universal. The chapel was beautiful.

Padua is very close to Venice, and our return tickets were out of Venice, so after we finished in Padua I went with my friend Hwei Ling to Venice. We didn't do a whole lot of traditional sightseeing; for the most part we walked around, since we weren't staying the night and neither of us wanted to spend a lot of money. I did get to see the beach, which was something I didn't get to see the first time, and I bought more Venetian glass than I probably should have. (Along with slippers, which is glorious; the floors in Florence are marble and they freeze my feet through socks. My toes have yet to be cold after I got home.) We got on the train at 7.57 and we pulled into the Florence station at 11.58, so it was a very long and tiring journey. I walked home from the train station very, very quickly and fell asleep without doing much else.

Next week: Siena and nothing else! Maybe I'll finally catch up on all the sleep I've been missing.

Another week gone...

6.18 PM

Florence, Italy

I have no idea how I keep losing all these days. I guess time is just going by really quickly, or I'm really tired, or a combination of both. In any case, a quick recap of the past week.

Last Wednesday I went with one of my classes on a site visit to Santa Croce, which is a Franciscan church in downtown Florence that houses the tombs of Machiavelli, Michelangelo and Galileo, among other important Italian personalities. It has a tomb for Dante as well, but Dante's body is actually in Ravenna. The church itself was gorgeous, as everything here is; high, vaulted ceilings, beautiful and moving frescoes, rich color everywhere you look. After class ended I spent some time just walking around by myself and taking pictures of everything. Except, being the idiot that I am, I didn't realize Michelangelo's tomb was Michelangelo's tomb and therefore didn't take any pictures because I didn't like the decoration. Ah, well. Wikipedia "Santa Croce" if you really want to see it.

Last Friday I went on an all-school trip to Assisi, which is one of the more beautiful places I've been. "Assisi is built on a hill," said our tour guide. WRONG. Assisi is built on a mountain. For people familiar with Lord of the Rings, I give you this metaphor: walking around in Assisi is like walking around in the White City. Everything is steep.

We spent several hours inside the Franciscan church and monastery that was buried to honor St. Francis just a few years after his death. The walls there are painted with beautiful frescoes that are still intact, for the most part. I got anxious when our tour guide told us that Assisi was hit by a huge earthquake in 1997 which knocked some of the vaults down from the ceiling and killed four people, while a group from SUF was touring in the lower basilica. Scary, no? But Assisi was incredibly beautiful and I made a few new friends, which is always a plus.

On Saturday I went on a day trip to Pisa and Lucca, and I have to say, it wasn't one of my more favorite places I've been. Pisa was interesting and beautiful, but we only saw the cathedral complex (which includes the bell tower/Leaning Tower), but I suppose I didn't miss much since people who have been there before said that the whole place was a tourist draw. Lucca is supposed to be one of the more beautiful Italian cities but in all honesty I didn't think it was anything special. The mediocrity of this day trip could also have been influenced by the fact that it was raining on and off all day and I had no coat.

That's really about it! Last night was the last night of Carnevale so I went out and saw everyone walking around in costume. It was fantastic. I wish America had traditions like that. Mardi Gras doesn't count because it's vulgar.

And now I have three chapters of a history book to read! I'll still try and be better, but it looks like the blog might go in fits and starts.