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.