Momma

So today happens to be my mother's birthday, and when I asked her a few weeks ago what she wanted she facetiously replied "A post on your blog!". While I'm pretty sure she wasn't entirely serious, here goes: Happy Birthday Mom!! I hope that today is absolutely wonderful- I miss you and love you so much!

Buona Pasqua

After much sleep (probably too much), some well-received solitude, and absolutely no more drawing this weekend, I rose like a phoenix from my dark conte ashes and was able to rejoin my fellow humans just in time to celebrate Easter.  The whole Easter weekend here in Orvieto was a lovely tradition of color, worship and fellowship.  On Good Friday most of us students made our way over to San Giovanale, where we attend mass on Sundays, for the 9 pm Stations of the Cross ceremony.  Even though I couldn’t understand any of the stations (with the exception of words such as “first”, “second” etc.) I found the whole night to be lovely.  Every person was given a long candle, like the ones we use in the states to sing “silent night” on Christmas Eve, but about 8 times longer.  The candles had flowers made out of colorful wax paper that made different colors bounce around the whole community.  Once all of our candles were lit we followed the cross, and the man with the giant loudspeaker mounted on a pike, out the back door of the church and around the streets of Orvieto.  We stopped every few minutes to hear another station, listen to some nuns sing, and chant responsive prayers such as the Lord’s Prayer and several others that I didn’t quite understand (most of them dedicated to Mary).  Through the tight streets shutters and windows opened above our heads to reveal fellow Orvietani people leaning out of the homes with their own candles lit to silently observe the procession. They quietly joined in the singing and waved at neighbors passing below.   My favorite part was the point where I looked behind me and saw a stream of people coming down the hill behind me, lit splendidly in a rainbow of colors.  It was beautiful. 

Naturally, any tradition like this isn’t some otherworldly glamorous spectacle.  With at least a few hundred people there, it’s bound to bear human traits as well as heavenly, and Friday definitely delivered.  I found myself walking the streets with mothers who stopped every 2 minutes to argue with their children, kids with toy guns, old men who do nothing other than leer from the side of the wall, neighbors who slammed doors and blared the TV when they heard us coming and the constant threat of fiery doom to the flowers and clothes of those around me. At one point, the old man in front of me managed to light his entire paper on fire, at which point his petite, wiry wife put out the flame, confiscated all easily flammable products from her husband’s person, and gave him a child’s candle within about 2 seconds.  Some reactions are really cross-cultural, it made me smile. 

            Saturday there was a midnight service in the Duomo, which I opted out of in favor of some rest, but Sunday was lovely.  We all dressed up and headed to San Giovanali, which was packed.  They really pulled out all the stops for Easter – maybe that is a Catholic thing, but to inexperienced students like me it seemed quite formal.   I was fortunate enough to snag a seat near the front in a row of little old Italian women dressed in their Sunday best, who all managed to look quietly scandalized when I crossed my legs and they saw my knee, but that is another matter.  The choir was full and had definitely done their homework; every action was accompanied by choral music and responses.  Unfortunately, every action was also accompanied by incense. While I understand that the stuff has religious connotation, it smells absolutely wretched.  For about 5 minutes after each time they would carry it out I would find my eyes watering, nose running, and all systems were down.  This was then followed by the priest walking down the main aisle on which I was seated, sprinkling the congregation with holy water.  Other than that, I really liked the service, regardless of the fact that the only thing I could understand was the Lord’s prayer.  During the offering, the choir members that were in our program sang “Christ the Lord is Risen Today” which was a real blessing; it was lovely to finally hear something in my own language!

After church we booked it back to San Paolo because we had been promised a pancake brunch – which actually turned into a 3-4 hour pancake/fruit/Easter egg hunt/ eggs extravaganza. It was fantastic.  The whole Doll family was there, and both of our new professors’ families came out for the fun.  There are 9 kids now: The English professor, Stevick, has a 3-year-old son named Winn, and an infant daughter named Yelena (Yuh-lay-nuh. But her real name is Madeline). Our painting professor hails from Geneva, and his children only speak French and Swiss German.  However he and his wife, Stephanie, speak English very well.  For some reason she reminds me a lot of my aunt Jane, she jumped right in with the student group and made fast friends with all of us.  Their daughter, Adele, is 7 and was shocked when a few of us were able to address her in French.  Their son, Zachary, is 4 and couldn’t care less if we could speak his language so long as we would play soccer with him. Pardon me, futbol.  We all took turns playing with the kids, helping out with the Easter egg hunt, and cooking the pancakes.  It was a perfectly lovely was to spend the holiday. I think it was especially lovely because it reminded each of us what it felt like to be with our own families during the holidays and most students shared memories or traditions that they had from childhood. 

I hope all of you had a wonderful Holy Weekend, and enjoyed time with friends and family.  I miss you all, but am incredibly blessed to be in Italy.  It’s been 2 months s(to the day!) and I can still hardly believe that I am actually here!! It feels so natural, almost like being a resident alien, not that I actually know what that would be like.  We’re already half way through our semester, but it feels like we just got off the plane last week! 

R&R

Drawing class ended today. Will return to the land of the living shortly.

Scheduling Success

I am so happy I could jump up and down - in fact, I did in the public library.  For the first time ever, I had no difficulty in registering for classes. Next semester is looking to be a highly gratifying montage of Anatomy for the Artist, Clay Sculpture, Art and Vocation (with Z- Im so excited) and Scientific Enterprise (which was added under severe duress. I took Earth Science in 8th Grade, I don't need it in College). Oh, and the best part? NO classes on Fridays!! I'm absolutely giddy.
Thus, we have the beginning to what is shaping up to be a lovely weekend.  Tomorrow morning, at a nearly ungodly hour, the whole drawing class is picking up and going to Rome for the weekend.  We have 4 apartments in the heart of the city where we are staying in groups, accompanied by a full schedule of sightseeing, architecture, infamously famous paintings and delicious food.  I am incredibly excited.  Yet, I worry that our days will be overbooked and exhausting.  The exhausting part wouldn't be too ba, but I like my free time.  The part I'm looking forward to the most is Saturday morning, where Prof. Doll gets distracted by the Dante class coming out for a tour and leaves us on our own to roam the streets (roam - rome haha) in search of inspiring architecture, commanding colors, invigorating espresso and any other spark of insight or creativity (Thank you to Justina for finishing that sentence for me). All in all I am quite excited.
There will definitely be plenty of pictures and blogging to come, once I learn to process all the sights, smells, sounds, and thoughts that I am inviting to bombard my person.  So be on the look out! However, the internet at San Paolo is down and I'm tired  of visiting Cafes so it may take a while.
I hope you all have wonderful weekends!

Super Mondo Big Post

I realize that it’s been a full week since I left for Venice and I have yet to tell you about it – so here’s a quick catch up!

8 of us took the train from Orvieto to Venice, which took about 5 hours.  It was a pretty chill ride, except for the last hour where about 50 middle school aged Italian kids got on after a field trip.  These kids were hilarious, we watched them get up and terrorize the teachers, play spin the bottle (water bottle – not a wine bottle J ) and listened to them all sing Hot n Cold by Katy Perry in unison.  I think that was my favorite part.  Once we got to Venice we had a few minutes to wait until our hotel sent a van to get us.  The first impression of Venice was unpleasant, as it seems to be with all major cities.  There are countless homeless people huddled up in rags in the middle of the sidewalk, many of them with a few dogs on twine leashes for some reason, who beg shamelessly. Or worse – they say nothing and just lie across your path in a smelly heap of hodge-podge fabrics and misery. There are also many large, loud, black men who shamelessly approach and berate you to buy their cheap, generic souvenirs and do-dads. 

After navigating these torrid masses we got into the hotel van for a quick 20 minute drive to our surprisingly nice hotel.  It turns out that the missing “S” is a big deal (hotel- not hostel.  That’s where I’m going with this, I’m just not sure if I’m coherent).  We were split between 2 rooms with 4 beds in each, clean private bathrooms (big deal!) and separate keys so we could leave our belongings.  They even made an attempt at American style breakfast in the morning – cold scrambled eggs, cooked hotdogs in ketchup (yep. Breakfast.) cereal with yogurt and an assortment of cold cooked veggies.  We stuck to demolishing the crepe plate and overusing the coffeemaker.  Then it was a half hour bus ride onto the actual island.

There was something I didn’t know – Venice is actually an island.  The city just kind of spills onto the mainland by way of a bridge – kind of like driving onto Long Island, or out to the end of the Outer Banks.  Once on the island, you are within a block of water at all times.  This sounds lovely, but as dear old Wikipedia informed us, there is no septic system on the island and all their crap gets dumped into the lovely “romantic” little canals.  You can tell right away.  Its worse is some places than others, and the nicer areas near the coastline definitely smell much better.  The rest of the day was spent meandering around the city.  We split up for a while and all just took the city at our own pace.  The one thing that we did do together was take a Gondola ride.  I have to admit, I really didn’t want to.  Its so obviously a tourist trap, overpriced, and I would much rather walk.  I told the gondolier this, but my absence would jack the price up another 5 euro for each of my companions so I decided I may as well get in the tippy, slow little boat instead of being the oddball out.  It was decently fun, and we got some cool pictures.  We actually had 2 boats because the max passenger number is 6. 

Boat #1: Kelsey, Tori, Lindsay, Emily

Our whole group with the gondoliers. 

After a dinner of pizza and white wine we returned to the hotel to watch The Italian Job – because every time we passed a stream/boat/bridge/piazza/pigeon someone would yell “THIS IS JUST LIKE IN THE ITALIAN JOB!!!!” and Tori had it with her.

The next morning we split up; Caitlin and Emily went into Venice for the day and then returned to Orvieto, and the other 6 of us hopped a train to Verona. It only took about 2 hours to get there and from the moment we stepped off the train Verona was one of my favorite cities.  In my opinion it was a big city that felt like a town, there were little parks with trees and fountains, the ruins of a coliseum, and lots of piazzas with loud music where locals hang out and dance at night.  We had been commenting on how we hadn’t seen any people our own age in our travels thus far, everyone seems to be in their thirties at least, and all the students are in Verona!! It was crazy.  Verona is famous for being the city of Romeo and Juliet (which actually isn’t true, but that’s another story) but I would just call it a city about love in general. 

One of our first stops (on the Rick Steves’ guided walking tour – courtesy of Kelsey of course) was this little wine shop run by a lovely Italian man who does not have a word of English in his vocabulary. 

Wine bottles of every age and value are stacked floor to ceiling in one room.  Some gather thick layers of dust, and others are obviously in consistent use.  Even the fireplace is filled with rows and piles of old bottles of varying shapes, sizes and prices.  The room next to it has the same floor to ceiling shelving system filled with every other imaginable kind of liquor.  A table down the middle is undistinguishable below various bottles. He was absolutely delighted to have 6 young women in his shop and showed us around, gave us free samples of wine, and tried to tell us about the legend of the well of love.  After we each bought our glass of wine and settled onto the long, dark, wooden benches lining the length of the store he pulled out a leaflet with the story in Italian and English which Lindsay read to us.  Here’s the short version: Boy sees girl, boy falls in love with girl, Girl snubs boy, Girl secretly falls in love with boy, Boy calls girl cold hearted, girl tells boy that if he wants something cold he’ll jump in the well, boy jumps in well, girl feels bad and jumps in well, both die. The end. And for some reason this well is a symbol of love…

Our next big stop was Juliet’s house (which looks NOTHING like the film Letters to Juliet, just so you know).  I thought it was kind of neat that people write their names on the walls as a kind of plea for their love, or to find a love, or as shameless exhibition that they have a beau. You get the idea.  Naturally we all partook in this tradition

The other superstition is that if you touch Juliet’s breast she will bless you, and it took us a good fifteen minutes to push through the masses of Italian students and asian tourists to get to her statue.

We walked around for the rest of the day, saw beautiful fountains, piazzas, counted how many times kat and Lindsay got hit on (lots), and ate dinner at a little family restaurant off the main road.  The wife of the little wine store man is a firey, feisty little black woman from Ohio and she recommended it to us, but what I am slowly learning is that no matter where I go or what I eat, it is NEVER as good as what Enya feeds us every day in Orvieto.  Even her pizza can’t be beat.  The woman is a saint.  Then we wandered until our 11:30 pm train.  The main streets were like any other city :Prada, Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, and all their designer friends made an appearance, as well and various people wearing their labels. 

Eventually we rolled into Orvieto at 5:45 am on Sunday morning, hiked up the cliff since the funicolare was closed and the bus wasn’t running yet (Sundays are awful days to travel here), and fell into bed at 6:30 in the morning.  It was definitely worth it, Venice and especially Verona were lovely cities and I’m very glad I got to see them.