Fifth Week Updates: Books, Theatres and Picnics!

Either this week has been a pretty easy breezy week, or I’ve really gotten used to all the intense travelling that we cram into it. Perhaps a bit of both!

On Monday, the mayor (or as they call him in Italiano, sindaco) of castiglion fiorentino came to eat dinner with us. A couple friends and I got to meet him and present him with a gift! But that was pretty much the extent of it. He welcomed us to castig and then we just ate as if it were just any ol’ day.

For our Field Trip Wednesday, we went back to Florence and toured the Accademia museum. This is where the REAL David is. Of course when I refer to David, I’m referring to Michelangelo’s David. I’ve only seen the FAKE Davids and I had only assume (that since they were really good copies, as I’ve been told) the real one would be quite similar. Nope. The real David is massive compared to the fakes and just all around more visually appealing. You can really see the pensive expression/thought in David’s face and I don’t think I can exaggerate how gigantic his hands were. They. Were. Massive. And lets not forget his butt. It was nice, not gonna lie. David is supposed to represent the perfect proportions of the body and well, he definitely takes the gold for a nice sculpted body (ha! So punny).

Our professor Giovanni took us back to the Galileo museum and into their private library where we were introduced to many old important texts of various philosophers, astronomers and etc. 

A work by Cardan that is censored due to "dangerous information" that went against the teachings of the church.

It was pretty neat to be able to touch first edition original texts from Galileo that were secretly published by the Medici family after his death because owning any books by Galileo were forbidden/illegal. 

Thursday we went to Castiglion’s Teatro that is no longer in use because of the town’s financial problems, but it was a beautiful baroque style theater. We got to sit in the fancy box seats and I got to pretend I was rich and important for a couple minutes. Hey, a girl can dream!

Look how beautiful it is! Also, there is the amazing Kyla reciting Puck from A Midsummer Night's Dream while Cece, Laura and I LUXURIOUSLY watched her performance.

One of my favorite things back in the States that I indulged in are Friday morning/afternoon errands (and feelgoodfriday, but you already know all about that!) after classes. In Castig, since I don’t have classes AND there is a Friday market place, Friday morning errands are my dream come true. There is nothing like the feeling of doing all my  errands by foot and not being dependent on a car. Although I’ve never had a car of my own to begin with and so never really needed to drive anyway, I’ve really enjoyed that luxury of being able to walk to nearly anything I need. Back at Cstat, if I need to go to HEB, I would need a car or I would have to take a bus. Here, I can literally walk to an alimentari in five minutes (or to the market on Fridays).

   

I know, Dez and I are super adorable.

On Saturday, Shenell, Alice, Tessa, Ivan, Dez and I took the early morning train to Arezzo for the day to shop, visit the Antique Market and have lunch. I wish I took an earlier train (we took the 940AM, which is pretty early honestly...) just so that I had more time to check out the antique fair (it nearly stretches through most of Arezzo) before lunch and Siesta started. But I got three vintage Italian postcards for my collection which I am very excited about! One of them actually was mailed TO Italy from Pittsburgh, PA by an Italian tourist, which I thought was super neat and I can't wait to translate all the letters on the back of each postcard.

We had lunch at a cute trattoria and then we shopped around town. I mostly bought stuff at Sephora (also a pair of matching socks with my lovelies Alice and Shenell) and did my traditional "grocery" shopping at the Arezzo Eurospar (because we are too lazy to walk fifteen minutes to the Castig Co-op), which is grocery store. The boys and I went to get drinks at a cafe and striked up an interesting conversation with the bartender about America, travelling, basketball and american football. I think I may be in love with him but I may be speaking too soon. I'm always so shocked at how incredibly well the Italians speak English  It's just flawless compared to my jumbling of words and thoughts. I feel so inadequate!

 

This explains our relationship very well. You don't really know what is going on but you know it's a bunch of weird silly people doing weird silly things.

This is me trying a "flaming absinthe" shot, in which they light the liquor on fire, melt sugar over it, stir, and then I proceed to drink it. As you can see I didn't enjoy the experience very much. But my face was priceless so I thought I would share it with you all.

Sunday was probably THE best weather we have had since we've been here. The sun was shining so bright, the temperature was perfect and so we decided to have a brunch picnic in the courtyard.

It was completely relaxing - a much needed break from the stress and the cold!
I'm hoping the weather will continue to stay this amazing for our Venice trip and Spring Break!

Until next time!

"Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die."

Lent in Italy

In preparing for Lent, I've told you all about the carnevale celebrations that go on before Ash Wednesday. This Tuesday was "Fat Tuesday," "Mardi gras" or "Martedi grasso" in Italy. After dinner, the gang and I got ready for the costume party that Bar La Posta was hosting. I dressed up as a pirate, Shenell as Ke$ha, Alice as a wood nymph and Dezi as a magician. We realized that us girls could potentially have shown up as Captain Hook (me), Tiger Lily(Shenell) and Tinker Bell (Alice)!

It was a lot of fun. I'm always surprised by how amazing these Italian teens' English are and then I realize how much American pop culture(ex: music) is transfused here to begin with.. of course they know English better than I know Italian! I was happy to be able to dance to the songs I was familiar with back home, but it would have been nice to be more immersed with Italian music.

On Wednesday, we went to Orvieto for our weekly field trip (Heads up: next week is Rome, I'm excited!) and mainly focused on the Duomo di Orvieto. It has defintely been my favorite duomo so far (I've only really seen about three or four so I can't be absolute yet, but it sure does take the cake) perhaps because of it's aesthetic beauty or the fact that I really appreciated the historical value that the tour guide emphasized to us. I think about anything can be interesting if told correctly or if one focused on the things that would interest that audience most. Muara (the guide), was really great at doing so. I wish I could show you pictures of the interior, but we were not allowed to take any.

The newest chapel in the duomo was beautiful. Signorelli painted very frightening Last Judgement depictions that apparently inspired Michelangelo's Last judgement. Fun fact: Signorelli depicted his ex-girlfriend as a prostitute and also in hell strapped on a demon. FUN STUFF. So the moral is - don't upset an artist because his revenge is eternal!

I went to Ash Wednesday mass for the first time ever (I think I've gone once as a child, but I can't really recall that) and my first Italian mass. It was extremely cold because there was no central heating unit. It was hard to follow for obvious reasons (I can barely follow mass in Vietnamese let alone Italian which I don't know that well) but at the same time so similar to english/vietnamese mass that I could understand what was happening.

I decided to give up gossiping (which has shown to be very hard to define, but I know what I should say and what I shouldn't repeat, if that makes sense), talking negatively about others and kiwis (Dezi and I are always fighting for the kiwi during lunch and dinner, so I thought I would be a fun thing to give up so others could eat it).

Forward to Friday. I had woke up (late for class- whoops) to the idea that I could try and fast today instead of just giving up meat for the day. I don't plan for it to be a reoccurring thing, but it was just one of those "in-the-moment" decisions that I felt I was compelled to follow. I was surprised that I did not feel much hunger pains through out the day at all. God was very good to me. I got a lot of reading done that I have been avoiding (The Picture of Dorian Gray) and caught up on journaling. It got a lot more difficult after dinner but at midnight I treated myself to a Rocchio pizza at the pirate bar (4 cheese, sausage and other goodness) and some of Cece's delicious nutella pizza (WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT TO MAKE SUCH A CONCOCTION).



I will let you all know how Lent is going in these next several weeks.

Until next time!

 To change and to change for the better are two different things.

          - German proverb.