Week 3: Blake, the Hair, and Assisi

2/13/11    

     I never realize how much I’ve done during the week until I sit down to write this silly blog. I am always so busy that by the end of the week, it feels as if three weeks have past. I thought this week would be low key because we are more settled into our lives here. We have a favorite grocery store and are going to classes, but to my surprise it was a very eventful week. Two friends of mine from Simon’s Rock, Blake and Elana came to visit and we went to Assisi.

     Blake is spending this school year studying in Lebanon and for whatever reason has a really long intersession that he’s been spending traveling around Europe. I heard from my friend Eva, who is also a Simon’s Rocker studying in Florence, that Blake was coming to Florence. When I asked him about it late last week he said he was going to be in Florence in two days and expected Eva and I to show him around. I would have been surprised at the short notice, but I wasn't because this is Blake we’re talking about. During the day Blake was being shown around Florence by his Grandmother’s high school boyfriend who is in his 90’s, “racist” and lives here. Blake and I met up on Monday night and I showed him around a few historical sights. He bought a six Euro gelato that was massive and posed with the famous boar statue. He seemed more taken with Florentine puppies than some of the most famous sights in the world. We met up with Eva and went to one of my favorite bars. I got the bar’s signature passion fruit martini, which I thought was just a flavored martini, but was actually a martini that came with a Passion fruit to eat and a shot of Champagne. It was a bit too showy for my liking, but the Martini itself was good. Blake was unimpressed with the bar, and when we went out again the next night, Blake was still underwhelmed.

     On the third night Eva, Blake and my roommate Jocie decided to try a popular club called Full Up. When we got there, there were a ton of Americans outside and a cover to get in. We had pretty much decided not to go in, but turned around to see Blake entering the club. Not wanting to go in and pay a cover, we waited outside for a few minutes to see if Blake noticed we didn’t follow him and join us outside, but he didn't. The three of us girls went to another bar, but Eva left shortly after because she was tired. After an awkward conversation with non-English speaking Italians, Jocie and I left to meet up with one of Jocie’s friends. Jocie’s friend took us back to Full Up where she had VIP passes so we could get in for free. The club was absolutely ridiculous and I did not hear one sentence of Italian. American party girls were all over the place. Now, I’m sure it’s a totally awesome place if that’s what your into, but I’m more of a “enjoy a drink at bar, listen to live music and have a good conversation” kind of person. We didn’t stay long and Blake was nowhere to be found. On our way back to our apartment we ran into Blake, apparently it took him a long time to realize we weren’t in the club and he ended up having fun there, but left before we arrived.

     Blake left on Thursday, just as my friend Elana arrived. Elana graduated from Simon’s Rock last year and is currently traveling around Europe. Unfortunately I could only hang out with her a little on Thursday because I had class and tickets to the circus. The circus show ended up being more of a theatre show with some circus arts integrated into it. It was focused around themes of humans conquering nature and global warming. I support people spreading those messages through art, but they made it too depressing, and they could have been empowering people to want to make changes. On the bus back from the circus show there was a drunk American girl who was describing her revelation about how Italian men didn’t like her, they just liked “the hair”, referring to her long blonde hair. She just kept repeating “It’s the hair!”, and I couldn’t help but to encourage her by asking “what is it?” “It’s the hair!” “ Oh, the hair! Of course!” This girl had NO idea how hilarious she was being.

     I showed Elana around on Friday and took her to my favorite Pizza place and the chocolate festival. We went into a little leather shop where I bought a pair of handmade leather boots and although the woman working there spoke very little English we were able a good conversation. She told me to come back there and practice my Italian. It was really nice to hang out with Elana. I really admire how she is traveling around Europe by herself. I’d like to start doing more traveling independently.

      On Saturday the roomies and I took a train to Assisi. I was surprised we all woke up early enough to even make the train. In fact we almost didn’t, we were really slow in getting our tickets and Kelly and Kira had to run for it while I was standing in the doorway yelling “Rally! Rally! Rally!” Assisi was absolutely gorgeous. Assisi is famous for being the home of St. Francis and St. Clare. St. Francis and St. Clare both lead lives devoid of material things or excess. We visited three amazing churches beautifully decorated with frescos and sculptures, had an amazing lunch followed by amazing cannolis, but my favorite part of visiting Assisi was really just being reminded the messages St. Francis and St. Clare lived their lives by. Material wealth means nothing, if you are privileged, use your money to help those in need and not indulge in meaningless excess. A little silly that all these churches in Assisi dedicated to St. Francis and St. Clare were so embellished don’t you think?

      Today was the last day of the chocolate festival. It was really sad to see them pack up the tents. Going to the chocolate festival became a part of our routine. Hopefully we find something else to fill that chocolatey void. 

Blake, the boar and I.

Week 2: I live here.

2/6/11

     My classes are awesome. On Monday I had my Mysteries and Sacred Knowledge in Architecture class. Amazing. I sat in the front and geeked out HARDCORE. There were about twenty-five students in my class and nobody said anything when the teacher asked questions, so I talked A LOT. I couldn't help it, I might want to research this stuff as a career, symbols, sacred knowledge and intuition, it's all so fascinating. I did make an effort to not talk so much, but no one was saying anything and I had an opinion about almost everything... I even brought up stuff about Australia and Aboriginal people. At the end of class a bunch of the students were mumbling about how tired they were and about how long that class was and I could not relate at all. I felt energized and I thought class went by really quickly. I'm sure everyone thought I was super annoying and talked too much, but I really couldn't help myself.

     On Tuesday I had Sustainable Food, Anthropology of Fashion & Desirability and Italian. We mostly went over our syllabus in Sustainable Food, but I think the class will be great. When I was studying sustainability in Australia, we mostly learned about sustainable food by visiting farms and talking to people who work in the industry. I honestly feel like I missed out on a lot of the theory of sustainable agriculture. I think this class will be a great opportunity to re-learn that and gain a better understanding of what I just did in Australia. Anthropology of Fashion class was awesome. I'm not used to being around other students that take fashion seriously, and it was nice. I've always been interested in fashion, but never really had anyone to talk to about it. I thought this class was good because it seems to go beyond the superficial nature of fashion and examine how clothing is used culturally and individually to express an identity along with stuff more related to high fashion. I'm excited to see what I'll learn. Italian class was fun, I liked the other students in my class.

     Wednesday I had Fresco Painting & Restoration class. I was pretty exhausted and the teacher's English was difficult to understand. Although I was excited for actually starting to paint frescos, watching the teacher's demonstrations was really tiring. We had a forty minute break and I was not looking foreword to coming back to class. when I did come back from the break, our teacher surprised us with a field trip! We walked around the Corner to The Medici Chapel and our teacher guided us to a back room. In this room was a staircase hidden by a weird door on the floor. He told us to go down the stairs, and everyone looked a bit confused, but I felt brave so I went down first. Down this stairway was a hallway with a bunch of huge sketches drawn all over the walls. Mostly sketches of figures, but some horses as well. As it turns out those sketches were drawn by MICHELANGELO around the same time he was working on the Sistene Chapel in the 1400's. This room is not open to the public and the only reason we got to go there was because our teacher helped restore the room. It was truly amazing. I was walking inside of Michaelangelo's sketchbook. I still can't believe I got to go there.

     I went to the Ferragamo Shoe Museum on Thursday with Jocie. It was small, but very well put together. There were lots of videos about how they hand-make their shoes and many beautiful shoes on display. They had this one interactive table where you take a shoe, place it on the table, and a description of the shoe's history would appear on the table. My favorite shoe on the table was a beautiful red velvet peep toe pump worn by Nicole Kidman in the move Australia, go figure. It was gorgeous, I wanted to try it on, but that would have been weird... The next day I wasn't sure what to do, I really wanted to go to the Ufizzi, but knew I wouldn't have enough time to enjoy it because I had this safety workshop later in the afternoon, so Kelly and I decided to climb to the top of the Duomo! It cost eight Euro, but was worth it. At first we were saying we were on top of the world, but then we realized we were on top of the Duomo and domes represent Heaven, therefore we were on top of heaven! It was beautiful, I could have spent all day up there.

    Later in day, we had a safety workshop where some martial artists taught us some basic self defense. At first they had a powerpoint presentation where they showed us reasons to know how to defend ourselves. The soundtrack was very dramatic, synthesizers playing a similar riff to the The Final Countdown and the reasons would pop up in time with the music "To prevent Rape." It was unintentionally hilarious. The martial artist guy was also truly silly. He was very enthusiastic and wearing very short shorts. He told us "Use your fists like hammers, your knees like knifes and your elbows like axes!" We could not stop laughing.

     Saturday Morning we all slept in. When we were all awake and in the kitchen I demanded that it was Mimosa time, so we made Mimosas and went upstairs to our terrace. After we were finished with our Mimosas, Kira and I danced around on our terrace to Ben Kweller and Andrew Bird. Later in the day we went to The Florence Chocolate Festival. It was right in front of the beautiful San Croce Church. There was chocolate everywhere, every kind, in every consistency. It was marvelous. A stall in the back was selling fresh made on the spot Focaccia bread. I knew I wanted to try it because the line was long and full of Italians. Kira and I both got Focaccia with pesto and cheese on it. We sat on the steps of San Croce and could not believe how good it was. We both agreed that it might have been the best thing we've ever eaten. We had Allison take our picture in front of San Croce to document where we had the best food of our lives. I spent about thirteen Euro on amazing chocolate. When I got back to the apartment, I was truly exhausted, and very pregnant with a food baby.

      Today I finally made it to the Ufizzi. I went there when I was twelve and it was even better than I remembered. Even though it is cliche, the Botticelli room was my favorite. He just captures the essence of women magnificently. I didn't see all of the Ufizzi today, but I plan on returning soon. We went back to the chocolate festival to get more focaccia for lunch. It wasn't as good today, but we had a good time walking around the San Croce area anyway. I can't believe I live here!

 

On Top of the Duomo!

 Chocolate Festival

 Next to Michaelangelo fresco