Things I'm going to have to get used to when I come back to America...

So while climbing the 414 steps up the duomo of Florence, Liz Michelle and I made a list of things we're going to have to get used to in America. This is that list and then some more that we've come up with since.

1. Lunch will no longer take 3 hours.

2. Breakfast will be more than just a tiny shot of coffee

3. "Bowser" will no longer mean recess but a evil dinosaur

4. "wait... is there something in my teeth? No one has said "Ciao Bella" yet and its already 10am"

5. men walking around in neon colored tights will no longer be normal

6. When I look out my window in California I'm going to feel slightly empty inside when I don't see my six creepy neighbors that watch us out their window and say "Ciao" to us every time we go into our room.

7. what's your contrada? you don't have a contrada?

8. Flat streets.

9. Getting breakfast or hanging out with a famous art historian will become a bit more far fetched

10. Old Italian men won't be trying to get me to become part of their contrada via marrying a boy from their contrada...

11. Sidewalks

12. Drivers that actually obey traffic signals

13. Jay walking will become illegal again, not the only way to cross the street.

14. Wine will no longer be served before 10am (Waiters will no longer judge me for not ordering wine with Brunch, Lunch, and Dinner)

15. It's going to feel SO quiet. If there is ever a moment here when people aren't yelling and cars aren't honking and roaring through the streets it feels quiet already, I can't even imagine how quiet Danville or Davis is going to feel.

16. People won't be staring at me all the time because I'll no longer be an outsider

17. Ti Piace Calcio?

18. On Wednesday's I won't have to wake up at a specific time so the cleaners can clean my room

19. Cleaners will no longer clean my room for me every Wednesday

20. I'm going to get alone time for the first time in three months when I get back.

21. "Hey, did you want to go to Capri this weekend or Paris? O wait..."

22. Davis doesn't have parades walking around every three hours... I haven't decided if this is a good or bad thing yet

23. English!

Florence again!

Last Saturday a few of us went back to Florence to see things that we we're unable to see on our school field trip.

First thing on our list of activities? Climbing the Duomo of Florence! Inside the dome in the picture is a massive, brilliant, fresco of Hell (with a few blips of heaven at the top. As my teacher says, "Hell is more interesting to paint". What we did was climb the tiny, old, marble staircase all the way up to the first level which is right under the circle window in the picture. Then you climb the curved staircase to the tippy top to walk around outside (beautiful). Then you climb back down the scary curved, tiny, deathly staircase and they let you walk around the frescos again but this time we were above the circle window (there is a thick band running around the building, that is where we were). So you really get to get up close and personal with all the poor souls being tortured in hell.

Despite the gruesome scenes the Fresco's are beautiful and getting so close to one is an amazing experience. Unlike a Monet, the pictures are still extremely clear and detailed close up so you get the full experience of emotion.

Eventually I adored the fresco's but when you first step out of the staircase onto the ledge in the dome you look down and see how high you are. I was fine with the height, until I looked across and realized that I was standing on a concrete walkway that was attached to the actual church walls only on one side and had no other support. That was about the time I got nervous, and lets just say looking up at a bunch of people falling into a vat of fire didn't help at first...

The hole in the wall is not part of the painting but is actually used to let the painting breathe because when the weather changes it contracts and expands if it can't breathe, causing the painting to crack. There are other smaller holes that indicate where the builder, and eventually the painter, put in wood to stand on (to build or paint). Well turns out that last summer the restoration crew put the wood into the wrong holes, and while they attempted to do touch ups more cracks appeared, then HUGE cracks appeared all the way through the wall because the building couldn't breathe.

The cracks made were so big and thick that when you climb up the curve of the dome, on the OTHER side of these paintings, you can see huge cracks through the concrete.

Chances of surviving that experience seemed pretty thin.
The stained glass window reflected onto the protection plastic wall.

That's the bell tower across the way.
Next we went to L'accademia! I LOVED IT (but I love all museums so...). I couldn't take any pictures (snuck this one of our pal David) but the art there was AMAZING. Just like at the Uffizi, but there are way more statues at the academia.
After that we went to Chiesa Di Santa Croce, a Franciscan church that Galileo, Machiavelli, Michelangelo, Leonardo Bruni, and Dante are burried in.

Dante's tomb.


Michelangelo's Tomb



Galileo's tomb.


Josh and I walked around to find Michelangelo's old house.

These next pictures are from a night walk I took and used a longer exposure on my camera. Just for fun.

Religious tour around the city

So this morning my art history teacher had an optional field trip around Siena to look at all the churches and relics. The first place we went to was the Dominican basilica. Saint Catherine of Siena had her first vision at this basilica and the church currently houses some of her relics.

This is a close up of a painting of the birth of the virgin. Isn't this the cutest baby Virgin Mary ever? You just want to reach out and hold her!
OK so this is where the tour got a little... strange. This is the whip that Saint Catherine used on herself everyday to make up for her sins and the sins of others. Saint Catherine is also the woman who jumped out of the Duomo window onto the marble stairs to keep herself from having an impure thought.

She had visions of Christ many times and is said to have placed the Papacy back in Rome and help unify Europe after the Great Schism of the Catholic Church. I'll let you decide if it was a miracle or if it was because she refused to eat anything but the Eucharist wafer and wine.
This is her thumb. She died in Rome so Rome wanted her body as a relic but Siena said "No way, she lived here we should get her". So what did they do? Compromise! Rome gets her body. Siena gets some fingers, her head, her right arm and her left leg. And Venice for some reason got her left foot.
This is her head.
And here is the altar for her head. The pictures are less gruesome from now on. I have pictures of fully preserved Blessed Ones if your interested.

This painting is in the Goose contrada. It's the Virgin and Christ petting a Goose =)

St. Christopher and St. George.
St. Catherine of Alexandria, who I am going to write my paper on.



St. Francesco telling his father he is giving up becoming King to be a monk.

Home =)

Pictures from Cooking class

Cutting up the pasta
Tiffany and I making the pasta!
mmmmmm

Roma!

On Friday morning the guys and I got on the early bus to Roma. Michelle and Natasha had decided to go thursday night so we just met up with them there.

We got there at ten and our hostel turned out to be right next to the train station...which was weird because online it said it was by the pantheon. o well. So we go up to the door and keep ringing the bell but no one answers... awesome. Finally we sneak into the building when someone left and got the number off the front door. No one answered so we went to get lunch.

The landlord finally called us back and we met up with him but then he took us to a different address, apparently the office and hostel are in two different places? Anyways we get to our hostel and it's on the top floor of a tall building, so we have to use the elevator. Sounds fine, except the elevator is a tiny glass box on a pull system and only God knows how old it is. Only three people could go in at a time and it shook a lot. Needless to say I took the stairs or held my eyes shut for the rest of the weekend.

After getting everything situated with the rooms we went out to find the colosseum! While we were walking around we ran into a Church called Santa Maria Maggiore. Inside was beautiful and it turns out that Bernini is burried there so we got to see his tomb.

Afterwards we went to the colosseum. It's amazing, honestly the biggest thing I've learned this trip is that everything looks so much better in person. We got to take a tour around the colosseum and learned that they used to use an elevator system to bring the animals from their cages to the upper stage (to surprise the gladiators) and that the shows were free to keep the masses happy.

Then we went to the ruins and saw where Romulus and Remus were raised by the lupa and where the vestal virgins maintained the fire and their virginity and where the horse races took place and mussolini's house (he had it made on top of the ruins...how dictator like of him).

The next day us ladies split up from the guys. The first stop of the day was the spanish steps. Designed by the Italians, paid for by the French, named for the Spanish, occupied by the British and now has a McDonals on it. There is a fountain at the bottom of them and it was ridiculously hot so Natasha and I went ahead and put our feet in the water (other people were doing it too). Turns out that it's illegal to do that and the police started handing out tickets to anyone that was caught "wet footed". Don't worry though mom, we dashed out of there reeeeaaallllyyyy fast to avoid a ticket.

Our next big stop was the trevi fountain, which is relatively close to the spanish steps but has a famous shopping street in between it. Being with all girls, we stopped at every... single... store.... oi. It's weird because besides the high end designers (we pretend we can afford it and waltz in and try things on) all the stores were british or American.

Finally we got to the Trevi Fountain! We turned the corner and all of us went WOAH. It's just absolutely stunning. I took so many pictures of it (only uploaded a few of them here) but still couldn't capture the beauty of it entirely. We threw a penny in each (illegal but we had too, we're at the Trevi Fountain...). One penny means a swift return to Rome (remember this part it's important later) and two pennies means that you'll fall in love with someone in Rome (everyone has boyfriends back home except me and I wasn't in the mood to fall in love with someone then leave the next day so we didn't do that).

Afterwards we went to the Pantheon. Caesar actually wasn't killed here but stabbed at the meeting place in Pompey. The Pantheon was used as a meeting place but the hole at the top also serves as a sun dial and marks certain days during the year. Raphael is also buried there so we got to see his tomb which was REALLY cool because it's Raphael and because his tomb is a marker in Dan Brown's Angels and Demons (my favorite book).

After dinner we went back to the hostel to meet back up with the guys. We were supposed to go to the Vatican on Saturday but Miguel wanted to try to get into mass on Sunday so we changed our plans. Sadly when we got back to the hostel the guys told us that they found out the Vatican was closed on Sundays.

So remember how I threw the penny in the fountain and it means "a swift return to Rome"? Yeah. I'm going back this weekend to see the Vatican.

Be careful what you wish for.