Beverly Hills and Gucci

This week is getting off to a fantastic start weather-wise. After rain Sunday that kept us from going out other than to shop, things cleared up and it's been 60's and sunny the past two days.

Yesterday after classes, Bethany and I took advantage of a lovely afternoon to explore the neighborhoods on the other side of the Arno. We didn't have any particular route or destination in mind, so we wandered across Ponte Vecchio, stopping to look at all of the gold and expensive jewelry (the bridge is known for being a jewelry capital), then up to Palazzo Pitti and checked out the shops around the palace. Without any clear route, we followed roads that looked interesting, trusting that eventually we would be able to make our way home, no matter how lost we got in the process.

To our surprise, we found many antique stores this side of the Arno, and spent about an hour going through those.

Eventually, we found ourselves in a residential area. We spent some time exploring a giant garden that we assumed was public, filled with fountains, palm trees, vines, ferns, and dormant flowers. The garden was just what we needed after living in concrete all day every day, but when we got to the back of it, we found ourselves standing on someone's patio. It turns out the garden was private, but we didn't see anyone around, so we were okay.

After that, we continued until we came to a giant stone wall with a massive iron gate leading into one of the nicest neighborhoods I have ever seen in my life. Bethany and I thought we had walked into Beverly Hills. Every house was a mansion, with sloping lawns, fancy cars, high-tech security systems. People kept looking at us as we walked by, clearly aware that we were not meant to be there.

It took awhile to get our fill of seeing these incredibly lavish houses, but once the sun began to set, we had to begin finding our way home. We passed a huge park with playgrounds and fields where people threw Frisbees for their dogs, played soccer and just enjoyed the weather. It was a really great park right in front of the Firenze School of Art, and we'll have to go back soon when Erika is with us.

When we finally found our way home (we were completely lost for a few hours, but we saw a lot), we stopped just long enough to relax a bit before going to Lydia and Caitlin's apartment for pasta dinner and to put the finished touches on our spring break plans. So now that's all finally sorted out, which is a huge relief.

Today, comparative media with Francesca was cancelled. Instead Marzio Fatucchi, a reporter from the "Corriere della Sera," Italy's most read newspaper, came to prepare us for our trip Friday to Milan. The "Corriere" is headquartered in Milan and we will be taking a tour of its offices Friday morning. I was glad he came to speak with us because I wish we were learning more about Italian media in our classes. All of our media classes focus on global media like Facebook and Twitter, which I already know about. I want to compare and contrast our media to European media, but it doesn't seem like we'll begin doing that until the end of the semester.

After that meeting, Erika and I went home to eat a late lunch before our evening field trip to the Gucci Museo in Piazza della Signoria. A group of about twenty of us met Petra at school, then walked to the museum only two or three minutes down the road from Cerchi.

The Gucci Museo was interesting. Not being anything resembling a fashionista myself, I wasn't sure how I would feel about it, but I did enjoy our tour. Our guide was very friendly and enthusiastic about what she showed us. You could tell she is extremely proud of her connection to the Gucci name, but it was kind of endearing rather than obnoxious.

Since it's a museum, we moved from room to room looking at various displays while our guide explained them (apologizing for her English every step of the way even though, like most of the Italians who constantly talk about how they can't speak English, she was just fine). We saw Gucci luggage in the "Travel" room, floral themed bags and dresses from the 60's and 70's in the "Flora" room, nine decades worth of Gucci handbags, gowns worn by starlets like Hilary Swank and Naomi Watts, jewelry, logo pendants and buckles, household items (picnic sets, lamps, guitars, ashtrays) in the "Lifestyle" room, and sports equipment (tennis, horseback riding, biking, snorkeling).

After the tour, we went to the gift shop, where our guide directed us to the handbags for sale in the museum. She had us pick out our favorites and guess how much they were. We WAY underestimated on many of the bags. Turns out, they ranged in price from a €950 clutch to a €18,000 purse. That's $1,278 to $24, 214. What could you possibly do with a purse that outrageously expensive? It made us all depressed thinking about our future journalist salaries and how many years worth of work one of those bags would cost. At least you could buy t-shirts at the museum for only €98. For real. They were t-shirts with the Gucci Museum logo screen-printed on them. For €98.

One nice thing that I didn't expect from Gucci is that they have a cafe inside the museum that is actually reasonably priced. They sold American coffee for only €2.50, which is average for Florence. But they also sold sugar cubes formed into the Gucci logo for €18 per fifty cubes... I think I'll stick to buying bags of sugar at the discount store.

We ended the evening with dinner at Il Gato e la Volpe, where I ordered salmon pasta and found - much to my distress - that I can't eat anymore carbs. About halfway through my bowl, I felt sick to my stomach and couldn't finish it. Now I'm craving salad even though I still feel sick. Pasta's so cheap and easy that I eat it every day and I feel gross thinking about it right now. I'm having fruit for breakfast tomorrow and getting a salad for lunch, because I am long overdue for some veggies.

So that's that. Sorry to end this post on a sour note, but I need someone to hold me to this vegetable thing. Right now, all I want to eat the rest of this week is salad. We'll see how that goes.

Siena, Toscana

As you know if you've been reading my blog this weekend, the roommates and I spent yesterday day-tripping in Siena. We met Lydia and her friend Laura at the train station at quarter to 10, and literally ran to make our 10:10 train on time after Erika stopped at McDonald's for breakfast and got held up in line because they were out of hash browns.

All five of us managed to squeeze in the train just as the doors were closing, after literally sprinting the length of the train station from McDonald's to our platform.

The train ride was pretty uneventful and we arrived in Siena around noon. Our first challenge was to get out of the train station.

You see, the train deposited us directly into the lower story of Siena's main shopping mall. We walked up two flights of stairs and one ramp to the main floor of the mall, then took an escalator to the top floor of the mall. From there, we thought we would be able to leave and walk right into Siena. False. Instead, we wandered around the mall for a while, looking for a way to escape, before finally realizing that the only way to go was actually up - up nine more increasingly steep escalators and moving ramps.

Me surfing on one of the ramps.

When we finally got to the top of all this, we realized we didn't quite know where we were. We didn't see anything that looked like Siena, and there were no signs pointing to Siena, so we wandered in a giant circle for about half an hour until we found a giant wall that looked promising. By climbing the wall, we were able to get a good vantage point to find Siena and realize we were just around the corner.

Another ten minutes of walking brought us to the Basilica di Domenico, home of St. Catherine of Siena's head. No, really. Her head is kept here in a box. Although it is not on display to the public, we did get to go inside the basilica and see the pedestal where Catherine's head originally sat, as well as several paintings and sculptures of the unfortunate saint. 

After the basilica, we wandered deeper into Siena in search of lunch. We stopped at a deli and got sandwiches (eggplant, turkey and asiago for me), then wandered around eating and looking at the sites.

From there, we made our way to the Siena Cathedral (Siena Duomo), where we were disappointed to discover it cost between 3 and 6€ per room to get into the duomo. So we only paid for the main room, but it was a good choice. The main room is massive and, of course, filled with really amazing artwork. The interior of the duomo is painted with crazy black and white stripes (Siena's colors) all over. Rocky, our art professor, told us a few weeks ago that the inside of this duomo always gives him vertigo, and I can see why. Parts of it were a little like an optical illusion.

After the duomo, we made our way through town to the Piazza del Campo, where we wanted to climb the Torre del Mangia for a bird's eye view of Siena. Unfortunately, the tower closed at 4, just a few minutes after we got there, so we were not able to go in. Much to Lydia's disappointment. She and I didn't tell the other girls that the climb to the top of the tower was 500 steps... So they were happy the tower was closed, but Lydia and I would have done it.

Instead of climbing the tower, we got gelato and sat on the bricks in the center of the piazza, imagining what it would be like to be here during the world famous palio di Siena horse races each August. Rocky told us in class that the races are such an important event, that people in the apartments surrounding the piazza rent out their windows for upwards of 2,000€ during the race - and the race lasts all of three minutes. 

Me, Laura, Bethany, and Erika on the piazza.

We wandered around again for some time after that, stumbling upon Palazzo Chigi Saracini, which was also closed. For some reason, it seems the Sienese go to bed at 5 p.m. on Saturdays... nothing was open past 4:00.

We were able to go into the courtyard of the palace at least and see the wishing well in there. 

Me and Erika with the Duck.

By this point, it was getting close to dinner, so we headed back toward the escalators to find dinner. We stopped at a little restaurant where I ordered gorgonzola and pear pizza and the waitress liked us so much she brought out two bowls of tiramisu for the five of us to share as a free dessert.

All very full, we made our way back down the ten escalators to catch our 8 p.m. train home. The train was the dirtiest and ricketiest of any I've been on so far, but the ride home was, thankfully, very uneventful and we all made it back safely without any strange stories to share.

Now, today is another very beautiful day, but we all have a lot of homework this weekend, so I've been doing that today in between uploading photos from yesterday and updating this blog. It will be homework and grocery shopping the rest of the day, then church with Katy this evening. Not a terrible way to end an excellent weekend.

Lounging On the Arno

Today has been absolutely beautiful. It was easily the most gorgeous day I've seen in Italy and thankfully I'm feeling much better today, so I got to go out and enjoy it.

After sleeping in and eating a pasta lunch, Bethany and I met Maria, Megan, Lydia, and Kelsey down on the Arno River. Literally, on the Arno. There's a little spit of gravel that sticks out about halfway into the river that we laid out on. There were a lot of other people out there either having picnics, reading or just sitting around talking and enjoying the warm sunshine like we were. 

When Bethany and I got there, the other girls were already laying out and they told us we had to jump down this retaining wall to get where they were. So we did. I lowered myself down the side of the wall and dropped the last six or seven feet while Bethany did the same and the girls laughed at us. Turns out there was a pathway hidden about twenty yards down the river that the other girls had walked down. But whatever. We made it in less time than they did.

We laid out until dinnertime, then went in search of a pizza place Lydia and her roommates had gone before and said was really good. I got a margherita pizza (as usual since it's always the cheapest) and it was pretty good, although not the best that I've had in Firenze. And the guy at the counter kept playing with my hair while I was reading the menu, then when I turned around, he looked away like he had no idea what was going on. Nice. Italians are so handsy. It's going to be weird going back to America and not having to worry about being groped everywhere we go.

After pizza, we wandered around the shops on that side of the Arno for awhile, then got gelato at a little place right by the river. I had pistachio and dark chocolate gelato and it was FANTASTIC. Pistachio is seriously my new absolute favorite ice cream flavor. Unfortunately, I don't think I've ever seen this in the States, so I may have to get my fill while I'm here.

Our group split up after the gelato (we ate it sitting on the edge of one of the bridges overlooking the water). Bethany and I went to Palazzo Piti while the other girls either went home or went shopping. 

Bethany and I wanted to visit the famous Boboli Gardens attached to Palazzo Piti, but they were closed by the time we got there. The palace was still open though, so we went in there and got to see where the Medici family lived while everyone and their brother was trying to kill them (they were really unpopular since they controlled ALL the money in Firenze back in the day; as Erika once put it, they were bankers who lived underground until they had everyone's money, then they came up, announced "We run this shit" and proceded to treat Florence like their own personal playground while the rest of the population became peasants and died... For real. So you see why no one liked them very much).

 The palace is ridiculously opulent, naturally. It's filled with the many of the most expensive paintings and sculptures in Italy, the walls are covered in gold and crushed velvet, there are gold/diamond chandeliers hanging in most of the rooms, it goes on forever, and I can't imagine how anyone could possibly live there. Except, that's not entirely true. The house holds multiple rooms for everyone in the family and all their friends, multiple chapels, ballrooms, dining rooms, billiard rooms, music rooms - essentially everything you need is in that house because it had to be. Many of the Medicis lived inside that palace and never left because of how dangerous Florence was for them. So they needed to be able to live their entire lives inside that one building.

When it started getting dark, Bethany and I made our way back across the Arno and back to our apartment, where we're just hanging out now. She, Erika and I are currently deciding whether to go out tonight since we have to get up early tomorrow for Siena. 

This is shaping up to be another excellent weekend in bella Italia.

Sick Days

Happy Thursday, everyone.

I'm still sick, but I'm getting better. Since I've been sick all week, I don't have much to report on right now. 

I told you I was sick all day Monday and stayed in after my classes were over. Tuesday I went to Italian class only to find that it was cancelled AGAIN. Gloria was sick (so am I, Gloria... a head's up would have been nice so I didn't have to drag my sick self all the way across town) and class was cancelled with no warning Monday and Tuesday. I made some loud, angry remark about being sick and Gloria not having the decency to send an email, and Simone, the secretary, heard me and started apologizing like I thought it was his fault or something, so I felt bad.

Erika and I didn't have time either Monday or Tuesday to go back home before our second class, so we hung out and did homework Monday, then Tuesday I used Petra's computer to write my article for Flo'n the Go, an online newsletter for American students in Italy.

Since Tuesday was Fat Tuesday, we saw a bunch of little kids dressed in Halloween costumes walking around town all day. It was pretty cute, although there were no bear kids that I saw. Most of our group went out Tuesday night to celebrate, but I stayed in to rest up some more. Erika and I watched "Under the Tuscan Sun," which I had never seen before. I really enjoyed it, but I think the best part was seeing how many places in the movie I have been to and comparing the portrayal of Italian life in the movie to our experiences with it (the movie was actually very accurate, you'll be happy to know).

Yesterday, Erika and I gave up on Gloria and decided to skip class, figuring it would probably be cancelled again anyhow. Wouldn't you know it, it wasn't, but we found out today that nearly everyone skipped, so we're not getting in trouble for it. That's good. Gloria didn't apologize, but she did try to explain the whole thing away by telling us that she has never used email. Really? Sometimes I wonder how she's a teacher...

I did go to my second class yesterday, which was Genius of Florence with Fabrizio. We visited the Basilica of San Lorenzo, about five minutes down the street from my apartment and learned more about the Medici family and the Protestant Reformation.

Last night I actually had a considerable amount of homework (journal entries for Fabio and Fabrizio, reading for Rocky, a packet for Gloria, and an analysis of Fahrenheit 451 for Francesca), so I spent most of the evening working on that. 

Today, I'm feeling much better although I have a cough now and my nose is still running. But the weather is GORGEOUS, so I feel like that is going to have me on the mend more than anything else. It was in the mid 60's today in Firenze and the sun was shining brighter than I've seen it all semester. Rocky took our class to the Uffizi this afternoon (part two of our lesson; the first part was Tuesday) and that was fun. Among all the Michelangelos and Raphaels, we got to see Botticelli's famous The Birth of Venus painting, which I have to say really is quite lovely. Sometimes I see these famous paintings and wonder how they got so famous, but this one really is very beautiful. Rocky pointed out how Venus is rather oddly proportioned, with a super long neck, sloping shoulders, long arms, and a flat stomach (not considered beautiful at the time this was painted). The reason for this was not that Botticelli didn't know what women looked like nor that he was a bad painter, but rather he gave Venus strange proportions and exaggerated features to emphasize that she is not human. Kind of an interesting observation.

After seeing that, we spent a long time looking at a painting Leonardo da Vinci did when he was just 20 or 22 years old. It's truly mind-boggling to realize just how ahead of his time da Vinci was. Rocky compared da Vinci's The Annunciation to some of the other paintings in the gallery and it's unbelievable. The paintings surrounding this one are incredible in their own right, but they look kind of pitiful next to The Annunciation. The attention to detail is out of this world. You could honestly look at parts of this painting and believe it was a photograph. And the most amazing part is, da Vinci painted this one in 1481, long before other painters had figured out impressionist style and perspective. It's incredible.

After class, Erika and I opened the windows in our apartment after class in order to air the place out, but that didn't last long since we have no screens and leaves and bugs started blowing in. I took my book outside to the park at the end of our street and read on a bench until after sunset. It was wonderful. 

I don't have any big plans for this evening (although I believe we will be going out later) or the rest of this weekend, other than a day trip to Sienna on Saturday. The weather looks great though and my whole apartment will be in Florence, so I'm sure it will be a fantastic few days.

So, that's it. Sorry this post is a little bland, but I didn't get out much this week. Up next on the agenda is our Sienna trip and a tour of the Gucci museum, so I should have more to report on next week. 

Fino ad allora...

Assisi e Orvieto

I'm home from my first self-planned weekend trip (as opposed to my last weekend trip to Rome, which the school organized).

This time it was just me and Lydia on our own the whole weekend. We decided to strike out without the rest of the group to Assisi and Orvieto, both cities in the Umbria region of Italia.

We met early Friday morning at Santa Maria Novella (the train station) for an 8 a.m. train direct to Assisi. After a mostly uneventful trip, the train dropped us at the Assisi station at the base of a hill leading up to Assisi proper.

Lydia and I got our bearings and decided against taking a taxi up the hill to the main town. We set off across the street, beginning an hour long hike through beautiful Umbrian farmland and up a steep cobblestone path into a parking lot just below the Basilica di San Francesco d'Assisi. We decided our first stop in Assisi would be at the Basilica since we arrived at the top of the hill around noon - an hour before we could check in to our hostel.

Luckily for us, the hostel was literally two minutes down the street from the Basilica, so we had plenty of time to tour the church while we waited.

Like all Italian churches, the Basilica is super huge and super beautiful. After touring the artwork and chapels of the upper and lower basilica, Lydia and I headed to the basement to pay our respects to St. Francis at this actual tomb.

Of all the churches we've visited in Italy, this one was by far my favorite. Maybe it's because of the deep personal connection I have developed to St. Frankie in all the years he has been living as a bird-feeder in my backyard. Or maybe it's just because there was an inviting air to the church that I haven't found in any of the other cathedrals in Italy. I really felt like St. Francis wanted us to be there as we walked through his namesake basilica.

Once one o'clock rolled around, Lydia and I headed up the street to our hostel, Hotel Properzio. We rang the doorbell and a young woman ushered us into a living room with a receptionist desk set up by the entry.

She confirmed our reservation, checked our passports and led us to our room on the second floor. As nice as everything was, we immediately felt a chill upon entering the room. It had been cold downstairs as well, but our room had to be about 20 degrees colder than the early spring weather outside. Our host didn't speak much English, but we thought we understood that the heat would come on at 4 p.m.

As Lydia and I were planning to spend the rest of the day sightseeing, we weren't bothered by the lack of heat. We thanked our hostess, unpacked a little bit and took our map out into the street to find our first planned stop: Eremo delle Carceri.

Our hostess (I didn't catch her name, unfortunately) had circled the hermitage on our map before we left and warned us it would be a long walk.

"Maybe buy a taxi?" she suggested when we told her our plan.

Of course, we didn't want to waste money on a taxi and we thought we were prepared for a hike. We followed the map to a high school at the edge of Assisi (we ended up in the courtyard during lunch and all of the students stood around smoking and staring at us) and found a sign labeled "Eremo" with an arrow pointing up into the hills.

We were a kilometer from our hostel by that point and figured we couldn't be more than another kilometer from Eremo.

False.

We walked for half an hour without seeing another sign. We stopped at a tavern to ask if we were going the right way, but the tavern was closed. We walked another ten or fifteen minutes, beginning to worry if we were off track, until another bend brought us distraction from this concern in the form of a pack of adorable donkeys.

Naturally, we used this opportunity to rest and take about a hundred photos while the old farmer who owned the donkeys watched us from his back porch at the bottom of the slope. It was one of the greatest moments of my life. I've never realized how much I like donkeys.

It took a long time for us to pull ourselves away from these little guys, but Lydia and I wanted to make it to Eremo and Rocca Maggiore (a castle) before dark.

That didn't happen.

We walked for another hour without seeing another sign of life, other than a handful of passing cars. There were no more signs, no more establishments, no more donkeys or farms. Finally we saw a jogger approaching up the hill (he had to be crazy). When he got close enough, Lydia yelled out for help in Italian. He shrugged and kept running.

"Wait! Do you speak English?" Lydia yelled, but he was past us at this point with his earbuds back in. "We speak English!"

The jogger was the last person we saw for another half hour or so and the first person we saw when we finally reached level ground. I waved to the guy and he asked if Lydia and I were American.

It turns out, he's an Australian soccer player living in Assisi. We stopped to catch our breath and talk to him in the parking lot where apparently you're supposed to park if you're smart enough to drive to Eremo.

We learned our new friend has been living in Assisi for the past four months and is here for a year-long soccer training camp, which explains why he was able to run up that killer hill. What it doesn't explain is why this guy - who claimed to run this hill four times a week - had never heard of Eremo.

Because as we discovered after leaving Aussie and walking another TWO minutes, we were in the parking lot of Eremo.

Oh well. The good news is, we finally made it. Two and a half hours after we left our hostel, we managed to walk to Eremo delle Carceri, hermitage of St. Francis himself.

It was worth the hike. The hermitage had the most gorgeous view of Umbria and was one of the most peaceful, lovely places I've ever been. I felt the same sense of calm and belonging walking around Eremo as I did in Francis' basilica.

I really think it's a shame St. Francis had to be buried in the Basilica, a symbol of the kind of religious opulence he fought so hard against, when I'm sure he would have much rather been buried on this hilltop.

He ended up in the Basilica so that people would not steal his body, but the Eremo would have made a much better resting place.

We spent over an hour in Eremo, then pulled ourselves together for the trip back down.

This time, we made it in only two hours, but by that point it was nearly dark and Lydia and I were both starving. We tried to find a restaurant that was open this early (it was about 6:30), but in Italy, most people don't eat dinner before 7. As we were scanning the menu at a promising looking restaurant, the chef came by to open the place for the evening and asked if we would like to make a reservation. We settled on 7:30 and, that figured out, headed back to the hostel to shower and change for dinner.

Dinner was excellent. I don't know why we needed a reservation though since the only other people in the restaurant the whole time was a group of middle-aged English guys who told us to go down St. Patrick's Well in Orvieto after we told them our weekend plans. I sat with my back to the kitchen, but Lydia said the chefs watched us and the guys eat all through dinner, a practice which seems to be pretty common in Italian restaurants when business is slow.

After dinner (spinach ravioli for me; truffle spaghetti for Lydia; cake for both of us for dessert), we went back to the hostel to find the heat had still not come on.

It was awful. By that point, the hostess had gone home and Lydia and I were the ONLY guests in the hotel. We searched the whole place top to bottom for extra blankets, but couldn't find any. Instead, we each layered with the few clothes we brought for the weekend.

I lay awake shivering most of the night, and Lydia said she didn't get much sleep either. I'm almost certain I've never been that cold for that long in my whole life. When it was finally morning, we packed quickly and headed downstairs for the 8:30 breakfast.

The first thing our hostess did when we got downstairs was ask nervously if we had slept okay. We told her about the lack of heat and she began profusely apologizing. The heat had literally never kicked on like it was supposed to do at 4 p.m. the day before and the hostess supposedly didn't know why. She tried to make up for this by making both of us cappuccino after cappuccino so that our mugs never ran out and refilling our breakfast plates with bread and yogurt until we couldn't eat anymore. Then she asked what our plans were for the day and volunteered to drive us to Rocca Maggiore castle, about a fifteen minute car ride from the hostel.

On the way, she stopped to introduce us to Massimo, a Franciscan monk, who was walking barefoot up the cold street wearing nothing but his burlap sack. So that was interesting at least, getting to see an authentic modern-day Franciscan.

We got to Rocca Maggiore around 9:30 and had to wait until it opened at 10 a.m. We passed the time playing with a cat we named Rockefeller on the wall outside the castle.

The castle was pretty sweet. I mean, it's a castle. The inside was decorated with photos from years of mediaeval-themed festivals in Assisi and reenactments of the castle in it's glory days. We climbed all three turrets for more fantastic views of Umbria before heading back to the train station around noon.

The train ride from Assisi to Orvieto was about two hours with a stop in Cortona (Nik and Franco's hometown) to change trains.

We got to Orvieto a little after 3 p.m. and took the funiculare (think Pittsburgh Incline) from the train station to the top of the cliff that is Orvieto.

Immediately at the top of the cliff, there is a series of walkways and overlooks built along the cliff ledge, so we walked those and took photos as we made our way over to St. Patrick's Well.

The Well is worth the trip and the 5 Euro ticket price, as the old men in Assisi told us. It's about 204 feet straight down on broad spiral stairs and it was nerve-wracking for me and my semi-fear of heights, especially when Lydia leaned way out over the water to take photos (there aren't any guard rails; we could have died). The bottom is cool because your voice echoes so much and you can see all the coins (and lost glasses, wallets, hats, etc.) in the water. On the way back to the top, Lydia and I both stopped to make a wish and throw a coin down into the dank water.

Me leaning out a window in the well.

After the well, we walked back up the overlook, then took a shuttlebus to our hostel, the B&B Valentina.

By this point it was time for dinner, so we headed to a restaurant that claimed to have the best carbonara in Italy, but it was reservation-only. Instead, we found a family-style restaurant called Trattoria Numero Uno and tried our luck there.

It was a great choice. None of the waitstaff spoke English, but our waitress Google translated all our questions and the menu so that we knew what we were ordering. There were about twenty homemade menu items to choose from, and not one was something Lydia or I had ever heard of. But I ended up with a delicious chicken and dumpling soup and Lydia got a spinach, egg and cheese souffle. Both were delicious, and afterwards we shared the official dessert of Orvieto - white cake soaked in cherry liqueur and mixed into chocolate pudding, topped with extra-thick whipped cream and chocolate chips. Amazing.

Also, did I mention this restaurant is adorable? There were three families in the dining room with us and one couple our age, and everyone talked to each other, despite being strangers. I felt like Lydia and I were at the kids table as everyone talked around us in Italian, smiling at the dumb Americans who couldn't understand what was going on.

A little girl from one of the families carried around a basket of plush fruit and vegetables, which she dutifully distributed to around everyone in the room. An even younger little boy and girl whispered secrets to our waitress and ran in and out of the dining room laughing. Despite this, they were really cute and well-behaved kids, so it was adorable instead of annoying.

We left the restaurant happy and made our way home after 11. We woke up around 8 a.m. Sunday and got room service (a plate of bread and butter and a thermos of American coffee) and checked out of Valentina.

From Valentina, we went to the Orvieto Duomo to sign up for a tour of Underground Orvieto, a network of caves spanning the entire area of the city above. Lydia and I were the only people on the English tour, so we had a guide all to ourselves.

The tour was really good. Our guide showed us some of the earliest caves (built around 3,000 B.C.) which were used by the Etruscans as grottoes to make and store olive oil. Many of the caves were also used for mining and - for about a century - for raising pigeons for eggs and meat.

Now most of the caves are used as private basements or store rooms. Our guide explained that when you buy property in Orvieto, you get everything under it as well as above, so we could only see the caves under the property owned by Underground Orvieto.

During World War II, Orvieto was designated a safe city, excluded from bombing. As a precaution though, the caves were transformed into bomb shelters and a tunnel was built from one of the largest caves directly into the basement of the nearest hospital, just in case.

This was the last addition to the caves because the underground labyrinth has made the aboveground city so weak that they fear more digging will cause the entire city to cave in large chunks of it to fall into the surrounding countryside.

Lydia and I spent the last few hours following the tour wondering around Orvieto, but it was cold and rainy Sunday, so we were relieved when it was finally time to catch our train home to Florence. We spent as much of the afternoon as possible in another restaurant where I finally got some Orvieto carbonara (can't complain).

... So that was my weekend. Unfortunately, now I'm sick. I woke up today with a bad cold and made the mistake of going to class anyhow. It is cold and raining today, so now I'm even sicker... Oh well. It will be TheraFlu then an early bedtime tonight.

Buona notte, tutti!

Train Ride Recap

Sorry I haven’t been keeping up with this blog like I was last month and when I first got to Italy. But now that I have a rhythm and am getting used to living here, the little things that were fun to write about because they were new have lost some of their novelty.

Only some of it though. Don’t get me wrong - every day is an adventure in Firenze. It’s just that I’m learning to navigate grocery stores, restaurants, shopping, the streets and culture of Firenze in general, and so it makes those things somewhat repetitive to record every day.

You understand.

I would, however, like to highlight right now a few key moments from this week.

Moment Number One: Tuesday was Valentine’s Day. Yes, they have Valentine’s Day in Italia and no, it’s not different than Valentine’s Day in the States. There were pink, red and white heart decorations in many storefronts and restaurants. There were sales on chocolates, candies, flowers, cards, teddy bears, and all other forms of San Valentino gifts.

The only big difference was a local one: the San Lorenzo Chocolate Fair. We went back again. It was still awesome.

The first day we went was Sunday. Bethany, Kevin, Glenn and I headed down there in the afternoon and got some of the greatest chocolate-covered strawberries I have ever eaten and Italian-style hot chocolate (basically just melted chocolate in a cup – so good!)

Then I went with Lydia on Monday and got chocolate-covered bananas, strawberries and grapes on a stick and chocolate cake covered in hot chocolate.

Fun Fact: It’s super popular in Italy to serve chocolate cake with fruit filling. I’ve had it twice like this and the only times I’ve seen it without filling, it has been a lot more expensive.

Sidenote: Lydia and I are at the train station in Perugia right now. One of us will not make it out alive. The polizia are actually checking the train right now, which they haven’t done in any other station. How much do you want to bet they are looking for Amanda.

Then I went again Wednesday just to look and Thursday again just to look. It’s a dream come true.

Also on Tuesday (getting back on topic now…) Erika, Bethany and I went to John Lennon’s place to treat ourselves to Valentine’s Day dessert since the girls were missing their boyfriends and I was missing not having a boyfriend…? Mainly, we just wanted wine and chocolate and figured this was a good excuse to have some.

John didn’t have any regular chocolate cake, but I got some kind of graham cracker crusted, cookies and cream pudding-filled, chocolate covered deliciousness in a pie. It was fantastic.

 Another sidenote: There are police with guns walking up and down the train looking for something/someone. They boarded in Perugia. I knew we shouldn’t have gone through there.

Wednesday: Nothing really happened. I got coffee and a sandwich with Katy again at a cute little café she recommended. Fabrizio (one of our professors) took us to another museum and he’s for sure in love with me. No big deal. It’s probably because we bonded over “Crime and Punishment” last week. There’s no quicker way to an Italian man’s heart than through 19^th Century Russian psycho-thrillers.

We’re even Facebook friends now and he’s in a band that plays odd Italian folk music of some sort. And he has been on several National Geographic and History Channel documentaries about Firenze because he’s an expert on all of the museums and historical sites around Firenze. That’s what his class is all about: The Genius of Florence. Literally all we do is take field trips, then write about it. It’s the greatest class I’ve ever taken.

Yesterday (Thursday): This was not my best day in Italia. We had to go to the immigration office to get fingerprinted for our stay permits. Why we waited a month and a half to get stay permits, I have no idea. But the school set up our appointments and this is when the immigration office told us to be there. Only about forty of the nearly 200 students in the Florence program went to the station today, but Erika, Bethany and I were part of that group.

We had to meet at the immigration office (luckily only about five minutes from our apartment) at 8 a.m. to check in. Trevor, an architecture major, had volunteered to be our group representative, but he barely had any more idea of what to do than any of the rest of us.

When we arrived, they were waiting on the twelfth person in line. The first person in our group to be called was 112.

Marijke told us in an email that the entire process would take less than three hours. Instead, they went through almost thirty numbers an hour and I wasn’t called to be printed until 12:30.

We sat there that whole time waiting with all of the other immigrants. I ended up going home at one point to make an omelet since I hadn’t had time to eat breakfast. I was gone about 45 minutes and in that time, two people went ahead of me. The staff has chosen that time to go on a lunch break as well.

Anyhow, I finally got up there and the whole registration and fingerprinting took about seven minutes. Seven minutes. After waiting four and a half hours.

And the best part was, not all of us went at the same time. There was a gap of about 80 numbers between the first half of our class and the second. So Erika and Bethany – both in the second half, didn’t get printed until almost 4 p.m.

So that was no fun. I ended up missing all of my class Thursday. By the time I got out of the immigration office, there were only twenty minutes remaining until my last class of the day and Lydia and I were both starving.

We went to John Lennon’s for lunch where I got the day’s special: Paella del mare. I do really like paella, but I’ve never had it like this. There was a giant crayfish – pincers, head, eyes, legs, and all – sitting right on top of the pile of rice. There were oysters, of course, which I had anticipated. The only time I’ve ever had paella it had oysters and shrimp. In addition to the crayfish, this had a FULL SQUID and scugili octopus legs on top.

Thanks to my uncle Jerry’s seven fish dinner each Christmas Eve, I know I like octopus, so I was able to eat that with no problem. I even ate the squid leg, but the body was more than I could stomach and I pushed that aside. I ended up eating everything but the squid and crayfish heads and the peppers.

It was an intimidating lunch.

Now, finally, that brings us to today. I mentioned earlier that Lydia and I were in Perugia. We were. Now we’re approximately twenty minutes from the train station in Assisi, assuming we’re on time, which I’m pretty sure we are.

It’s just Lydia and me right now. We’re spending this afternoon and tomorrow morning in Assisi and Saturday evening and day in Orvieto. This was kind of a spur-of-the-moment weekend trip (planned and booked Wednesday), but we’re looking forward to travelling with just the two of us and not a whole crowd.

Our first stop in Assisi will be to try to find Basillica di San Francesco and then our hostel. I can’t wait to get off this train (it’s been two hours) and start seeing things outside Florence.

I don’t know how busy we’ll be (we have a lot planned) or if we have internet access in both cities, but I’ll blog again asap so you know what Umbria (the region of Italia in which Assisi and Orvieto are both located) is all about.

Until then, ciao!

Masquerading In Venezia

Have you ever been to a party?

Don't answer that, because let me just tell you, you have never been to a party like Carnivale.

Before I tell you about our day at the world's largest block party, let me begin at the beginning Thursday night.

I finally got to go out dancing, which I've been waiting for since our first week, and it was fantastic. Bethany, Erika and I met the rest of our group at the six-girl apartment and walked to a disco with Lydia, Caitlin and Yelena. The place we originally wanted to go didn't open until 12:30 - a two hour wait - but the bouncer directed us to another club around the corner and we ended up hanging out there all night.

Our waiter let us into the VIP party upstairs where we got to dance and have a great time. It definitely made up for all the nights of not dancing (unless you count dancing in the living room to Italian music videos) and was a cool start to the weekend.

Friday we just hung out, but Saturday we got up bright and early to catch a bus to Venice from Santa Maria Novella Station at 9 a.m. Ten of us from Kent went though a tour group called Bus2Alps that seems to be a really excellent organization. We've booked a couple of trips with them and they've all been great so far.

"Four hundred and two of our closest friends" took the buses to Carnivale, according to our tour guide CJ. She was super helpful, answering all of our questions - even vague ones like "What should we do?" - and provided a very funny history of Venice and Carnivale as we started out on our trip.

Unfortunately, the bus ride was nearly three and a half hours. We went through a lot of the countryside and there were several feet of snow far from cities, which was interesting since there is no snow at all in the city.

We talked to Nik and Franco (who apparently transferred schools and is now living in Florence...) Friday night and they told us we wouldn't be able to get to Venice because of all the snow... Italians... They just don't know how to deal with a flurry. But there was a lot of slush on the highway, so I guess their concern was somewhat valid.

Anyhow, we watched "The Proposal" on the bus ride, so it wasn't too terrible and arrived in Venice around 2 p.m. Our first mission was to buy masks (I bought one in Firenze, so I didn't need to look, but a few of the other girls did), then catch a waterbus to the main island from Tronchetto Island where our bus parked.

Waterbuses are the way to go in Venice. They're literally the same as any other public bus system, but they travel the rivers. It's like a Pittsburgh Duck tour, but not as cool because it's a public transit system... It was still pretty novel though to stand holding onto a chair (it's like a New York subway - not enough seats for everyone) while we rode a bus through the rivers of Venice, stopping at floating bus stops to pick up costumed tourists and locals alike. (The locals, I noticed, all had much better costumes than any of the tourists. They really get into Carnivale.)

Our first stop after docking was to find lunch. We ended up at a little restaurant off the main streets run by a cute little old woman who was kind of the quintessential Italian grandma. I had carbonara again (it's so good) and Lydia and I split profiteroles for dessert. I was overexcited about this last part since, being a Harry Potter nerd, I've always wanted to try these. They were quite possibly the best dessert I've ever had, so it was well worth the wait and I got to feel like Ginny Weasley for a few minutes.

"Ginny! Ginny, I have saved profiteroles for you!"

After lunch, we all put our masks on and headed out to find the party. There were people everywhere in masks and many in full costumes. We made our way back to the main street and spent the next few hours looking in every store for masks and other souvenirs (partly because the stores were all cool, but mainly because they were warm and we were freezing). I bought a cute pair of spider earrings and got flower earrings thrown in for only a Euro extra.

As we finished our shopping, a large parade went by. It looked like Halloween on steroids. There were so many people in crazy costumes, pulling pedestrians off the sidewalk to join in the parade and stopping to pose for photos.

Once the parade was past us, we headed down to Piazza San Marco, Venice's main square to people watch some more, before moving away from the water to browse the shops and do some sightseeing.

At some point, it got too cold to keep walking, so we stopped in a bar to warm up with some wine. We ended up sitting next to an American woman and her English husband who flew in to Venice just for Carnivale. The woman was a little tipsy, but she was fun and told us all about how she fell in love with travel while studying abroad in Australia and Ireland during college. She met her husband while backpacking through Europe and they've been married and living in England for the past twelve years.

Once we were finally sufficiently warm and prepared to return to the streets, we said goodbye to our new friends and went back to browsing the shops until dinner.

We got dinner on another side street (margherita pizza for me), then went back to San Marco for a rumored DJ set.

The DJ set wasn't much. Some guy sang Old McDonald and no one seemed to know what to do. We hesitated there until the guy got off stage and they started playing filler music over the loudspeakers, including "Ai Se Eu Te Pego," which I swear must be the unofficial Italian national anthem. I'm pretty sure it's in Portuguese, too, and not even Italian. But you hear it everywhere and there's a dance that goes with it. So we sang along (because we have heard it that many times) and tried to copy how everyone else was dancing.

The music picked up after that and it was fun dancing in this giant mosh pit of people in the piazza. Eventually, it got to the point where we needed to start heading back to the waterbus that would take us to the island our bus was parked on.

As we were leaving, a be-caped man in a half-mask came up to us with a microphone and film crew. He was with a Russian news station and wanted us dancing in the background of his news report. We weren't in that much of a hurry, so we agreed and danced through the first take while his camera crew danced offscreen and gave us cues for when to wave, dance, shout, etc. The song ended though before he could get his shot, so we had to mill around for a while waiting for the next act to take the stage and the music to come on again. We waited long enough that we started getting worried about missing our waterbus.

Erika went to try to tell the news crew we were leaving, but they didn't speak enough English to understand her. Luckily for us, Yelena is Russian and was able to explain the situation to the reporter and his crew. But just as she was talking to the guys, the next group took the stage and the reporter was able to get his shot with us in the background.

Yelena said we'll be on the Monday news in Russia, so I guess we'll try to find it. We didn't have time to ask if the report would be online.

From there, we hurried back to the floating bus stop on the river to wait for the waterbus that would take us back to Tronchetto Island. Unfortunately, we got on the Number One line instead of the Number Two, so it took us an hour longer than it should have to get back to Tronchetto while we did a slow loop of Venice. We were able to call CJ from Bus2Alps and have them wait for us since we had joined other groups on the way to the bus and there were about forty Florence students stranded on the Number One.

The bus ride home was rough just because we didn't leave until about 11:15 at night, it was nearly a four hour trip and we were all exhausted. They played "The Tourist" on the way home, but I was too tired to pay much attention. Instead I talked Lauren, who sat next to me (our group got split up onto three different buses, so only four of us were on this one), listened to my iPod and attempted to sleep (with no luck).

Erika was on my bus, but Bethany had ended up on a different one. Our's had gone back to Venice about twenty minutes into the trip to pick up two girls who had gotten lost and been left behind, so we were the last one back to Florence. Despite how late it was and how full the day had been, Bethany and I sat up talking for a few hours after Erika and I got home and neither of us went to bed until after 4 a.m.

The only complaint I have about Carnivale was that I didn't see any bear-children. One of the pamphlets we got from Bus2Alps about Carnivale informed us that children dressed as bears would be swarming the streets, throwing confetti at us. I didn't see a single bear-child. In fact, the only kid I saw was dressed as a tiger and we didn't see him until the end of the day. Maybe bear-children are only active at night? Or maybe it was too cold for them? Either way, that was a letdown.

... Naturally, we slept in late today. I was the first in the apartment to wake up and I didn't get out of bad until about 11:00.

We spent most of the afternoon hanging out before Bethany and I went out with Kevin and Glenn. We first went to San Lorenzo market to do some shopping, but the cold weather and pushy shopkeepers drove us away after only about twenty minutes. We went instead to Piazza della Repubblica for the Chocolate Fair that has been going on since the beginning of the month.

Obviously, this was great. I mean, it was a chocolate fair. There was chocolate everywhere in every form and flavor imaginable. All four of us got chocolate-covered strawberries topped with sprinkles and a drizzle of melted white chocolate. They were one of the best things I've ever tasted.

Guns, handcuffs, tools, locks, trumpets, tapirs,
motorcycles... ALL made entirely of chocolate.

"Gucci" chocolate shoes.

Once we saw all the chocolate there was to see, we got groceries, then Bethany and I split from the guys and went to try dinner at The Clubhouse, an "American-style" ristorante in our neighborhood. We shared wings, a cheeseburger and fries, but I feel like Bethany and I might die in our sleep of food poisoning. 

The wings and fries were good, but the burger was raw. We contemplated for a while whether to eat the burger, but a few tentative bites proved that it did taste pretty good and we were afraid to send it back since the waitress didn't really speak English. We settled on eating it without looking at it or thinking about it so that we didn't freak out too much. 

All I could think of while eating was my impending death and the scene in "The Tenth Kingdom" where Wolf yells at the waitress for overcooking his steak.

"'Rare' implies dangerously cooked! When I say 'rare,' I mean
just let it look at the oven in terror, then bring it out to me!"

Right now Bethany and I both feel a little queasy, but we can't tell yet if we're dying from consuming raw hamburger, if we're just still really full or if we're psyching ourselves out. I guess we'll know in the morning... Wish us both luck.

Happy Anniversary

Today marks the one month anniversary of my leaving the United States for Italia. I can say with absolute certainty that this has been the fastest month of my entire life, and it's freaking me out. If this month went this fast - and it was so cold and snowy for most of it that we didn't get to enjoy everything we could have in nicer weather - how fast will the next three months go by? It makes me sick to even think of it.

Allora, I'm going to move on to something I have decided to do on the 8th of every month while I'm here; and that is, go through my original checklist of things to do in Europe and see how much I have accomplished this month and how much I have left to do.

I'm doing this mainly as a break from this massive Italian grammar/vocab packet I need to do for tomorrow, but it's something that should be done regardless (this applies to both subjects, so take it as you wish).

Here is the list, posted way back on December 16, but with a few accomplished items crossed off and annotation where necessary:

• Go to Croatia.   *Booking in progress.
• Go to Germany.   *Probably won't be able to afford this.
• Go to Ireland.   *In the early planning stages.
• Go to any other country I can go to.   *Greece is booked.
• Get a touristy photo of me holding up the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
• Eat authentic Italian pasta.
• Drink authentic Italian wine.
• Take a Beatles tour of England.
• Get a photo of me crossing Abbey Road.
• Take a Harry Potter tour of England.
• Get a photo of me at Platform 9 3/4.
• Strike up a conversation with a local.
• Try to read an Italian newspaper.
• Spend a day just people watching.
• Follow a road just to see where it goes.
• Visit all of the major Italian cities. 
• Visit Dante Alighieri's house.   *This was a let-down. It's not so much a shrine to Dante as a house-turned-museum dedicated to everyday life in Italy at the time of Dante. But obviously they love Dante here, so I'm always happy to come around a corner and see a bust or sculpture of the poet looking at me or a quote from La Divina Commedia carved into a wall.
• Swim in the ocean.
• Actually see an ocean.
• Stay in a hostel.
• Attend an Italian youth group with Jess and Katy.
• Go to an Easter service in a church older than the United States.
• Appreciate the fact that I can be in anything older than the United States.
• Get lost without panicking.
• Do something 100% spur-of-the-moment.
• Grocery shop in an open-air market.
• Make one purely selfish and frivolous purchase.
• Hang my laundry out to dry over the street.   *This one I may have to axe from the list because it is illegal to do in our building. Perhaps I will get the chance somewhere else. But as you've probably seen from earlier posts, I do hang my laundry to dry over my bedroom.
• Not lose/ruin any laundry in the process.   *So far, so good. But I won't check this off until I'm safely back in the States.
• Watch the local news (I do this everywhere I go, but it will be particularly good in a foreign country).   *We interrupt this news report to bring you porn. Have a great evening.
• Learn about international communications (duh).   *If defining "media" six ways to Sunday counts, I'm golden.
• Learn at least enough Italian to get by.   *Communicating with locals is easier than I thought. Communicating with Gloria... not so much.
• Learn about art.   *This is a work in progress, but I have learned a great deal already, so I'll check it off.
• Live out of a backpack for a weekend.
• Go to a pub.   *Checked off in several cities.
• Take more photos than I know what to do with.   *Again, work in progress.
• Blog every (?) day.   *I have already failed in this, but I blog every week, so that's something.
• Remember to keep my feet off the frescoes.
• Spend Valentine's Day in Paris (I'm looking at you, Katy).   *This wasn't a very serious idea, so I'm okay with letting it slide.
• Not lose or let anything bad happen to Katy Welch because I promised Sarah.   *I tried. Sort of.

There you go. I feel semi-accomplished with this. And since this list is a lot more vague than I remembered, it shouldn't be difficult to finish. Which means I should probably start a new list...

To close, here's a picture of the most delicious strawberries I've ever eaten in my life. In the words of Jim Sturgess, "red, juicy, sexy" indeed.

Florence Gospel Fellowship International

I had the apartment to myself this weekend. Bethany left for Paris Thursday afternoon and is still travelling. Erika left for Interlaken Thursday night and is home now.

With most of our class going either to Paris or Interlaken (I decided to save my money since neither of those places is on my list of top destinations), that left me alone in the apartment with only Caitlin and Kate left from our group in Firenze.

Friday I slept in and spent the morning reading, doing dishes and updating Facebook. I met Cait and Kate in the afternoon to do some shopping at San Lorenzo, then go back to the girls' apartment to make chicken nugget parmesan. We tried to watch "Hannibal" on Netflix in honor of being in Firenze, but a slow internet connection meant it was taking hours to load. Instead we played more Dutch Blitz.

Saturday we had planned to spend the day museum hopping at the Uffizi, Palazzo Piti and the Accademia. But Caitlin called as I was heading out the door to meet the girls at the Uffizi at 10 to let me know she and Kate had slept in... We ended up not getting to the Uffizi until almost 3:00...

I don't want to talk about it.

The Uffizi was really cool though. Not as good as the museums we saw in Rome, but still pretty awesome.

The first floor of the Uffizi misleads you. There are only two display rooms and it takes no time at all to get through them. I thought, as we made our way to the second floor, that we could be out of the museum in two hours.

Boy was I wrong.

The second floor of the Uffizi is ENDLESS. We went from room to room to room. We figured out about three rooms in that there is a proper order to viewing the museum, but we were hopelessly out of order at that point. That combined with the fact that everything is written in Italian made it difficult for us to navigate or understand what was going on. Luckily, we're going back with Rocky in a few weeks so he can explain everything to us then.

Despite not understanding what any of the artwork was or what it meant, I enjoyed looking at everything. The Uffizi is home to the Medici family's personal collection of sculptures and paintings, including work from Michelangelo, Bernini, Caravaggio, Giotto, and Brunelleschi. I'm excited to go back and do it again with a guide because there was too much to see in the four hours we were there.

Today I again didn't do much because I was home alone still. Katy and Jess went to Genoa for the weekend, so I couldn't hang out with them, but they got home last night and the three of us plus their friend Grace went to an English speaking church for study abroad and foreign exchange students.

The church was interesting. It was in a real church, but of course it was all college students. It began like h2o in Kent, a live band, everyone singing praise songs off a projection on the wall. The songs weren't ones I knew, but the band was really into it. Things got a little strange though when the band leader asked if anyone wanted to come up and give a testimonial. Some guy in the back got up and took over the service. He sang a song, he told a story, he sang again, he read from the Bible, he sang again. I could see the band members exchanging glanses with the guy I assume had been scheduled to preach, but no one said anything.

When they guy from the back finally finished, another girl got up to read her favorite Bible verse, and then another to share a snapshot of her life in Florence and her challenges into adjusting to being in a new place with new people.

The pastor (I guess that's who he was) got up after that and did a five minute speed through of the sermon he had prepared, then the band closed us out.

After service, we were shepherded through a door, down the hall and up a flight of stairs into a lobby where they had a mismatched assortment of teacups sitting out for us to choose from on one table and cookies, chocolate wafers and Nutella pie on another. Katy, Jess, Grace, and I snacked and mingled a little bit with some of the other students (including a girl named Sarah who pulled me aside to tell me how much she loved my coat) before heading to our respective apartments.

Now Bethany and Erika are home and ready to tell me about their weekends, which sound decidedly more interesting than mine. I feel like I need to make up for this lazy weekend by booking a bunch of weekend trips asap. All I have officially booked as of now is Venice Carnival this Saturday. I feel like I need to step it up this week and start planning before another month is gone...

Total. Widespread. Panic.

A word of warning : What you are about to view is very disturbing. Italy is on the verge of shutting down entirely because of this horrible sight.

Brace yourself...

Ready?

SNOWMAGEDDON!

I hope these drivers made it out alive.

Some classes were actually cancelled today (none of mine, unfortunately). My Comparative Media professor was all of a dither about it. She hasn't seen this much snow in 20 years. This is a historic snowfall.

On an unrelated note: I went to an American diner with Katy Welch yesterday for lunch and cheated on Italy with a very delicious chicken wrap (chicken, lettuce, tomato, mayonnaise) with waffle fries and broccoli cheddar soup. I felt so guilty, but it was so good.

On another unrelated note, I'm watching MTV Italia right now and there is a horrifying Italian rap about Kevin Spacey in existence. I will never understand this country's collective obsession with him. Instead of freaking out over the snow, Italy should be cowering in fear at the first note of this hot mess.

Not gonna lie, I will be having nightmares about this for the next week or so. And I hope you do, too.

You're welcome, America.

If We Are The Body

Every time we enter a church in Italy, I find myself comparing it to my home church in Pennsylvania. I think St. Paul's UMC is a pretty large church, but it would easily fit inside most of the churches we've seen so far in Firenze and Roma (not counting St. Peter's Basilica, since it's the world's largest church and could hold a football field and then some).

Also, I think St. Paul's is very nice and homey, but it looks super plain - both inside and out - compared to Italian churches. We don't have any carvings, sculptures, priceless paintings, or ornate decorations at St. Paul's (with the kind of exception of the stained glass cross behind the alter; laughable next to the glasswork in Italian duomos).

I've noticed looking at these duomos and basilicas week after week that I have a very hard time imagining myself actually attending church in these churches. And people do that. These buildings are art museums six days a week, and houses of God one day (in my mind, at least). Each time I walk into a church, after taking in the incredible view, I find myself struggling to comprehend what it would be like to sit in these pews every Sunday, listening to Pastor Ron, surrounded by the one of the greatest collections of wealth in the world. I can't process it.

I wonder about the congregations of these churches. What is it like to attend services in a building hundreds of years old? What is it like to sing hymns in a room visited by thousands and thousands of photo-happy tourists every other day of the week? What is it like to listen to a sermon while sitting only a few paces away from the final resting places of greats like Galileo and Michelangelo? Of saints and popes?

I can't imagine it.

And then I get to thinking about how the congregations of these churches must relate to each other. In my church, we have a youth room with comfy couches, coffee, games, TV, laughter. This would be so out of place in a gold-encrusted tomb where no one speaks above a whisper and guards wait to confiscate the cameras of those who dare use a flash.

In my church, we play games in the gym, eat meals in the kitchen or the courtyard, mill around talking in the hallways and pews after services. Can you do that in a basilica? Where do you fellowship in a museum? How can you "do life together" in a century old crypt?

I love visiting these churches for their historic and artistic value, but they seem so fake, gaudy, overdone, wasteful to me. I can't force myself to believe that these ancient museums are houses of God when they're so foreign from everything I love and believe.

It's a surreal experience each time, but each time it makes me appreciate a little more summer Sunday mornings in the sanctuary with my St. Paul's family and winter Sunday nights in the auditorium with my h2o friends.

It's hard to see this and think "home church."