"Today I don't feel like doing anything...

...I just wanna lay in my bedddd" -The Lazy Song, Bruno Mars

Yes, today has been one of my favorite kinds of days - a real, true lazy day. I thought about getting up when my roommate's alarm went off at 8:30, but then I realized what an absurd idea that was and went back to sleep until 11, at which point I showered and emerged to find raspberry and mascarpone crepes with strawberry and basil topping and banana bread awaiting me! Today was our giant American-style brunch. Rachel, Greta and Sebastian handled the cooking, which meant all I had to do was sleep in and eat - I am so spoiled. As I waited for the second course - eggs and homefries with tomatoes and garlic and general yumminess, I basked out in the gorgeously bright (and hot!) sun on our balcony for a little, and I'm glad I took advantage of that opportunity because it's now completely gray and overcast and I think it may rain soon! :(

After the eggs and fries and some more banana bread (made from scratch by Rachel... she even made her own sour cream because they don't sell it in this country, like WHAT?!) I came back into my bed and spent a while catching up on this blog. At 5, I headed over to Creta Rossa (the clay laboratory) to pick up ornaments I had ordered... well, at least, that's what I thought I was doing. It turns out that those of us who had ordered ornaments thinking that Giuseppe and Michela were going to paint them FOR us and we'd BUY them, were instead going to be painting them *ourselves*. Uh oh. I tried to mimic my favorite design of theirs (a beach kinda scene with trabocchi, these apparatuses used for fishing), which went fine for my initial sketch but terribly wrong when I had to transfer it to the actual pallina (ornament). Painting them was even harder because the paint for clay is unlike anything I'd used before, plus I do not have a steady hand when it comes to making thin lines, and trabocchi require MANY thin lines. We'll see how it turns out, hopefully it will be better when it comes out of the oven!

After wrapping up work on my ornament, I left for mass at 7. I've decided to do one of my Living Language Journals on the differences I've noticed between mass here and mass at home because I've found them so fascinating, and because I'm somewhat surprised by how much I prefer mass in America. (I'm also just looking forward to hearing mass in English and knowing all the right responses and when to say them again!) 


I returned to Creta Rossa after mass and did a second ornament, this one in a dripped paint kind of design that will hopefully turn out somewhat like the awesome vases Michela and Giuseppe had made that it was modeled after. Again, we'll just have to wait and see how it turns out. Anna, Brittanie and I stayed and talked with them for a little bit - they are SO nice and such talented artists. Then the three of us took a bus down to the Marina and ate at a pizzeria Michela and Giuseppe had recommended called Ippocampo. We split a pizza for 3, half tomato and prosciutto and half broccoli and sausage (both white pizzas). I admittedly do not like anything on my pizzas but I ate it all except the sausage and it really wasn't bad at all, just different! Don't expect me to do it again though. :P


I had never been to Vasto Marina at night before, so we walked around on the boardwalk and the pier afterward. It's all set up like a giant carnival at night, with rides and games and food and tons of street vendors, and there were a tonnn of people of all ages walking around in spite of the fact that it was midnight on a Sunday. It was all really cute, and there were definitely a lot of characters to meet there; I hope I get to go back again one night before we leave.


And now I am back in bed ready to enjoy my six hours of sleep before getting up bright and early to rehearse our third and final fable, Le tre melangole d'amore, which we are putting on for the kiddies at 5:30pm.


Buona notte!
Michelina

Rain, rain, go away! :(

Rain makes me sad :(

Waking up early makes me very sad :(

So today was a kinda sad day, because we got up early AND it rained. Things are really starting to wind down here in Vasto, which is CRAZY. I don't know how time goes so fast! I should probably keep that in mind and be glad to start the day early and make the most out of the time I have left, but yet I just can't bring myself to be happy getting out of bed to go for ... a hike. Yup, that's the second hike in THREE days for this nature girl. LOL. 

Yesterday morning at our "book club" our professor asked us how we enjoyed the trip to Lettomanopello and we mentioned how we really enjoy having any type of excursion and that we'd definitely recommend doing more of them on next year's program ... apparently she took that to mean that we want to go on more hikes in the here-and-now. So today we set off for an early morning trip to Punta Derci, a scenic beach site that's up above Punta Penna. I'm pretty sure that actually each and every one of us fell asleep during the bus ride! Cinzia and her husband and son met us there and helped lead us on the hike. It wasn't strenuous but it was a bit challenging since a lot of it was on all the pebbles and rocks along the coast which are hard to walk on. I kinda ruined my shoes (the NB black ones, Mom, so sad!) because they got all this wet sand in them, yuck!


The view was just stunning when we got to the top though, and we all sat/laid down and relaxed for a good while. We dug into the yummy crostata (Italian fruit pie) that Paola had made for us while we looked out over the water from way up high - so gorgeous and relaxing. :)


Afterward we went back down to the gazebo and rehearsed Giovannino e i tre cani, the fable we'll be presenting tomorrow for the kiddies, a few times through. (I'm part of the group specifically working on this one so hopefully it goes well!) The weather wasn't looking so great so instead of sticking around at the beach we headed back to the B&B - good call, since Paola got a call from Cinzia while we were on the bus telling us that it was pouring in town; fortunately by the time we got off it had let up a bit. 

Once back in my room, I took a nap to try to ward off my headache. When I woke up it had just about stopped raining altogether, so I essentially pretended it was morning: I ate cereal and "toast" and jam and got dressed again and showered. Then I went shopping with Hannah. We checked out all the little stores and boutiques around the center of Vasto, but I didn't have any success (Hannah had some, fortunately!).

One lesson I learned today was that the way to peoples' hearts really is through their stomachs! Rachel made dinner, and it was FANTASTIC. Breaded chicken cutlets with mushrooms and spinach and a side of rosemary potatoes (SO yummy!), and I'm not sure if I've ever seen 11 more thrilled people! :)

I've just been relaxing since then, and am probably going to hit the hay soon. I'm tired, as usual, and even though we have nothing as a class until our Favolare presentation at 6, I have book club with Anna, Brittanie and our professor at 9am. We do get free cappuccinos and cornetti though, and I really enjoy talking about the book, so it's all good minus those miserable four or five minutes right after my alarm goes off! :P


Buona notte!

Lasciare fare a Dio

So it's not even 11pm here yet and I'm already in bed... yup, clearly I'm not feeling well. :( My throat is really hurting me, along with my entire neck region. And my head, every time I change positions. And I generally feel lethargic and sickly. Will probably go to a pharmacy tomorrow to see what they can give me. Hopefully I'll be well enough to go to Napoli with Luciana in a couple days!

I'm writing this post as I take a break from working on my Living Language Journals. They're one of the assignments we do for this program and we do 9 of the 12 here in Vasto, with the first 3 due this Friday. For these three we're working with the Vasto students that are doing theater with us; there are 6 of them and 12 of us so it works out evenly for discussion groups with 3 people each, but we all met today for lunch and for the most part ended up talking as a big group, which was great and really interesting. Oh, and by the way, we all came back to the meeting with our homemade panini... the Italian kids came back with McDonalds. Go figure :P

The subject of the first journal is the presence of dialects in Italy, and in Vasto in particular (YAY!). The vastesi students told us that only their grandparents really speak in dialect, and that many of theirs only went to school for two or three years and don't actually know standard Italian so they prefer to speak in dialect. Their parents don't really know it though, and use it only to speak to their own parents, and they themselves use it very rarely, and mostly just when joking around amongst themselves. When we asked them to tell us about the dialect, they described it as "vecchio" - "old" :( This makes me suuuper sad because it kinda seems like the dialect is a dying art. :( Apparently in Naples there's like a law that the dialect has to be protected. I hope a lot of other regions follow suit and really appreciate the beauty of their own dialects and take measures to protect and promote pride in them. :)

And as a closing note, the title of this post? The standard Italian for the title of yesterday's post. Yup, 'Ssa fa' dde' = 'Lasciare fare a Dio." Dialects FTW! 

Lasciare fare a Dio (leave it to God :)!),
Michelina

Ssa' fa' dde'

Today I woke up really not feeling well again - Vasto and my body are just not getting along. I have constant headaches and my throat has been killing me :( But fortunately I didn't have to be in class until 11 so I could sleep in a little. Class today was the 3rd theater workshop with Sergio; 2 hours of prep for our performance of Masaniello in a couple weeks. Since I missed the last class because I was sick and wasn't about to volunteer to be a ballerina today, I currently have no lines of my own, but hopefully that will change as the acts continue to be added! :)

After theater we came back, ate, and went to the beach for the afternoon. It was my first time going to Vasto Marina, which is less than 10 minutes away as opposed to the 25+ to get to Punta Penna. Vasto Marina is different because most of it is private beaches, so you have to rent an umbrella/chair and can't just lay out on a towel. There were 9 of us so the man gave us a little discount, and all in all it was worth $5.50 to be able to lay out on a chair and not have to deal with your entire body being covered in sand :P The water was nice and perfectly blue and clear as I've come to expect here, buuut I'm still partial to Punta Penna because I just like the nice, small, public (read: free) feel and it's just more aesthetically pleasing without all the ombrellone and beach chairs! But the Marina is soo much more convenient for when we only have 3-4 hours between classes so I'm sure I'll grow to love it!

I had a meeting with my professor at 6, so I wanted to catch the 4:40 bus back so I'd have enough time to shower and review what we were going to talk about beforehand. I got to the bus stop at 4:24 but the bus never came :( So I hopped on another line that seemed to be headed in the right direction at like 5:15ish, and the driver gave me a really hard time about my little bus card that the program gave us so we can take the public transportation for free. It clearly says on the card that it's valid from 7 luglio (July) to 6 agosto (August), but he was adamant about the fact that these cards are ONLY issued in monthly allowances, so if it says August on it, it can ONLY be used in August. (I pointed out that it also said July on it, but he wasn't very pleased with that idea!) In the end since I was already on the bus and really wanted to get back to the hotel, I coughed up the 1 euro for the ticket. Still. I object! :P

My meeting went really well; we got to talk about the book I read a little, as well as some translations I'd been working on and some basic theories of translation and dialects based on the books she gave us yesterday, so that was cool. My roommate Rachel and I are both super interested in the regional dialects of Italy so we went to this theater production IN the Abruzzese dialect tonight! Our professor was there too, with her husband, who is from Abruzzo, so he probably understood more than I did... okay, a LOT more, since I understood pretty much nothing. (To give you an idea, the title of the play was Ssa' fa' dde' (the title of this post) ... yeah. Not so easy.) It was so fascinating to see the audience's reactions and interactions to/with the dialect though - there were mostly elderly people in attendance (which made me and Rachel scared that it was a sign that dialects are 'dying' - SAD!), and many of them shouted out lines before the actors or sang along or shouted out commentary. I heard a man in front of me ask the couple sitting next to me, "But the dialects of Vasto and Vasto Marina are different, no?" and they responded that they are. Isn't that crazy - Vasto is a tiny town and they speak their own LANGUAGE! Can you imagine if like, Rhode Island spoke a totally different language than Massachusetts? So crazy!

Anyway, at 11:00 it seemed like it was all coming to a close; the main character was carried out, having just won a large sum of money, the curtains were drawn, and people in the bleachers began to talk and move about a bit. But no one in the seated section where we were was moving so we waited... and waited... and waited. Then came the announcement: "if during this change of scenery, you'd like to ...) Yup, it wasn't over. (This is probably partially due to the fact that it takes Italians 23947 minutes to stop greeting/kissing/talking to each other as they arrive, so the play had to start later than scheduled, but I won't dare mention that.) We sneaked out anyway though, because it was getting late and we were really tired plus we didn't exactly know what the heck was going on in the play to begin with!

We did decide to do our own type of dialect project though. Using the books from our professor plus the internet and our observations, we're each going to study two dialects a little bit over the next two weeks and teach each other the patterns we've learned; then we'll both look at Sicilian together because it's (I think?) the most interesting to both of us - Sicily is a fascinating region because, being in the center of the Mediterranean, SO many societies/countries/languages/cultures have passed through it and influenced the dialect's development. French, Spanish, North African, Arabic, Greek, Italian, etc. etc. etc. ALL have impacted the Sicilian dialect. SO COOL!


Now I'm off to sleep because I have a headache and it's raining and we're taking our professors to our fruttivendolo in the morning (yes, OUR fruttivendolo, hehe!) and because I'm just plain TIRED, which is reason enough sometimes!


Baci,
Michelina

Andiamo al mare! Let's go to the beach!

No time to rest today, as we had to be out and about exploring Vasto at the ripe hour of 8am. Our first activity was to wander around in pairs to different food vendors and write down our observations. Shopping is done differently in Italy - rather than going to one big supermarket and buying it all in one place, you go to several small specialty shops. For instance, the fruttivendolo sells fruits and veggies, the panificio sells bread, the salumeria sells deli meats, and so forth, and on weekends there's always a big mercato all'aperto (open market). So our assignment was to go around in pairs (I was with Anna) and listen to what went on around us, noting the ways in which transactions were made and the like. Basically this required standing awkwardly and looking very foreign in the doorways of shops and frantically scribbling notes as we listened in on other peoples' conversations. And this activity was meant to HELP us with the immersion process and feeling like we belong here. Riiiiight...

We checked out a lot of the booths at the open market too. Italians do most of their shopping there, be it for clothes, shoes, trinkets, vegetables or whatnot. It's like having a big flea market that's open every single weekend, and sometimes during the week as well. We divied up the weekly funds and did the necessary shopping for pranzo. I also bought a beach towel for 5 euro, which came in handy because after lunch we went to... the beach!

Vasto Marina is the closest beach, about 7 minutes by bus, but it's private so you have to rent an umbrella and beach chairs, and on a recommendation from our TF Paola,  Hannah, Luciana and I decided to go to Punta Penna instead. In addition to being an incredibly beautiful beach, it is also a nature reserve, so it's free. The trip took about a half hour by bus and it was SWELTERING hot (as I've come to expect from Vasto) but well worth it! When we were about to scendere dall'autobus - get off the bus - a woman and her son stopped us and asked where we were going. When we told them, they recommended that we stay on with them until the next stop and they'd show us a better way to get there, and we agreed and had a nice conversation with them. Turns out if we had gotten off at the original stop we would have had to descend down a mountain to get to the beach - thank goodness for the kindness of Italians! The woman and her son walked and talked with us until we arrived at the beach, and I was awestruck by everything about it.

The water of the Adriatic (my first time ever in a body of water other than the Atlantic Ocean!) was crystal clear and WARM; every once in a while you'd hit a little wave of cool water, but it was always a refreshing cool, and it was warm enough to walk right in without a second's hesitation-inducing shiver (now THAT'S never happened at Jones Beach! :P), and you could walk and walk without it even hitting your waist (and I'm referencing my waist in particular, which is only something like 4 inches off the ground, so you can really tell how shallow the water is!). It was calm and there weren't many waves, which is just the way I like it because I get knocked over easily in the ocean. The water was such a gorgeous shade of blue, and you could look way out into the distance and see it continuing and darkening in color until it reached the horizon line, where it blended seamlessly into the blue of the sky, as smooth and hazy as the brushstrokes in a watercolor painting. Even the sand was perfect, and as you lay out on it and look up you see not just the beautiful cerulean sky and the puffiest, fluffiest, clearest clouds but also this grass-covered mountain rising up along the side of the water, with a nature trail leading steeply up its side (the very one we would have had to walk down had we not had the good fortune to meet the woman and her son on the bus!). On the side opposite the mountain you see the boardwalk, which is surrounded by cement blocks (literally, square blocks) and on which you can see three or four trabocchi - essentially little fishing huts off of which extend the rods so that you can fish from an altitude; they've come to be a familiar symbol of Vasto and are found on a lot of postcards and local artigian craftwork.

Day's Recap:
Weird looks received from Italians who realized Anna and I were listening to their conversations and recording their every word: ~37
Time spent on bus: 1 hour, round trip
Number of Italian men seen wearing speedos who should really NOT be seen wearing speedos: ~49
Number of times my friends had to hear me exclaim "OMG this is just SO beautiful!": upwards of 50 :)

Abbronzata e allegra (tanned (at least a little!) and happy),
Michelina

Benvenuti a Vasto!

So we set off this morning on the five(ish) hour bus ride from Perugia, and the first thing I saw when I took my first step onto the land of Vasto was... palm trees. Palm trees, just chillin' in the center of the piazza. (Apparently this isn't as crazy to everyone else, but it still baffles me. We don't have palm trees in New York.) Other than that first glance though, I was much too exhausted (and feeling a little bus sick) to do anything other than go inside and plop my suitcases down on the floor and my body down on the bed.

The bed and breakfast we're staying at is super nice. The main gate is directly across from Piazza Rossetti, the center of town, and it leads into a courtyard which leads to another locked door which leads to a staircase which leads to our rooms, which take up all of floors 1 and 2. I'm living on the first floor with Rachel; we have a double with our own bathroom, and the communal kitchen for the 12 of us is on our floor. Hannah and Luciana have the room directly next door to us, and we managed to move around all the furniture and figure out how to unlock the door that adjoins our rooms, so now it's kinda like I'm in a big suite with my 3 best friends here :) Yay!

I rested for a bit and then Hannah and I went for a little walk around Vasto. It was afternoon at the time so everything was closed up for pranzo, but we walked to where Vasto overlooks the beach and it was SO GORGEOUS that it prompted my last post declaring Vasto as heaven. I can't wait to go to the beach (I've never been to one that wasn't connected to the Atlantic Ocean!) now, although at present the weather is not exactly perfect for the beach. At 95+ degrees and at least 257% humidity right now (by my own estimations), it's more of a day to stay inside and relax under our air conditioning vent (we have AC here!!!!!!). :P

We also met Cinzia, the coordinator for this branch of the program, today upon our arrival, and in the evening she led us on a practical walking tour of Vasto, throwing in some fun historical facts. She has taught at Harvard in the past and her husband, now a professor at the University of Birmingham in England, got a PhD there as well. They live in England for much of the year now but Cinzia is native to Vasto and everyone here knows her and her family well, so seeing the reactions of those she encountered on the street really reinforced my view of the classic "small-town" feel of the city.

After the tour it was time for dinner at a restaurant that the landlord of the B&B, Nicola, has some kind of connection to. It's called Lo Scudo and is right down the block from the B&B... andddd its menu is predominantly (read: entirely) seafood. My favorite... :-/ It turns out a lot of others on this trip aren't huge seafood fans either, and many asked to have anything but all the fish dishes that kept being carried out from the kitchen. I, however, ate (read: tried) almost ALL the fish that was served to me. I had smoked salmon and fried calamari and shrimp (though not the one that still had its eyeballs intact...) and so forth, and it wasn't all bad! Still not my forte though, but I think I'll have to learn because they don't really eat meat here in the summer, and it's a coastal fishing town to begin with. We'll see how that goes!


Getting up early for another tour of Vasto, this one with Paola, so I'm off to sleep. Visions of the *octopus* on my plate earlier - fully intact with some limbs and creepy, non-blinking eyes - (couldn't bring myself to eat that one... I'm a work in progress at the whole fish thing) will probably be dancing in my head tonight! :P

PS- Hannah and I had our first Vasto gelato today, and were NOT impressed. We'll have to do some exploring and find our gelateria of choice soon.

I'm in Vasto!

...Read: I'm in heaven!!!!!!
:) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) 

Summer's here and the time is right, for dancin' in the street :)

WOW! I am so floating on cloud numero nove right now. I just spent a couple hours literally *DANCING IN THE STREETS* of Perugia with a bunch of strangers and that is not the kind of thing I usually do, but it was SO much fun!!!


Backtracking... so tomorrow (well, today, since it's after 2am my time) starts Umbria Jazz 2011, which is this huge and awesome jazz festival that takes place every year in Perugia. They've been setting up the main stage for it next to the fountain all this past week, which has been an epic tease because we're leaving *the very day it starts* and won't get to partake in any of the fun. Apparently this is because the hotel prices skyrocket once the festival starts and we couldn't afford to stick around (boo Harvard). The atmosphere started to change around here in the past couple days because more and more people and musicians were arriving to get ready for Umbria Jazz, and tonight was the eve of it so things kicked off with a bang.


As soon as we got onto Corso Vannucci, there was a fairly big crowd of people watching this one group of jazz musicians playing in the street. We stopped by for a little but there was really loud noise and lots of lights coming from the center by the fountain/steps, so we headed over to check it out. Everything was all done being set up and there was this crazy huge light show, with all these colored lights and designs being projected onto the wall of the Palazzo dei Priori (the wall behind the fountain in the picture below, so you can finally get an idea of what it looks like in the center of the Piazza IV Novembre here!)

I keep typing and backspacing my descriptions of the light show and there really aren't words to describe it besides "really really mesmerizingly cool!" so I'm just gonna go with that for now and put up some pictures soon!


Anyway, the (really loud) music got kinda scary after a while, so we headed back to see what was going on down the street, and the crowd around the jazz band we'd seen earlier had grown and some people had just started dancing around them. I was with Hannah, Luciana and Rachel and Luciana, ever making friends, started dancing too and introducing herself to everyone. The energy of the place was just ELECTRIC and the musicians were SO good and so before long me, Rachel, and Hannah all joined in too, clapping and dancing along in the center of this giant group of people we'd never seen before and would never see again to the music of this random Belgian jazz group we'd never heard before and will probably never hear again, in the early hours of the morning in this beautiful city filled with people and musicians from all over the world. As I finally gave in to the random people who'd been persistently trying to pull me into their dancing train and began circling the group of onlookers with them and pulling in others to join, I was filled with such utter happiness and excitement and smiley-loving-life-ness and really reminded that the whole dancing-in-the-street-with-total-abandon-on-the-last-night-of-being-in-a-foreign-city thing is absolutely NOT something to be overlooked or shied away from as overly-ambitious-Harvard-kids like myself sometimes tend to do because it's FUN and AMAZING and PERFECT and most importantly it's *LIFE*


And I am absolutely in loveee with life, especially on FUN and AMAZING and PERFECT nights like tonight. 

AND I AM ABSOLUTELY IN LOVE WITH PERUGIA WHY ARE WE LEAVING TODAYYYY?!?!?

Il Cenacolo - The Last Supper :(

So here we are, the last night in Perugia :( I am definitely excited for Vasto, but SO sad to be leaving. We didn't have our morning class today but I still got up fairly early so as to make the most of the final day here. After breakfast, Hannah and I went shopping at the local boutiques, and by shopping I really mean walking in and out of stores unable to make any kind of decision. I ended up getting a watch from Coccinelle as my goodbye present to myself from Perugia :) Yay!

Then I went over to the Institute just to spend some final time there. It was practically empty so Rachel, Hannah and I spread out all our stuff and took over a whole room in the library and split our time between half-trying to read the Italo Calvino excerpts we were assigned for our final class and just whining about how much we adore Perugia and never want to leave.

Our last lecture was with the professor who did the presentation on dialects a few days ago. He's really cool but also suuuper intense, very into being in touch with your senses and emotions and finding your passion in life. The Calvino reading he assigned was about these Italians on vacation in Mexico and had all this crazy (and somewhat disturbing... think ancient Mayan human sacrifices) food symbolism, so it was an interesting but challenging read. The professor really just used it as a jumping off point for a conversation about the importance of consciously using each one of your senses in everything you do because doing so is crucial to truly experiencing your experiences as well as enhancing the memories you retain from them. He ended it with a note about how very very very important it is to find something you truly love to do and embrace it, which always makes me happy to hear because I like to think that's what I'm doing here in Italia. :)

For our farewell dinner, we went to Al Mangiar Bene, the same restaurant I took Anna to for her birthday. The food was good but not quiteee as good as last time because we didn't get to choose anything we ate. There were still like six wonderful courses though, so I'm certainly not complaining! After dinner we went for our final Perugian gelato (biscottino for me, as has become the usual) and ate them on the steps by the fountain surrounded by everyone out and about for the evening passeggiata. By the way, 'the steps' I keep referring to have their own Facebook page. And over *12,000* Facebook users have "liked" them, including me. (You can check out some pictures at this link if you'd like!)


We're probably going to go out now and walk around for a while tonight, just to take in Perugia for the final time before shipping off on a 9:30am bus to Vasto tomorrow! 

La Perugina Adottata (the adopted Perugian),
Michelina

Umbra Loveeee!

Sooo it's currently my lunch break before our last lecture with Zach/Luke/Blake, but I figured I had to write now and get out all this pent up excitement I have gushing around in my head right now :) 

So my roommate Rachel and I just went to talk with Elgin about potential for term-time or J-term study in Perugia with the Umbra Institute because we're both kind of obsessed with Perugia and never want to leave. We talked for a long time about all the options, including direct enrollment with the University of Perugia - you can stay in Umbra apartment style housing but take classes directly at the University with matriculated Italian students, ahhhhhhh!!!

We also got to talk to Elgin about her doctoral dissertation (it's her *third* degree from Harvard, like WHAT?!) which is on this Sicilian mystery author whose books Rachel just happened to buy the other day at Feltrinelli that I plan to start reading too! Apparently he's really famous and has written a tonnn of gialli (mystery novels) which have also been made into a TV series andddd the books are set near Sciacca!!!! :) :) :)

I want her to be my thesis adviserrrr!! And I want to come back and go to school here, and I've *never* thought about doing term-time study abroad before but I love it here sososo much! Eeek life choices!!! (I know my parents are probably freaking out right now... financial aid transfers, if that's any consolation. And let's face it, this probably won't end up happening because I'd miss being on campus too much. But still, I'm just gonna let myself bask in my current state of language nerd happy happy joy joy -ness for now!)


Gelato of the day was... biscotto. Again. We have a winner, folks!


BACI E UMBRA ABBRACCI,
Michelina :)

...Buona Festa?

So, it turns out today is a holiday. Well, not a holiday so much as a Holy Day, but regardless my liturgical calendar has been offset since my arrival so I had no idea that today is the Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ. Thus, I arose at a still way-too-early hour to go to the 11:30 mass. I headed out at 11:15 and was surprised to find a) a giant image covering the pavement next to the fountain and in front of the church, a dove and flowers made out of herbs and petals (look at the pictures when they go up, there's no way I can actually explain it in words!); and b) the church itself, which had been practically empty last Sunday, completely packed. Standing room only, with extra folding chairs scattered about - and this was with 15 minutes to spare?!


A quick commentary about mass in Italy: a big part of it is really the social aspect. You go to mass not just for the religious experience here, but to see everyone in your town. It's a very communal, interactive event.


So as testament to this fact, all the people around me were walking around greeting each other but I didn't know anyone so I was just kinda standing there trying to figure out what was going on. It didn't help that I couldn't see anything going on at the altar because a) I was in the back of the church, and b) I'm short. But fortunately I could hear, and the first thing I heard was the priest telling the congregation to share with each other the sign of peace. I shook the hands of those around me, but I was alarmed - HOW had I managed to *miss* the mass that I had come to 15 minutes early?!

Another commentary about mass in Italy: it's kinda really unorganized. When people go up for communion, it's literally a free-for-all. There's no system, no order to the procession, you just throw yourself into the line and do your thing. 

So as a testament to this fact, all the people around me were walking around the back of the church, talking, basically just hanging around and not paying attention to anything going on at the altar, as if it wasn't a religious service. I was becoming more confused by the minute but then people started streaming down the center aisle so I figured it was time for communion and even though I hadn't been there for the whole mass I figured I should still receive the Eucharist, so I headed over to join the "line," if you can call it that. The problem is that I get really nervous about angering people by cutting them off in the "line" even though there really *is* no organized line. Sigh. But it turned out that wouldn't be an issue today because they weren't actually going up for communion, they were just joining the procession that, as I somewhat understood the priest explain, was going to go from that church to another church, where the service would conclude. So I ran over to one of the chapels with candles and statues and prayed quickly, then ran to join in the procession, grabbing the paper with all the responsorial songs on it as I went. 


By the time I made it out, the procession was already a little bit away; there were hundreds of people following this tent-like thing covered in a gorgeous cloth, under which the clergy walked carrying the Eucharist. Several altar servers or brothers or some sort of religious people were positioned intermittently along the edge of the crowd holding speakers for everyone to hear the readings. I got sidetracked by a group of little children playing in the herb/petal dove scene, throwing the petals up in the air and rolling around in it and it was all so cute and meraviglioso that I decided to sprint the 50 feet back to the hotel to grab my camera before catching up to the procession.


After that and a few photos I rejoined the procession and just continued becoming more and more amazed by how incredible the whole thing was. Literally HUNDREDS, possibly even over a thousand, of people all walking through the streets of Perugia together, singing praises to God and listening to scripture readings. (WHY DOESN'T THIS HAPPEN IN AMERICA?!) I had no idea what church we were going to, but we passed alllll the way down Corso Vannucci (the main street off which is my hotel), past Piazza Italia, and started our way down the winding, sloping road that leads toward the park that I read at with Rachel and Hannah. People came out of their homes and shopowners out of their shops to watch the festivities, and when we passed through Piazza Italia there was a row of police/military-like uniformed people standing out front with the flags of Italy and the region. I felt like the quintessential awestruck tourist who just kept gaping at everything going on and snapped a million photos, but at least I knew some of the songs (the Latin ones though, not the Italian, strange as that sounds. They sang Ubi Caritas, Dad! Was there a sale at CVS?! Hehe.) so hopefully I fit in at least a little bit.

The procession was just gorgeous. The cloth covering the Body and Blood was beautiful - cream colored with red/pink flowers. There were also several groups of nuns and brothers marching, and it's rare to see them in America these days so that was a happy surprise. 


Finally, the procession arrived at its destination, the church of San Domenico, the exterior of which was also sprinkled with flower petals. We all entered and took seats, and the priests gave a final blessing - as well as a very sincere thank you to all of Perugia for coming out in such force to show a love for Jesus and for the Catholic faith. It was a really touching little speech of appreciation, and afterward I stuck around to check out all the chapels and pray in them for a little bit (partially, I will admit, to confess my guilt at missing the actual mass!). I lit candles for my loved ones, so everyone who is reading this can consider him/herself blessed and prayed for! :)

I'm still on this super happy cloud 9 just because that was such a cool experience and I love being in a country where, in some way or another, religion is always present. It's really special for me, especially because I feel like in America it is considered more of something that we should keep private and personal and not be too open about. I love being able to walk down a random street and look up to see a statue of the Madonna and Christ child draped in fresh rose petals, or go into a shop and see a crucifix displayed in a place of prominence on the wall, or join in a beautiful procession of hundreds and hundreds of people singing glory to God. It's a wonderful thing, and something I feel truly blessed to have been able to experience today and throughout my time in Italy. I definitely feel my faith being strengthened through the constant reminders of God I come across in daily life here - the positive aspects of this trip never seem to cease! Grazie a Dio :)


Con pace e amore, (with peace and love),
Michelina

I AM NEVER LEAVING PERUGIA.

That is all.

La dolce far niente - The sweetness of doing nothing

Finally a day to sleep in! Well, until 9:45, at which point Rachel and I rushed down to the breakfast terrace in our pajamas to smuggle food into our room before breakfast closed at 10. After a lovely breakfast in bed (fortunately I got the nutella off the bedspread with my handy Tide to Go, love that thing) we took a walk over to the "mercato coperto" where we bought yummy fruits and veggies to sustain us for the week. 

After the market, we took a stroll over to the (somewhat) nearby park that Antonella had showed us on our tour of the city, books in tow. We were all tired from yesterday's trip and it was yet another GORGEOUS day out, so reading (I loveloveloveeee that I can read books in other languages! It's actually like the coolest thing EVER!) outside under trees in this little park was an absolutely perfect way to spend the afternoon. 

A Lot of Men in Medieval Garb

Guess who was up at 5:45am?! Nope, not me. But Rachel and Hannah actually got up on time. I did get up at 6(ish) though, and we were out the door by 6:30(ish) to head over to the bus station for our 7:30 Sulga bus to Florence. It cost 17 euro for a round-trip ticket, coming back at 6pm, and it was just about a 2 hour trip both ways. I slept basically the whole way there, so I was finally wide awake when we arrived. So much to see in so little time!


The first thing we did was walk over to the Duomo, and as soon as we approached it there were massive crowds and church music floating out from St. John's Baptistery. We didn't know what was going on, so we casually continued our touristy things, oohing and aahing over the stunning beauty of the Duomo and the cathedral and how detailed and amazing the architecture is (but like seriously, HOW IS THIS COUNTRY SO GORGEOUS?), and then when we started to head in the direction of the Galleria Accademia, our path was blocked by a very regal procession from the Baptistery into the cathedral. Everyone was cheering and photographing but all we could see from our distance in the crowd (and my lack of height) were these giant colored feathers poking out from the people's hats. Then an important figure of some sort must have walked by, because everyone really cheered and he waved to the crowds as if they were all there for him. We made a mental note to Google it later and proceeded on our way.


La Galleria d'Accademia is the museum that houses the famous statue of David by Michelangelo, so of course there was a massive line. We had read in Rachel's guidebook to Tuscany (there are endless perks to having an ever-informed roommate) that the line usually takes about an hour, and we felt like it was something you kinda have to see while you're in Florence, so we decided to wait it out even though we were literally a full block down away from the entrance when we got on line.

An hour and a gelato each later (mint chocolate chip; classics never go out of style) when we had yet to move more than ten feet forward, and we were starting to rethink that decision. So we went through that whole debating phase (do we leave now, so we can have time to go see other things? vs. do we stick it out because we're already an hour invested and we do want to see it? etc. etc.) that everyone who knows me knows I am really not good at, and eventually the group decision (it was Rachel and Hannah's decision, really, because everyone who knows me knows I cannot make decisions) was to stand strong (okay, we sat on the curb eventually) and wait. After a grand total of about 2 hours and 15 minutes, we got into the museum and got our tickets at long last. We didn't exactly know how to navigate the museum, but we followed the throngs of people and, naturally, ended up at David.


W.o.w. It was truly amazing. I was awed by the incredible detail, not to mention the size - David is *17* feet tall. To put that in perspective, over *3* of me. :O But Michelangelo was seriously, brilliantly talented. You can see every vein in David's hands (which are disproportionately large, we all agreed) and his face has so much emotion. He appears "plussed," as I so eloquently referred to it - I meant it as in the opposite of "nonplussed" because he's so alert and almost a bit alarmed; as if he was not basking in the glory of his victory but ready for any impending battle. His brow is furrowed and he's staring pointedly into the distance, as if waiting for Goliath, intimidated but ready. But while his face is so intense, his body is in a relaxed pose; the slingshot is flung almost casually over his shoulder, one arm just hangs at his side while the other holds onto the rock, his legs are positioned naturally. It's an interesting contrast. And even the cracks in the marble seem to perfectly align with the positioning of human veins.


AND it was completed in 1504. And is still not only standing, but awe-inspiring, and so anatomically accurate. I can't even wrap my head around that.


We sat and analyzed David for a while (seriously, his hands are disproportionate). Hannah had done a project on him in high school, and both she and Rachel are considering some type of concentration/secondary field in History of Art and Architecture, so they're awesome people to go to a museum with. Hannah had learned that David's hands were designed to appear proportionately sound when the viewer looks up at the statue, so by default they'd look really big from far away... but we tried that, and they were still definitely really big from that angle too. But despite my 1 academic year and approximately 3 weeks in Mepham Drawing & Painting classes, I'm not quite qualified to judge Michelangelo ;)


After seeing David, we walked around the museum for a while. Most of the exhibits were Byzantine, middle-ages Virgin and Child diptychs and the like, which isn't my favorite time period of art, but it was still interesting. Some paintings were annotated to teach specific religious symbols in the painting, which was cool, and there was an entire exhibit devoted to Lorenzo's Bartolini's sculptures of the human form. Literally you walk into the exhibition and there are tens upon tens of heads on display.


After the long wait and the long museum trip, we were tired and starving. Following the advice of the Umbra staff though, we wanted to cross the Ponte Vecchio to eat on the other side of the Arno. Ponte Vecchio was so, so pretty. All I can think all day, every day that I've been here is how impossibly beautiful EVERYTHING is. I can't even take it all in, and it's even sadder knowing that my camera will never be able to capture the spectacular views as they actually appear in front of me, so I'll never be able to show everyone at home :(


[Speaking of sharing photos with people at home, I'm working on getting the slideshow at the top of the blog to work properly... right now for some reason it's set on a show of sample photos which appear to be ranging from convertibles to beach sunsets to a scantily clad Eva Mendes... my apologies!]


After posing for pictures with the Ponte Vecchio, we headed across and began the search for something, anything, to fill our hungry tummies. Of course though, we had totally forgotten that between 1 and 4pm basically everything closes. So there were very, very few trattorias or snack bars open to find food. Fortunately, we stumbled across a cute outdoor restaurant, 4 Leoni, and before long were dining on mixed salad, Italian bread and pasta. Dad asked me earlier what the most surprising thing about being here has been so far and I didn't have an answer; now that I think about it, it's definitely the quality of the bread. I have yet to have a piece of bread that I have enjoyed in Italy (pizza excluded, of course), which is so weird because I love "Italian" bread in America. Hmm.


Anyway, after our meal, we headed back towards the Duomo, but were stopped a little before getting there by a giant mob of people gathered along the street. Curious, we pushed our way through (one of the perks of being short) toward the front and were greeted with the sight of... a lot of men in medieval garb. Including hats with the giant colored feathers like we'd seen this morning leaving the baptistery! Of course, we still had no clue what was going on, but it was just awesome so we joined in with the cheering crowd and took a ton of photos (which will eventually make it onto this blog, I promise!). The men came in swarms of different colors, all bright and complete with matching tights and clogs and large flags bearing the emblems of the city and wealthy historic Florentine families. The parade would stop every so often for flag throwing, drum beats, or when a horse or mule or other animal (draped in similar attire to the man walking it) made its way slowly through the line. The marchers were intensely organized and stared straight ahead - keep in mind they were also wearing full out medieval gear in 90 degree heat. It was so much fun just to be there to watch, even though we weren't exactly sure WHAT we were watching. I love that stuff like this happens here pretty much all the time - you just don't see this in America.


When the parade ended we headed back towards the bus station just to be safe. On the way, we stopped for cannoli (my first cannolo in Italy!) and then walked around the Congressional gardens for a bit. Soon we were headed back to Perugia. (I tried and failed yet again to find a comfortable bus-sleeping position. So sad.)


So when we got back to the room, I googled June 24th in Florence and it just so happens that it was the feast day of San Giovanni - St. John the Baptist - who just so happens to be the patron saint of Florence. There's a big medieval parade through the city and then it concludes when it reaches one of the piazzas where the men play a game of soccer - IN their medieval attire! And of all days to be in Florence, we randomly chose this one - che fortuna! And apparently there's also a fireworks show at night over the Arno. Now of course, I am still of the belief that it was really all just as a celebration of my dad's birthday - HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD!!! :)


Day's Recap:
Hours spent in transit: ~3 total
Hours spent waiting in line to see David: ~2.5
Hours actually spent in the museum: 2?
Numbers of times I said "WOW" throughout the day: approximately 238497 (keep in mind that's a conservative measure)
Flavors of gelato tasted: Biscottini and menta. (Figuring out my favorites and becoming less adventurous with my choices, sorry!)

Tests and tours

Last night and this morning were suuuuper nerve-wracking for me because we had our first big exam today. When push comes to shove, I KNOW that I know Italian grammar (or at least the parts of it that were on the exam) but I still get sososo nervous! Fortunately I think everything went well (and I thinkkkk I got the maximum 8 bonus points! I'm a huge fan of extra credit.), and after that it was the weekend and I'm going to Florence tomorrow and it was just such a nice weight to have lifted.

To treat ourselves after the stress of studying, my roommate Rachel and I took a trip down the block to Feltrinelli. I kind of love bookstores. They make me absurdly happy. And I kind of lovelovelove the language sections of bookstores, except in the US they're usually pretty small and basically limited to Spanish. So I absolutely ADORE Feltrinelli. So many books I want to read in Italian! Oh, I also love and adore children's books in other languages, so the kid's room is my favorite. There was an entire shelf devoted to Gianni Rodari, who I've loved and adored since my freshman year in high school when I recited one of his poems at the Stony Brook competition. He writes the absolute CUTEST books/stories/poems for kids, and most of the books are illustrated and it's just the cutest thing ever. Plus they had little flip books of Disney stories in Italian - they had 101 Dalmatians in Italian and I am soooo tempted to go back and buy it... this will probably happen before the end of my stay here because it's literally a 3 minute walk to the bookstore and it cost 3 euro.

Rachel and I were overwhelmed with joy, so we decided it was safest for our wallets to return at a later date when we weren't in the post-exam-stress BUYBUYBUY mindset. But as we're leaving we hit the language-learning section of the store... ¡Ay dios mio! I've actually never met anyone (my age) who fully understands how excited languages and all kinds of language learning materials and everything in foreign languages excites me... buuuut now I have! Rachel and I were actually freaking out in the aisle - we awwed over the cute little pocket dictionaries (they even have Italian-Albanian... soo tempting!), cooed over the little synonym reference books, drooled over the giant Zanichelli dictionaries that are sadly too big for us to take back into the US :'( and just generally were filled with joy at the love of languages and it was the greatest thing everrrr to have someone to share in that happiness with!!! Leaving was actually painful, but I ended up sneaking back later and buying a French grammar intensive book... IN ITALIAN. I'm going to re(kinda)-learn French IN ITALIAN. HOW COOL IS THAT? And how amazingly helpful will that be, to be able to compare the two languages side by side and make connections?!?! I'm SO EXCITED. 

Yeah, so that was my day of intense stress and then intense roomie bonding. I'm still in such a smiley state just thinking about it... I know, no one really gets it, but I love this stuff. Just that feeling of happy passion joy-ness totally solidified (ignoring the fact that it already was solidified) my commitment to my major. While we were standing in front of the shelves all fluttery I said to Rachel, who can't really commit to a major for more than a couple days (Sto scherzando ;) Rachele!), "YOU HAVE TO DO RLL!" and she was like, "I knowwwww aaaah!" soo maybe I'll have a friend in my concentration now (by that I mean actually KNOW someone else with my concentration now... haha).

As hard as it was, we had to buckle down for our afternoon class with Antonella. After a brief class, she took us on a walking tour of the historical sites of Perugia. We walked a loooong way, down a bazillion steps and by the train station and then all the way over to this pretty park by a monument to June 20th... there are a few days (like the 4th of November and the 20th of June) that are CRUCIAL to Italians; there's at least one street or piazza named after them in every city. As we walked we stopped at these monuments and examined the differences in wording on them and how the diction is reflective of the people's opinions of that leader or event. It was really intriguing, and Perugia has such an interesting history for a smallish town. It's the perfect size to live in and explore and really get to know without being overwhelmed. It's too easy to fall in love with this country. Really, though. I'm falling head over heels here :) P.S. that's another crazy thing, like ALL the women here wear crazy high heels EVERY DAY. And the streets are all super uneven cobblestones! I'll stick to my flip flops, especially because I'll still be a foot shorter than the average person even with heels :P

Day's Recap:

Books purchased: 1 (so far)

Books want to purchase: Decline to comment for fear of parental lecture

Steps walked up/down: 932847923 (approximation)

Cutest thing I saw in Perugia today: when we went to class in the morning, there was an enormous groups of little elementary-school aged kids (from a camp, from what I could figure out) all gathered in front of the big church and they were dancing/singing along as some of their counselors (or maybe hired people like the Wiggles or something who dance/sing with kids for a living? Not sure, had to rush to cram more before the exam..) stood up on the steps of the church to lead them in the motions. The songs were super cute, about like getting ready in the morning and playtime and stuff, and all the kids knew the hand movements and were SO into it. Adorableee! (Kinda like pocket dictionaries... okay, I'll stop now.)

L'amore e libri (love and books),

Michelina

When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, thaaaaat's AMORE :)

Yup, you read right. Pizza for dinner, yet again. But I actually don't mind at all, because every night there's something a littleee bit different that makes that pizza special and yummy and I love it. I wish my parents were here to try all this pizza because there definitely HAS to be something here that can convince them to stop opting for frozen pizza over fresh. (I'm distraught over this, guys. Where is the Italian blood in you?!)

But anyway, before we get to that we'll start from the top of the day. Paola had promised to help us set up the wifi a bunch of us had purchased yesterday, but of course my kit was the only one that the man at the store had forgotten to put the money cards in. I went back to the store on my lunch break and luckily he believed me without any questions and gave me the cards so I finally was able to call and activate everything, buuut it'll probably be an extra 24 hours on top of the original 36ish until I can get my internet to work :(  

We had our first lecture with Zach this afternoon (For some reason I keep thinking his name is Luke, so don't get confused if I write that accidentally). Like I said in the earlier post, he's a Food Studies professor, so we talked about the origins of Italian cuisine today. We focused on Pelligrino Artusi, who compiled a huge book of recipes from all the different regions of Italy, though primarily from Emilia-Romagna and Toscana. Along with the recipes, which he received from people all across the country, were little stories that gave each one a personalized touch, storielle in Italian. The book was written primarily for the middle class, and in Italiano "standard" (as opposed to regional dialects), which were both unique approaches for that time, and it served a purpose of unifying the nation, both in its cuisine and its language. 

That evening we continued our lessons in food history, focusing on pizza. Zach/Luke took us to a pizzeria that is in a converted monastery; he knows the family that owns it and the pizziaolo gave us a demo on how to make pizza, though I am no expert, so don't expect anything. While we were waiting for the pizzas to cook, Zach/Luke told us the story behind pizza, which I LOVE. It's probably a myth, but it's still really cute. So once upon a time there was a princess, Princess Margherita, and a pizziaolo named Rafaele Esposito went to the palace and made her three pizzas. The first she didn't like because it had garlic, which was considered a food of the poor (until Artusi clarified that in his book). The second she didn't like because it had anchovies on it, and she didn't like fish. But the third was juuuust right: simply tomatoes, cheese, and basil. Which, by the way, are the colors red, white, and green... so in this way, pizza IS the food of Italy. It represents it, it unifies it, it characterizes it in the minds of many foreigners. (And it's flat out delicious!) 

There were a bazillion different kinds of pizza on the menu but I just ordered the Margherita. To be honest, I don't WANT all these crazy things on my pizza... salad, sausage, mushrooms, buffalo wings, fish, etc. I like my pizza plain and simple and classic. It's good every time, it's red, white and green, and it's juuuuust right. So it was yet another delicious pizza dinner for me, and another great close to the day. (Well, kinda. We didn't get home until around 11, and I actually have HOURS of homework ahead. Oh, well. Nothing us Harvard kids aren't used to by now!).


Day's Recap:
Pizzas eaten so far this week: 3?
Museums visited: 1 (Galleria Nazionale d'Umbria - the advanced group had a homework assignment to pick out a work of art that we believed was somehow representative of a character or other aspect of the novel we're reading. Only about 12 rooms were open at the gallery, and it was mostly Byzantine/medieval Madonna and child paintings, but it was still really neat, and is right in between the hotel and the institute!)
Hours of homework left tonight: >4
Hours of sleep anticipated tonight: <4


Anneganda in compito e piena di pizza (drowning in homework and stuffed with pizza),
Michelina

Ed elli a me: 'La mia scrittura è piana..."

Disclaimer: don't get too excited for this post, because nothing THAT interesting happened today (minus several language-lover moments).

We had our usual 10-1 class, and then at 2 we had our first lecture with a professor we're going to be working with about every other day for the next 3 weeks of classes. Her name is Antonella and she is an expert on basically all aspects of Italian literature / history / opera / contemporary society / culture in general. And of course, like everyone at the Umbra Institute, she's awesome. Today's lesson was tough - Dante, Petrarch and Machiavelli. For the readings, we had English translations in addition to the Italian, but those were pretty difficult to understand too... the quote in the title is from Canto VI of Dante's Purgatorio of The Divine Comedy, and its translation is, "And he said to me: 'My writing is plain..." Yeah, not so much, buddy :P


But as difficult as the readings were to read and discuss, the lecture was FASCINATING. I've always been nervous (excited, too, but really, REALLY nervous) about the full semester + of classes I'm going to have to take in the upcoming years that focus solely on Dante, but Antonella really raised my interest. I love when teachers are so intensely passionate about their subject matter - it really makes all the difference! I also really want to read more Petrarch. We read an excerpt from Canzoniere for class and Antonella was contrasting his views of Italy from Dante's - you can tell from his writing that Petrarch was absolutely crazy about Italia. He treats the country with such affection, choosing the most lovely words to describe it, and he's so full of hope for its future. Whereas Dante can often tend toward a more pessimistic outlook, Petrarch has a beautifully positive message in Canzoniere. As Antonella described this all to us, fireworks and exclamation points and smiley faces were jumping up and down in my mind because it was like, YAY! THAT IS EXACTLY HOW *I* FEEL ABOUT ITALY! I literally wrote in the middle of my formal notes *READ MORE PETRARCH* :)


I spent most of the afternoon at the Institute taking advantage of the free wifi. I bought my own internet "chiavetta" (portable wifi key thing) today but it will take at least 36 hours before all the activation sets in. Then I headed over with Rachel and Hannah to a pizzeria a little far away but worth the walk because the pizza was free, courtesy of the Institute. There were about 239847 people there though, so it took actually like almost 2 hours for us to get our food. We were STARVING by then, but fortunately, the pizza was super yummy and worth the wait (as food tends to be here). I actually ate all but one slice of my personal pizza. :O Plus since we were one of the last tables there, I pilfered a half-full bottle of Coke back to the hotel (yay for big bags), which surely beats paying for the can that's sitting in our mini fridge tempting me every day.


ALSO, the Umbra Institute has t-shirts/sweatshirts! Might have to treat myself before we leave for Vasto... :)

Day's Recap:
Hours spent waiting for dinner: ~2
Minutes spent consuming dinner: ~2 ;)
Pieces of pretty ceramics bought for mommy's kitchen: 2
Euros discounted from my ceramics purchases: 4! (the old man selling it said I was pretty :) hehe love Italy)

Ditching before Dining

Rise and shine for the first day of classes! From 10-1 we were at the Institute for our Italian language grammar-based class with Paola. The "advanced" group of me, Anna, and Brittanie were pulled out to work with Professor DiFabio for the last half hourish of class; we got the novel we're going to read (Tra due mari by Carmine Abate, an Italo-Albanian author I read in class this past semester) and talked about logistics for the class. We're going to be doing more museum visits and making up activities for the other group, and we do translations from the novel and from our textbook. Hopefully it'll be good but not TOO intense because in all honesty, I want a little bit of relaxation this summer! :P


During our break in between the language class and the culture lecture, I went and got gelato (keep reading to find out the flavors!). I probably should've gotten something caffeinated though, since I had a really hard time staying awake during the lecture. Fortunately, it's the only lecture we have with that particular professor, but it actually was somewhat interesting when I wasn't zoned out. It focused on ancient Roman eating habits and the the culture of food. Turns out the ancient Romans used to eat meals reclining on their sides. Now that's livin' the good life. Can we do that at home, Mom? ;)


At night I took Anna out for her belated birthday dinner. We couldn't decide where to eat, so we were walking around checking out menus. We went down an alley to this one cute place and looked at the menu, then we saw a sign further down for another restaurant so we figured we'd go check that out and compare the two before deciding. The prices at the second restaurant were MUCH cheaper (like, sketchily cheap), but we sat down anyway. Kinda reluctantly. We weren't sure if we were going to stay but the waiter came over and just stood there, and even when we told him we needed a moment to look at the menu he would NOT leave. So finally Anna ordered water (they charge for water here... what is up with that?) and he went inside and we frantically debated whether the suspicious $6 advertised steak dish + the sketchy waitstaff + the fact that there was literally NO one else in sight coming to dine there or dining there or leaving after dining there OR anywhere in the whole alley at all were just cause to leave before the water got there... and we did. We literally ran through the alley and past all the customers at the other restaurant and all the way back into the square. Then we finally found a restaurant called Al Mangiar Bene that was situated allllll the way down a long flight of stairs and decided to go there, a) because the menu looked good, and b) because we figured the waiter wouldn't be able to find us there. Sigh.


So then we got to the bottom of the long staircase and of course, we were the ONLY ones in the restaurant, yet again. But the food ended up being DELICIOUS - Anna got eggplant parm and I got ravioli in a tomato and basil sauce (plain and classic and always yummy) for first course and then we split a rosemary meat dish with really really good potatoes and green beans. And there was actually some half decent bread! Oh yeah, and we also split cake... Yum yum yum. The only difficulty was in paying, largely because the waiter and I had some communication issues. We were speaking Italian but mostly gesturing with the money and not really getting anywhere, and then he started trying to speak English (darn it, I HATE when people realize I'm American!) except I didn't realize that's what he was trying to do because his English was really bad. When I finally picked up on it, I told him he could speak Italian and he was like "Ah, va bene!" and proceeded to say something along the lines of "Sdlfjklsjflrrrrrr skldfjiosej alsfjlsfjlsl ewiuoouwlks!" To which I responded with a clever, "...Si. Ciao." Lol.


Day's Recap:
Classes taken: 2
Number of times zoned out (and maybe dozed briefly) in class: 1... possibly 2... apologies in advance to all my teacher relatives, I promise it won't happen again! 0:)
Restaurants ditched: 1
Restaurants dined: 1
Gelato flavors tasted: Fragola (strawberry) and cioccolato ... think chocolate covered strawberries :P

Sconfinamento - Trespassing!

We were up early yet again this morning (whyyyy won't they let us sleep in even once?!) because one of the Umbra professors, Zach, took us on what he declares to be an internationally renowned walking tour of the "Nooks and Crannies" of Perugia. Zach is seriously awesome though... he was sitting across from me and Rachel at the faculty dinner so we learned his life story - he's from upstate New York, went to Kenyon College in Ohio (they have an amazing writing program!) and studied Italian at Middlebury and has been living in Italy for the past 12 years, working at the Umbra Institute for most of them. He teaches in the Food Studies Program - as he told us in class, he's not actually that interested in food, but in how food and the act of eating is the meeting point for fields like history, political science, and sociology. He's just really cool and so the tour was worth getting up early for. Plus, while we were waiting we got to see the Fiat 500 Club drive past... well, kind of. It's basically a parade of old men with classic Cinquecentos that they adorn with flags and drive by on Sunday mornings, except they were apparently lost so a few minutes in, just as they were passing us, someone told them they were going the wrong way and the poor old men just stopped there. Their 500s were still idling when we headed out on the tour :(

We saw all the sights and learned a lot about the history of Perugia, ie why there's no salt in the bread here (it's gross). and it ended with Zach taking us illegally onto private property and whispering a little about the history before telling us that while the tour was fun, class will be serious, and we have 50ish pages of reading to do by Wednesday. Yikes.

Before the tour, I went to 8:30am mass with Luciana. It was my first mass here, and it was an interesting experience. I was surprised by how few people were there - maybe 20, tops, and also the lack of... regal feeling? For instance, there was no procession of the priest, altar servers, cantor, etc., through the center aisle; the priest just kinda popped up from a door in the side and started the service. There was also no real uniformity as to when the congregation sat/stood/knelt, so I basically just did whatever Luciana did. I also paid close attention to the responses so that I'll be able to partake more in the mass in the upcoming weeks, as they're not a direct translation from what we say at church at home. One linguistic aspect I really liked though was the fact that God (il Signore) is addressed using the "tu" form; this is informal, as if to show that we have a personal rapport with God, that he is a close friend and someone we are on a tu-form-basis with. (It's kinda a big deal here to use the tu form with an "authority" figure / someone of high regard / someone older than you in general - you almost always use the "Lei" form which is formal, until they specifically tell you that you can use the tu form.) Language nerd moment :)


Day's Recap:
Hours spent walking: ~3
Pieces of cool information learned: 237+
Pages of homework done: 2
Pages of homework left to do: approximately 3294 :(
Flavors of gelato tasted: Biscotto (think cookie dough with pieces of cookie in it... SO good) and cioccolato bianco (white chocolate)


Datemi del tu,
Michelina

PS - Happy Father's Day, Daddy! Miss and love you - and ate a gelato for you! (that you technically paid for...hmm)

Buon giorno, Perugia! -aka- "We'll move"

The title of this post is a little misleading, since we actually spent the day in Assisi. The Umbra Institute arranged a last-minute day trip and tour for us, so we set out by train around 9:30 and were in Assisi by 11. As a quick aside, Italian public transportation is by far my favorite. I took a subway a couple days ago in Rome and it was super nice and clean and airy (also, the poles were set up differently so it's like a center pole with 3 curved poles attached to it so like 5 different people can actually reasonable hold onto one pole - brilliant), and then today we took the Mini Metro (picture one car of a train, but smaller and taller and on this elevated track that goes throughout the city... if you've seen the Incredibles, it actually looks somewhat like their train thing!) to the train station and then took the train to Assisi, where we met our guide, Marco.

Oh, Marco. He was... interesting, to say the least. He apparently wasn't used to giving Americans tours in Italian and not English, so he enunciated eeevvvvvveerrryyythinggg he said (making it less clear, counter intuitively) and constantly asked us, "Ci siamo? Capite?" and other questions along the lines of "Are you with me; do you understand?" But he did it in a really condescending manner (though he wasn't trying to be condescending at all!), and we all felt dumber because of it. He would also target his gaze directly at once of us for a few minutes at a time, and constantly shouted out his conjunctions and make rapid hand gestures to accompany them. Very dramatic. While in one of the churches he focused on me and said, I kid you not, "Lui era un veg-et-ar-iiiiiii-aaahh-no. Capite? He was a vegetarian. He didn't eat meat. You with me?" Sigh. We also kept joking among ourselves about his repetition that "Assssiiiiiiiiiiiissii è uuuuna ciiiiiitttààà diiiii paaaaaaaaacccccceeeee" - Assisi is a city of peace, as he told us time and time and time again.

Peaceful it was, though. It was truly a lovely little town, actually one of my favorite places I've been so far. And of course, it was SO pretty. Also, there were cats everywhere. It's a city of cats. And animals in general (I had my first Pomeranian citing in Italy!) to go along with the whole St. Francis thing. [Oh and by the way, it turns out his body and St. Clare of Assisi's were relocated from the outskirts of town to the city, so St. Clare's waxed corpse is on display in the basement of Santa Chiara church... there is actually like at least one dead saintly body encased in every church I've been to here. Not gonna lie, I find it kinda creepy.] There are a TON of churches in Assisi, but we only got to see / go into four - the Basilica of Santa Chiara, the Basilica of San Francesco, the Cathedral of San Rufino, and Chiesa Nuova (which is at the birthplace of St. Francis). All were of course GORGEOUS and Luciana and I took some time to pray in each one, so it was a really spiritual day for me. I especially liked Santa Chiara's Basilica because they have the replica San Damiano crucifix that he prayed before, and which he was praying before when he received the message from God that he was to rebuild the church, and Marco talked to us about its significance (he WAS very knowledgeable and passionate - I'll give him that).

The San Damiano crucifix depicts Jesus on the cross suffering, but serene. There are bright colors, emphasizing His glory and strength in the face of torture. He is at peace, His face reflective, inviting Christians to follow His example. There are also several other saintly examples to follow in the figures that are standing next to Jesus – the Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalene, and St. John the Baptist, among others. No one knows the particular artist who made the original crucifix, but it is thought to have been a Syrian (!), and it is now cherished by the brothers of the Franciscan order as a symbol of their lifelong commitment to God and the Church. And there is a whole lot of brilliant symbolism that’s really cool and inspiring that you can ask me about if you’d like. Or Google it, that works too :)

The prayer that St. Francis prayed before this crucifix was framed in several languages around the cross, so I kneeled and said it in Italian, Spanish and English (and also took prayer cards in each of those languages) because I really find it a beautiful prayer, one with values that people of any faith can appreciate. I also bought myself a 1 euro necklace of the San Damiano crucifix so I can keep those thoughts with me throughout the day :)

Here's the prayer, for those who may be interested:
Most high, glorious God,
cast your light into the darkness
of my heart.
Give me, Lord, right faith,
firm hope,
perfect charity
and profound humility,
with wisdom and perception,
so that I may carry out
what is truly Your holy will.
Amen.

During our lunch break (aka break from Marco), Rachel and I first got gelato (yay!) then took a walk around (okay, first she had to follow me as I went in and out of souvenir shops indecisively...) the town. We went through this little broken wooden gate at one point and the view was simply STUNNING. I was just in awe of how beautiful it all was, and as we walked back down to the center of the piazza I texted my mom saying, "Why do we live in the US when a country this beautiful exists???" to which she responded, "We'll move."

I think that's a grand idea. :)

Day's Recap:

Number of times Marco said "Capite?": approximately 526

Cats seen: approximately 124

Flavors of gelato tasted: Limone (lemon - first fruit flavor, that was for you Mom!) 

Pace,
Michelina