Wow, what a week.
Last Thursday was glorious as soon as class was done, as I had an incredibly long nap before playing ultimate frisbee in the evening. Ultimate Frisbee is our new favorite pastime, and we even recruited several of our Italian friends to join in the fun. After pizza we went to this resteurant and I got this incredible pizza with mushrooms on it. Everyone else was quite impressed with their food as well, and at the reasonable prices.
On Friday we had a field trip to Viterbo and Villa Lante. Viterbo is a city nearby, and Villa Lante is this huge garden/estate place just outside of Viterbo. It was absolutely gorgeous, although there could ahve been a few more flowers and colorful things, but the fountains and the view were spectacular!
We got back around 3, so we took a nap, played frisbee again, changed, got aperitivos, and went to this thing at a theatre. First this guy, I forget his name, told us about the ancient Italian form of entertainment called Commedia Dell Arte. Basically, they do this improv. thing wearing these crazy masks, only using several words (no full sentences) and noises, and this incredibly odd posture. It is hilarious to watch. Next, Mei, one of our student advisors, showed us her variation of this, and to be honest I did not understand the point of her discipline at all, but it was very interesting to watch none-the-less. After she was done, the theatre guy whose name escapes me had two of the students go up in front of us and try out the Commedia Dell Arte thing, using the correct posture and noises and even the masks. It was one of the funniest things I have ever seen! All of our advisors were dying of laughter along with us.
Saturday was a day to finally sleep in. Around 12 or 1 one of our friends came over and ate an amazing breakfast that my roomate Ashley cooked. It was a very American breakfast, and I was glad to be eating bacon and eggs as opposed to caffe (espresso) and pastries. Very delicious! In the afternoon, guess what we did... that is correct, FRISBEE, which was incredibly fun, as usual. We went and ate at the same restuerant again, then went to our friends Dan and Cory's house to hang out. A little later on several of us went to our Italian friend Marco's farm, and got to try some of his family's homemade wine.
Now Sunday was probably one of the most beautiful and fun-filled days we've had since we got here. We got up early (which for us was abouto 8am) and went back to Marco's farm and helped his family with the grape harvest. We hardly did any work, but I guess they were grateful because it would've taken much longer if they had to do it all themselves. Marco's mother, Teresa, then cooked us this delicious lunch of spaghetti, lamb, and potatoes. She was such a sweet woman. Marco's grandparents on his mother's side were also there, as was his father. And non of them spoke any English, but Dan and Allessio were there to translate when we couldn't understand, so it was fine. My Italian was helped out a great deal just by listening to the others talk in Italian. I finally felt like I was starting to pick up on some of it. Yaay.
After lunch, we hiked down this huge hill through the woods and bushes and thorns to this stream. The stream was so wonderful! There were this huge rocks and great places to just dangle your feet in the water, which I did. It would be a great place to go swimming over the summer. I also saw a pile of charred wood on the rocks, so it looked like someone had a campfire there. I can't help but think how fun that would be as well. Anyway, the sun was warm, and I could have just layed on theh rock for hours, but we had to go look at some Etruscan tombs with Allessio.
Not that I'm complaining! Allessio is studying archeology, so he showed us these tombs that we had to climb all over steep hills and rocks to get to, and they were really cool because we could actually go in them and touch them and sit in them and everything! On the way back I almost fell about 15 feet, but luckily grabbed on to a thorny bush and saved myself from that, but did get a few small cuts on my hand. It was such an incredible day, I cannot describe it well enough to tell how wonderful it was.
It made me glad I chose to come here to Tuscania. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have had such an experience had I chosen to go to Florence or Rome. This town is so great, and there are so many kind people here. I love it.
Today we painted the same fountain as last week, and I'm getting quite frustrated with my decision to paint the entire fountain and then some, but I think it will turn out well. I simply have a lot of work cut out for myself. I'm just hoping that Marco or someone will let me use an easel to take to the fountain and use to paint. Oh, and right next to where we are painting is this cute little cafe called San Marco, and the owner, Valdo, is such a sweet guy. He's originally from Chile, and he is always giving us free drinks and whatnot. Today he brought out gelatos for all of us while we were painting. How nice.
Monday, September 29, 2008
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Wow, so much has been going on lately, I'm not sure how to fit it all in, but I'll try. Let's see, my last post was Tuesday, so I'll start with Wednesday. I had Digital Photography and learned a little bit about how color works with computers, and then we went and shot pigeons. It was pretty cool, although it would've been more exciting had we been able to shoot them with guns instead of cameras. Later in the day I had my Mediteranean Cuisine class for the first time, and it was great! We made bruschetta, vegetable risotto, fried eggplant, cooked cauliflour with oil and vineger, cooked peppers, and so much more I can't even remember it all. When we were done we got to eat it all, complemented by some good white wine (vino bianca).
On Thursday we endured another session of trying to learn Italian from Rita, but we haven't been doing to well with that. I really think I would learn Italian better on my own if I was just given a good step by step book with and ORGANIZED format. But I'm trying not to complain, she's a really sweet and kind person.
Later on Thursday my roomate Ashley and I went and sketched the San Marco fountain (fontana di San Marco), one sketch in burnt umber diluted with turpentine, and one in pencil. It was a lot of fun, but I think we accidently made the guy working there stay longer than they were supposed to be open. We were sitting outside sketching, and we had gotten gelatos, and hadn't paid for them yet because that's the custom here, so he was waiting to close up until we paid and left. Literally as soon as we paid and walked out the doors, he followed us and locked the doors. Oops.
On Friday we went on a field trip to Tarquinia to the museum and the Etruscan tombs. The museum was ok, I probably would've enjoyed it more had I went to bed at a reasonable hour, but it was still cool to see all the Etruscan artifacts, and funny watching Dan get yelled at for taking pictures. The tombs were really neat, too. Alessio, one of the faculty at our school, showed us around, but really didn't explain much about them to us. But it was still really cool to see them at the actual site where they were found.
After that, we didn't go with the group back to Tuscania, but took a train from Tarquinia to Rome, and then got another train from Rome to Venice. Oh, and did I mention it rained pretty much all day Friday, so we were soaking wet on the train ride. We got to Venice, and waited for almost an hour for the bus to come to take us to our hostel, which turned out to be a campground. We were all pretty hungry, so we looked for food there, but the only thing open was the bar, which only had booze. Luckily Elizabeth had a stash of snacks in her backpack, so we lived off of that for the night.
On Saturday we explored Venice and found a lot of cool bridges. We also found Piazza di San Marco (a different place than the fountain in Tuscania). There was also a church in this piazza, which we went into, and I took several pictures (without flash) despite the "no photo" signs everywhere.
In the evening we ate at this incredibly overpriced place, where it was 7 EURO for a 20 oz. bottle of coke. (multiply that by about 1.5 and you get the price in US dollars... ridiculous, right?). We also walked around the city some more, and Gabby taught me how to use the manual settings on my camera, so I took some pretty cool pictures of the canals at night, with 8 second exposures and whatnot (I set my camera on the bridge and used it as a tripod).
Later we came to this group of people gathered around some band playing music near the bus station in Venice. They were from Canada, and the music was really good. It was just a really neat experience with everyone standing around, clapping along with the music.
On Sunday we got up early and went over to Murano, the island where they make all of the glass that Venice is known for. We took a quick tour of the Murano glass museum, and then headed back to the train station and caught our train back to Rome, and then our other train back to Tarquinia. In Tarquinia we had to wait about an hour or two for Massimo, our driver to get there. We would've taken the bus normally, but buses don't run on Sundays, so we had to pay him to pick us up and take us back to Tuscania. And since he was running late, it was a little longer of a wait than we had hoped for, but va benne (it's good).
Monday we had classes again, we got to take our easels to the fountain and paint for about 5 hours, and everyone was watching us. Some people would come up and make comments on our paintings, and it was just a very cool experience, as everyone here is so incredibly nice and friendly.
In the evening, six of us got together and played ultimate frisbee in the park for about an hour, which was incredibly fun.
On Tuesday we had Italian again, which was quite frustrating, but we also had Tuscania Sketchbook, and Carlos (our professor) took us to this really cool place in town with a really great view and we just did some sketches. When we were done sketching we stopped by the San Marco's cafe/var/gelateria for some caffe and hot chocolate (which is more like a melted candy bar than water flavored with powder that we're used to in the states).
We recruited more people to play frisbee, and altogether there were about 10 of us. It was a pretty intense game, and even more incredibly fun than the night before. Afterwards we went and got some amazing pizza before going home to sleep.
I apologize for how long it's been between postings. I just have trouble forcing myself to sit down and recall all of the activities of the week and type it when there is sooo much else to do. But I will try. :-)
On Thursday we endured another session of trying to learn Italian from Rita, but we haven't been doing to well with that. I really think I would learn Italian better on my own if I was just given a good step by step book with and ORGANIZED format. But I'm trying not to complain, she's a really sweet and kind person.
Later on Thursday my roomate Ashley and I went and sketched the San Marco fountain (fontana di San Marco), one sketch in burnt umber diluted with turpentine, and one in pencil. It was a lot of fun, but I think we accidently made the guy working there stay longer than they were supposed to be open. We were sitting outside sketching, and we had gotten gelatos, and hadn't paid for them yet because that's the custom here, so he was waiting to close up until we paid and left. Literally as soon as we paid and walked out the doors, he followed us and locked the doors. Oops.
On Friday we went on a field trip to Tarquinia to the museum and the Etruscan tombs. The museum was ok, I probably would've enjoyed it more had I went to bed at a reasonable hour, but it was still cool to see all the Etruscan artifacts, and funny watching Dan get yelled at for taking pictures. The tombs were really neat, too. Alessio, one of the faculty at our school, showed us around, but really didn't explain much about them to us. But it was still really cool to see them at the actual site where they were found.
After that, we didn't go with the group back to Tuscania, but took a train from Tarquinia to Rome, and then got another train from Rome to Venice. Oh, and did I mention it rained pretty much all day Friday, so we were soaking wet on the train ride. We got to Venice, and waited for almost an hour for the bus to come to take us to our hostel, which turned out to be a campground. We were all pretty hungry, so we looked for food there, but the only thing open was the bar, which only had booze. Luckily Elizabeth had a stash of snacks in her backpack, so we lived off of that for the night.
On Saturday we explored Venice and found a lot of cool bridges. We also found Piazza di San Marco (a different place than the fountain in Tuscania). There was also a church in this piazza, which we went into, and I took several pictures (without flash) despite the "no photo" signs everywhere.
In the evening we ate at this incredibly overpriced place, where it was 7 EURO for a 20 oz. bottle of coke. (multiply that by about 1.5 and you get the price in US dollars... ridiculous, right?). We also walked around the city some more, and Gabby taught me how to use the manual settings on my camera, so I took some pretty cool pictures of the canals at night, with 8 second exposures and whatnot (I set my camera on the bridge and used it as a tripod).
Later we came to this group of people gathered around some band playing music near the bus station in Venice. They were from Canada, and the music was really good. It was just a really neat experience with everyone standing around, clapping along with the music.
On Sunday we got up early and went over to Murano, the island where they make all of the glass that Venice is known for. We took a quick tour of the Murano glass museum, and then headed back to the train station and caught our train back to Rome, and then our other train back to Tarquinia. In Tarquinia we had to wait about an hour or two for Massimo, our driver to get there. We would've taken the bus normally, but buses don't run on Sundays, so we had to pay him to pick us up and take us back to Tuscania. And since he was running late, it was a little longer of a wait than we had hoped for, but va benne (it's good).
Monday we had classes again, we got to take our easels to the fountain and paint for about 5 hours, and everyone was watching us. Some people would come up and make comments on our paintings, and it was just a very cool experience, as everyone here is so incredibly nice and friendly.
In the evening, six of us got together and played ultimate frisbee in the park for about an hour, which was incredibly fun.
On Tuesday we had Italian again, which was quite frustrating, but we also had Tuscania Sketchbook, and Carlos (our professor) took us to this really cool place in town with a really great view and we just did some sketches. When we were done sketching we stopped by the San Marco's cafe/var/gelateria for some caffe and hot chocolate (which is more like a melted candy bar than water flavored with powder that we're used to in the states).
We recruited more people to play frisbee, and altogether there were about 10 of us. It was a pretty intense game, and even more incredibly fun than the night before. Afterwards we went and got some amazing pizza before going home to sleep.
I apologize for how long it's been between postings. I just have trouble forcing myself to sit down and recall all of the activities of the week and type it when there is sooo much else to do. But I will try. :-)
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Classes have started for the week, and it's a big adjustment from doing nothing on the weekends to having to go to class and try to learn Italian. I just bought a train ticket from here to Venice for this weekend, so I will have something to do this weekend.
This past weekend I went to St. Peter's, the church just outside of town. It was pretty cool, very old and everything, but more than anything it was just something to do. Later on Sunday some of us went to the school to use the wireless signal outside (because the building is closed on Saturdays and Sundays), and it started POURING! Not just pouring, either, it started thundering and hailing, so we tried to dash back to our apartment. But running when little balls of ice are hitting you in the face isn't so fun, so it was quite an adventure. By the time we got to our apartment it stopped raining. Of course.
In our painting class we did our first painting. It was a still life of two vases/jars, and it was a lot of fun. I'm really happy with the way all of ours turned out.
Today was my sketchbook class, so we went to Museo di Tuscania (Museum of Tuscania) and did some sketches of trees and architecture. That was a lot of fun as well.
I'm working on trying to get a photo of the angry Italian woman who lives across the street from our apartment. Every day she comes outside and just yells very angrily, and it is one of the most hilarious things ever. Even when she goes inside we can still hear her yelling. Our friend Rich refers to her as the crazy woman, and I agree.
Oh, and on Thursday we took a trip to Lake Bolsena and got to swim the in a volcanic lake (the largest of its kind in Europe). It was amazing, the water was so warm and clear.
That's all for now, I'm really terrible at trying to remember everything, and I am really hungry right now.
This past weekend I went to St. Peter's, the church just outside of town. It was pretty cool, very old and everything, but more than anything it was just something to do. Later on Sunday some of us went to the school to use the wireless signal outside (because the building is closed on Saturdays and Sundays), and it started POURING! Not just pouring, either, it started thundering and hailing, so we tried to dash back to our apartment. But running when little balls of ice are hitting you in the face isn't so fun, so it was quite an adventure. By the time we got to our apartment it stopped raining. Of course.
In our painting class we did our first painting. It was a still life of two vases/jars, and it was a lot of fun. I'm really happy with the way all of ours turned out.
Today was my sketchbook class, so we went to Museo di Tuscania (Museum of Tuscania) and did some sketches of trees and architecture. That was a lot of fun as well.
I'm working on trying to get a photo of the angry Italian woman who lives across the street from our apartment. Every day she comes outside and just yells very angrily, and it is one of the most hilarious things ever. Even when she goes inside we can still hear her yelling. Our friend Rich refers to her as the crazy woman, and I agree.
Oh, and on Thursday we took a trip to Lake Bolsena and got to swim the in a volcanic lake (the largest of its kind in Europe). It was amazing, the water was so warm and clear.
That's all for now, I'm really terrible at trying to remember everything, and I am really hungry right now.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Ciao! Our first week of classes is complete, and I love all of them! However, I decided to drop "Wines of Italy" to take the Mediterranean Cuisine class. Both sounded cool, but my roomate told me how wonderful the cooking class is, and I thought I would switch. But my painting class is going to be amazing, as are my Tuscania sketchbook and Digital Photography classes. And Italian is definitely a must since not very many people speak English here, so that class is going to be very helpful. Things haven't been quite as exciting since classes started, but it's still great to be here!
I have to go now, as I'm using my roomate's laptop using the wireless outside the school, and the battery is very low. But I will try to update more on Monday, when I can use the school's internet.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
The photo is of the terrace at our apartment. It's really great for having dinner parties on!
Not much has happened since the last post. Classes started yesterday, so it's kind of been a reality check, since everything has seemed like a really fun vacation up until that point. But the classes are enjoyable so far. I had Oil Painting and Wines of Italy on Monday, and today I had Beginning Italian Language and Tuscania Sketchbook. Tomorrow I will have Digital Photography. I'm really looking forward to being able to use my camera in more interesting ways.
Last night my roomate and I decided to go for a run. It was invigorating and all, although a bit frightening as we almost stepped on a snake! Yikes!
We also booked a (one way) flight to Paris at the beginning of Fall break. We're not really sure where else we're going on break, but Paris is definitely on the list now! And it was only €20. Sweetness!
Sunday, September 7, 2008
Tuscania
I'm making this mainly for my mother, but also for anyone else that is just bursting with curiousity about what I am doing from day to day in Tuscania, and Italy, or wherever I happen to be.
I'm just going to do a run-down of the days so far:
Wednesday: I flew into Rome (Fuimicino) airport, and got incredibly lost. Thank goodness for a cell phone that worked, otherwise I might still be stuck in terminal B. I met up with my roomate Ashley and waited until Marco and Massimo came to pick us up. We also met this kid, Dan, who is going to be in Tuscania for a month as part of Lorenzo de Medici's Three Cities program. We arrived in Tuscania a short van ride later, and got settled into our apartment a bit. Later we went out to eat at this wonderful restuerant with another LdM (Lorenzo de Medici, the name or our school) Tuscania student named Rich. We sat outside and everyone's food was delicious! I had pasta with wild rabbit (lepre in Italian). I love how eating dinner here is such a different experience. It's very relaxed and you can sit and talk with everyone for hours, and no one cares. It's a far cry from the US, where you order, wait for the food, eat, get the bill, pay and leave, and if you don't leave right away you get dirty looks from the server because you're kind of taking tip money away from them. After dinner, we just roamed around the city and discovered this cool little park and some other neat places in the city. It's a very safe little city, and I feel completely comfortable walking around well past dark.
Thursday: We had our orientation for a good part of the day, and got a nice walking tour of the city. It was really good because we were told of all the services and places to go, and things to do. In the evening we had our welcome dinner at the same resteurant as we went to the night before, and were served a four course meal. It was delicious ("buono"). We walked around the city some more and went to a few bars. Just for your info, though, bars are more like cafes here (although they do serve alcohol).
Friday: Friday was just a day to do some random things that needed to be done, such as getting to the school to get on the internet, getting groceries, going to the bank and exchanging money, using the ATM, etc. We also went to this adorable little bar and had gelatos. I think I forgot to mention this, but all the restuerants and bars that I'm talking about have been outside dining. It's so wonderful to just sit outside and eat and talk with friends.
Saturday: We got up and met at the clock tower at 9:30, hoping to get bus tickets for the 10am bus to Tarquinia, which would be close to the beach, and we's just have to hop another bus to the beach. But there were not tickets, and so we sat around deciding what to do for a little while. We eventually got bus tickets to a different city, called Montalto, which was also close to the beach. So we rode to Montalto, then got a smaller bus that took us directly to the beach. The beach was kind of not too awesome, because it was really windy and the sand hurt like crazy when it hit you. It was also black sand, and it got everywhere!! We ate, and then took a bus back to the city of Montalto. We had to wait 3 hours until the bus back to Tuscania would come, so we just hung out at the park. While waiting we met these little kids who wanted to take us on in soccer ("futbol", not sure about the spelling). So we did and it was soooo much fun. I had to play barefoot, and I got these huge blisters on the bottoms of my feet. Ouch. When we got back, we met at Dan's apartment and met up with his landlord or landlord's son (I'm really not sure which) and some of his (landlord dude) friends. They drove us to his friend's house, and we helped to make pizza. It was a lot of fun trying to talk and understand each other, as some of his friends spoke very broken English, but it was a good time. And the pizza was out of this world amazing! Without a doubt the best pizza I have had... ever! I ate a lot of pizza, so they insisted that I take some of the leftovers back with me to our apartment to eat for breakfast. So I did, and had a good breakfast today. :-)
Sunday: Today... finally got to sleep in, went over to our friend's apartment and ate a little more for lunch, then came over here to the school to use the internet. I certainly value internet time a lot more now that I can't just use it whenever I want to. Classes start tomorrow, which is exciting.
I'm just going to do a run-down of the days so far:
Wednesday: I flew into Rome (Fuimicino) airport, and got incredibly lost. Thank goodness for a cell phone that worked, otherwise I might still be stuck in terminal B. I met up with my roomate Ashley and waited until Marco and Massimo came to pick us up. We also met this kid, Dan, who is going to be in Tuscania for a month as part of Lorenzo de Medici's Three Cities program. We arrived in Tuscania a short van ride later, and got settled into our apartment a bit. Later we went out to eat at this wonderful restuerant with another LdM (Lorenzo de Medici, the name or our school) Tuscania student named Rich. We sat outside and everyone's food was delicious! I had pasta with wild rabbit (lepre in Italian). I love how eating dinner here is such a different experience. It's very relaxed and you can sit and talk with everyone for hours, and no one cares. It's a far cry from the US, where you order, wait for the food, eat, get the bill, pay and leave, and if you don't leave right away you get dirty looks from the server because you're kind of taking tip money away from them. After dinner, we just roamed around the city and discovered this cool little park and some other neat places in the city. It's a very safe little city, and I feel completely comfortable walking around well past dark.
Thursday: We had our orientation for a good part of the day, and got a nice walking tour of the city. It was really good because we were told of all the services and places to go, and things to do. In the evening we had our welcome dinner at the same resteurant as we went to the night before, and were served a four course meal. It was delicious ("buono"). We walked around the city some more and went to a few bars. Just for your info, though, bars are more like cafes here (although they do serve alcohol).
Friday: Friday was just a day to do some random things that needed to be done, such as getting to the school to get on the internet, getting groceries, going to the bank and exchanging money, using the ATM, etc. We also went to this adorable little bar and had gelatos. I think I forgot to mention this, but all the restuerants and bars that I'm talking about have been outside dining. It's so wonderful to just sit outside and eat and talk with friends.
Saturday: We got up and met at the clock tower at 9:30, hoping to get bus tickets for the 10am bus to Tarquinia, which would be close to the beach, and we's just have to hop another bus to the beach. But there were not tickets, and so we sat around deciding what to do for a little while. We eventually got bus tickets to a different city, called Montalto, which was also close to the beach. So we rode to Montalto, then got a smaller bus that took us directly to the beach. The beach was kind of not too awesome, because it was really windy and the sand hurt like crazy when it hit you. It was also black sand, and it got everywhere!! We ate, and then took a bus back to the city of Montalto. We had to wait 3 hours until the bus back to Tuscania would come, so we just hung out at the park. While waiting we met these little kids who wanted to take us on in soccer ("futbol", not sure about the spelling). So we did and it was soooo much fun. I had to play barefoot, and I got these huge blisters on the bottoms of my feet. Ouch. When we got back, we met at Dan's apartment and met up with his landlord or landlord's son (I'm really not sure which) and some of his (landlord dude) friends. They drove us to his friend's house, and we helped to make pizza. It was a lot of fun trying to talk and understand each other, as some of his friends spoke very broken English, but it was a good time. And the pizza was out of this world amazing! Without a doubt the best pizza I have had... ever! I ate a lot of pizza, so they insisted that I take some of the leftovers back with me to our apartment to eat for breakfast. So I did, and had a good breakfast today. :-)
Sunday: Today... finally got to sleep in, went over to our friend's apartment and ate a little more for lunch, then came over here to the school to use the internet. I certainly value internet time a lot more now that I can't just use it whenever I want to. Classes start tomorrow, which is exciting.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)