I have officially decided that my perception of time here in Italy is the most baffling experience of them all. I almost feel as if too much has happened between this blog and my last to be able to write it all. I’ll try to sum it up quickly.
Paris was a lot of fun, my best friend from home was with me, and my best friend from the program and we got to spend time with my other wonderful friend from high school who is studying there. It was five full days in Paris and they were all jam packed with museums, pastries, and walking long distances. It made me appreciate once again my knowledge of the Italian language because even after two years of high school French I felt so bad not being able to even order a baguette sandwich correctly. The experience did, however, make me remember why the French language was so beautiful, and that I may still want to pick it back up one day. My favorite museum in Paris was the Museé D’Orsay, a museum that was created out of an old railroad station and now holds one of the most incredible collections of art I have ever seen including many works by three of my favorites: Degas, Monet, and Van Gogh.
Paris was exhilarating and exciting, there is absolutely so much to do there that I can see it being a very livable city, it was shockingly modernized and globalised in comparison with Florence, reminding me of things like multi-culturalism and efficiency that just don’t exist in Italy. The weather, however was freezing cold and it rained/snowed almost every day we were there, my feet were very tired by the end of the day, and getting back home to Italy was once again a wonderful feeling.
Since then the weather in Florence has been beautiful, I’ve finished up my University of Florence course and caught up on everything I missed from my illness. Friday morning three of my closest friends and I hopped a cheap RyanAir flight to Sardegna, the island off Italy’s western coast for a much needed relaxing three days. We flew into Alghero, the city in the northwestern corner of the island, found the bungalow we had reserved at a campground, and spent three full days lying on the beach, making our own dinners, and studying for our upcoming University exams. We got back late Sunday night, sunburned but happy, and now I have two more days to finish the reading for my University Exam Thursday morning. The exam is oral, we are responsible for knowing all of the information given in class plus three books we should have read, I am still swinging back and forth between feeling completely confident and completely unprepared, but hopefully the first one will win over come Thursday morning.
Now that I am back from Sardegna I have three and a half weeks of classes left, three weekends to spend in Florence, before finals for my other courses happen the first week of May, followed by our group trip to Sicily May 10-15, and then I will be flying home May 19th. There are six weeks sitting in front of me and I’m trying to tell myself they will be enough, but in all honesty I just can’t believe any of it.
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Parigi
Me with my Degas at Musee D'Orsay.
The clock from the railroad station that the museum used to be.
Carly, Dana, and I in front of the Arc de Triomphe.
Inside the Louvre, the building was the coolest part.
The tower, with an extremely ominous cloud behind it.
Pastry break during the rain storm.
The view of the storm after it passed from the top of the Eiffel Tower.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Photos da Ravenna
Yes, this is a mosaic.
All this too.
And this, look at the depth!
JYA Florence '07-'08. What a pretty group.
Dante's tomb.
And the days run together...
The last month has gone so quickly that it seems absolutely impossible that I am on Spring Break. Since I got back from Prague I have since: started my University of Florence class, had several wonderful visitors, taken a day trip to Ravenna, celebrated my 21st birthday, gotten laryngitis, and had midterms.
I chose to take a Linguistics course at the University of Florence this semester, after much stress about the Italian University system, scheduling conflicts, confusion about exams and modulos, and my director not being entirely sure if this course would be something too “technical” for me to understand in a foreign language, I went. And I understood almost everything, it’s a very dry subject, but it’s something I’m interested in especially since it is a General Linguistics course and therefore discusses not only the aspects of the Italian language but also compares it with English, Spanish, French, German, Chinese, and whatever else the professor can come up with. My exam is on April 7th, it’s an oral exam and I have no idea what to expect. We’ll see.
One of my good friends from Smith came to visit a couple weekends ago who had taken Italian with me but decided to study in Scotland this year instead and it was fabulous to have a visitor that reminded me exactly what I loved about this city. When I met her on the steps of the Duomo shortly after she arrived she gave me the hugest hug and looked at me with tears in her eyes, pointing up to the bell tower, “Maggie! Look where we are!” She reminded me of my original passion and excitement every time I saw laundry hanging outside a building, or the way the sun casts its light on a yellow building and a terra cotta roof. It was a nice reminder.
That same weekend we took a day trip to Ravenna, our third trip with the school, and after being jaded by the last two trips, which were less than exhilarating, Ravenna came as a pleasant surprise. First of all, I saw Dante’s tomb. Even though Dante was a die-hard Florentine, when he died he asked one of his monk friends to bury him in Ravenna. Florence tried to take him back a few times, but when they came the monks had dug him up and hidden his bones somewhere else. The Florentines finally gave up and now he’s back in his original tomb, although every year a group of Florentines come and fill a lamp with Florentine olive oil that burns inside his little altar. It was beautiful and gave me such an amazing feeling to know that someone so grand in the world of literature, Italy and history ended up just like everyone else, right where I was standing. The rest of the Ravenna trip was just as moving. We were shown several different churches all filled with Ravenna’s famous mosaics. Most of Ravenna’s buildings were done during the Byzantine Empire, back before frescoes, when the art was still mostly mosaic work. These decorations are impossible to describe, they covered entire church walls and ceilings depicting groups of people, and animals, all made up of tiny 1 x 1 cm. glass tiles that were each cut by hand. Incredible.
The last three events kind of come in a mish-mash that was last week, I began getting sick last Sunday but ignored it knowing that I had mid-terms and a birthday party to look forward to, by Saturday morning after two exams and 6 days of ibuprofen and lots of water I woke up with absolutely no voice. Not wanting to miss out on my own birthday party I thought positive and went out that night anyway to a nice dinner and then a few bars for some 21st birthday drinks, needless to say the next morning my body wasn’t very happy and I spent my actual birthday in bed, without a voice. Monday I missed school for the first time and went to the doctor who prescribed a giant dose of antibiotics and to “rest my voice.” It’s been very tough and made me feel like a foreigner all over again, but I’m finally healing up and hopefully will be back to 100% by Sunday when I fly to Paris for my newest adventure.
I chose to take a Linguistics course at the University of Florence this semester, after much stress about the Italian University system, scheduling conflicts, confusion about exams and modulos, and my director not being entirely sure if this course would be something too “technical” for me to understand in a foreign language, I went. And I understood almost everything, it’s a very dry subject, but it’s something I’m interested in especially since it is a General Linguistics course and therefore discusses not only the aspects of the Italian language but also compares it with English, Spanish, French, German, Chinese, and whatever else the professor can come up with. My exam is on April 7th, it’s an oral exam and I have no idea what to expect. We’ll see.
One of my good friends from Smith came to visit a couple weekends ago who had taken Italian with me but decided to study in Scotland this year instead and it was fabulous to have a visitor that reminded me exactly what I loved about this city. When I met her on the steps of the Duomo shortly after she arrived she gave me the hugest hug and looked at me with tears in her eyes, pointing up to the bell tower, “Maggie! Look where we are!” She reminded me of my original passion and excitement every time I saw laundry hanging outside a building, or the way the sun casts its light on a yellow building and a terra cotta roof. It was a nice reminder.
That same weekend we took a day trip to Ravenna, our third trip with the school, and after being jaded by the last two trips, which were less than exhilarating, Ravenna came as a pleasant surprise. First of all, I saw Dante’s tomb. Even though Dante was a die-hard Florentine, when he died he asked one of his monk friends to bury him in Ravenna. Florence tried to take him back a few times, but when they came the monks had dug him up and hidden his bones somewhere else. The Florentines finally gave up and now he’s back in his original tomb, although every year a group of Florentines come and fill a lamp with Florentine olive oil that burns inside his little altar. It was beautiful and gave me such an amazing feeling to know that someone so grand in the world of literature, Italy and history ended up just like everyone else, right where I was standing. The rest of the Ravenna trip was just as moving. We were shown several different churches all filled with Ravenna’s famous mosaics. Most of Ravenna’s buildings were done during the Byzantine Empire, back before frescoes, when the art was still mostly mosaic work. These decorations are impossible to describe, they covered entire church walls and ceilings depicting groups of people, and animals, all made up of tiny 1 x 1 cm. glass tiles that were each cut by hand. Incredible.
The last three events kind of come in a mish-mash that was last week, I began getting sick last Sunday but ignored it knowing that I had mid-terms and a birthday party to look forward to, by Saturday morning after two exams and 6 days of ibuprofen and lots of water I woke up with absolutely no voice. Not wanting to miss out on my own birthday party I thought positive and went out that night anyway to a nice dinner and then a few bars for some 21st birthday drinks, needless to say the next morning my body wasn’t very happy and I spent my actual birthday in bed, without a voice. Monday I missed school for the first time and went to the doctor who prescribed a giant dose of antibiotics and to “rest my voice.” It’s been very tough and made me feel like a foreigner all over again, but I’m finally healing up and hopefully will be back to 100% by Sunday when I fly to Paris for my newest adventure.
Friday, February 29, 2008
Czech Lessons
It’s been almost a week now since I went to Prague to visit my friend Cait and to get a taste of Eastern Europe, but I find myself still having difficulty collecting my thoughts on the experience. This semester I felt as if I was behind in the whole “backpacking through Europe college experience,” but now that I have left Italy once and seen how much I missed it, I’m glad that I am keeping my travels outside of the border to few.
Prague was immediate culture shock, the Czech airport was sleek, modern, and pristine, at baggage claim towering, pale faced Czechs surrounded me, and on the bus no one smiled or said a word the entire thirty minute ride into the city, I was definitely not in Italy anymore.
As I wandered through old town the next day while Cait was in class I couldn’t stop taking photos of the buildings. Living in an Italian Renaissance city is architecturally incredible, don’t get me wrong, but the style isn’t something you could describe as diverse. Prague’s architecture reads like a history book of the city’s struggles through regime changes, wars, and political strife. The skyline looks like patchwork, like a little model gingerbread village complete with pink, red, green, and yellow buildings lined up beside incredible gothic cathedrals.
That first day I sat by the Charles Bridge and noticed how perfectly the cloudy sky reflected the dark history hanging over Prague—casting a slightly cold, misty shadow on all of the beautiful buildings and on my sentiments. As the days went on, however, I made my way to the Franz Kafka museum, the John Lennon Peace Wall, Prague Castle and cathedral, and Vysherad, an area above the city housing the Church of Apostles Peter and Paul, and one of the most famous cemeteries in Prague. Learning about the intricacies of the past of the city helped me to see Prague not just as a melancholy, suffering, post-communist city, but as a city that has struggled through many occupations only to come out twenty years ago with their country, pride, language and culture intact.
I was happy to return to Florence at the end of the weekend, back to the foreign comforts, culture, and lifestyle I have grown accustomed to, but the appreciation I found for the Czech culture in only four days there has opened my eyes to the innumerable different histories, cities, cultures, and ways of life that occupy this world, and how few of them most of us have attempted to understand.
Gothic architecture!
The cathedral at Prague Castle
The Frank Gehry "Dancing" building in Prague
Pretty Czech architecture
Franz Kafka museum, very trippy, but very interesting
The John Lennon wall!
Czech folk music on Charles Bridge with Prague Castle in the background
The View of Prague from Vysherad
Prague was immediate culture shock, the Czech airport was sleek, modern, and pristine, at baggage claim towering, pale faced Czechs surrounded me, and on the bus no one smiled or said a word the entire thirty minute ride into the city, I was definitely not in Italy anymore.
As I wandered through old town the next day while Cait was in class I couldn’t stop taking photos of the buildings. Living in an Italian Renaissance city is architecturally incredible, don’t get me wrong, but the style isn’t something you could describe as diverse. Prague’s architecture reads like a history book of the city’s struggles through regime changes, wars, and political strife. The skyline looks like patchwork, like a little model gingerbread village complete with pink, red, green, and yellow buildings lined up beside incredible gothic cathedrals.
That first day I sat by the Charles Bridge and noticed how perfectly the cloudy sky reflected the dark history hanging over Prague—casting a slightly cold, misty shadow on all of the beautiful buildings and on my sentiments. As the days went on, however, I made my way to the Franz Kafka museum, the John Lennon Peace Wall, Prague Castle and cathedral, and Vysherad, an area above the city housing the Church of Apostles Peter and Paul, and one of the most famous cemeteries in Prague. Learning about the intricacies of the past of the city helped me to see Prague not just as a melancholy, suffering, post-communist city, but as a city that has struggled through many occupations only to come out twenty years ago with their country, pride, language and culture intact.
I was happy to return to Florence at the end of the weekend, back to the foreign comforts, culture, and lifestyle I have grown accustomed to, but the appreciation I found for the Czech culture in only four days there has opened my eyes to the innumerable different histories, cities, cultures, and ways of life that occupy this world, and how few of them most of us have attempted to understand.
Gothic architecture!
The cathedral at Prague Castle
The Frank Gehry "Dancing" building in Prague
Pretty Czech architecture
Franz Kafka museum, very trippy, but very interesting
The John Lennon wall!
Czech folk music on Charles Bridge with Prague Castle in the background
The View of Prague from Vysherad
Friday, February 15, 2008
Quando sembra troppo vicino.
Last Saturday we took our second day trip with the school to a little town in Le Marche (a mountainous region East of Tuscany) called Urbino. They took us there because it is small but beautiful and home to a huge palace, but practically impossible to get to by means of public transportation. After three hours on the bus through winding mountain roads we were introduced to Urbino, a tiny walled city nestled within the hillside. We took a tour of Palazzo Ducale, but then were let loose in the city, to explore and eat for the rest of the afternoon. The town was small, there was lots of brick, we had pizza and drank wine for lunch, lost ourselves in tiny alleyways, took pictures of hanging laundry and vast vistas, before heading back to the bus.
The day in itself was nothing spectacular. Driving home however, watching the sun set as we descended the mountain on switchback roads, facing the Italian countryside spread open before us, leaving the little walled town behind, the three short months I have ahead of me finally seemed entirely too short.
I have since taken to waking up a little earlier, and staying out longer during the day, reading on church steps, watching people in piazzas, chatting with baristas. When days pass this quickly its all I can do to try and slow them down a little.
This afternoon I decided to climb the cupola of the Duomo for the first time. The monument that stole my breath when I first drove into the city in September has since become just one of the many churches I pass on the way to school in the morning. Every now and then I take the time to look up and see the façade just as striking against the blue Florentine sky as it was my first day here.
The view from the top (after over 400 steps and no elevator) was incredible. I fell in love all over again with the panorama of the city that I now consider my home. The red terra cotta rooftops littered the horizon up until the hillside in all directions, and I could pick out the streets, the churches, the towers, and the piazzas that I walk on, past, and through every day. I couldn’t bring myself to leave my post up there, at the top of my world, for over an hour. Even though the days rush by and the beauty all begins to look the same, I continue to be mesmerized by this place.
Beautiful Urbino:
Palazzo Ducale in Urbino:
The sunset from the bus:
Top of the Duomo:
The day in itself was nothing spectacular. Driving home however, watching the sun set as we descended the mountain on switchback roads, facing the Italian countryside spread open before us, leaving the little walled town behind, the three short months I have ahead of me finally seemed entirely too short.
I have since taken to waking up a little earlier, and staying out longer during the day, reading on church steps, watching people in piazzas, chatting with baristas. When days pass this quickly its all I can do to try and slow them down a little.
This afternoon I decided to climb the cupola of the Duomo for the first time. The monument that stole my breath when I first drove into the city in September has since become just one of the many churches I pass on the way to school in the morning. Every now and then I take the time to look up and see the façade just as striking against the blue Florentine sky as it was my first day here.
The view from the top (after over 400 steps and no elevator) was incredible. I fell in love all over again with the panorama of the city that I now consider my home. The red terra cotta rooftops littered the horizon up until the hillside in all directions, and I could pick out the streets, the churches, the towers, and the piazzas that I walk on, past, and through every day. I couldn’t bring myself to leave my post up there, at the top of my world, for over an hour. Even though the days rush by and the beauty all begins to look the same, I continue to be mesmerized by this place.
Beautiful Urbino:
Palazzo Ducale in Urbino:
The sunset from the bus:
Top of the Duomo:
Sunday, February 3, 2008
Photos from Carnevale
The foggy view of Venezia.
View from the Rialto Bridge on the long walk to San Marco.
My "mask".
The first of many "maschere."
Having lunch, anonymously.
Piazza San Marco.
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