Some rice with your lasagna?

Last night we threw together a piccola festa at the house before Ashley, Hannah, and I leave. What a feast! Korean eggplant and spicy/curry pork, sushi rice from Aiane's stash of stuff from home, my spinach lasagna, and fruit salad. Nothing really went together, but no one seemed to mind. A kind of cross-cultural celebration. Aiane gave us a paper crane lesson and we finally got Aurora to sing for us. (Opera in Korean and Italian, just sitting at the kitchen table. She's really good despite her claims).

Aiane and her napkin crane

Group shot: Me, Elona, Aurora, Ashely, Aiane, Hannah

Feast!

Origami lessons

And a family of cranes.

It's hard to believe that I leave Perugia in exactly one week. It's scary, but I am ready it. I finished my Italian course this morning and the rest of my exams are next week. I have one weekend to tie up all the loose ends, see friends, eat at those last few restaurants, and do all my laundry. It's gone by so quickly, but at the same time, the timing is just right.

In the mean time, I met my friend and old roommate Kate in Rome this weekend. It was exactly what I needed, a good friend from home, a weekend of travel, and lots of ancient Roman stuff. I am so glad that she thought to go to Pompeii, it was one of the most amazing things I have ever seen. I found a similar sense that I experiences last summer in the ruins of Chaco Canyon. But at the same time, it's completely different. I couldn't help but sense the tragedy of the place, such a sudden end, and the expression of the figures that were preserved, really very powerful. We walked for a good four hours and probably only saw half of what there was. Between that and the fact that my camera batteries died after the first hour, I am very glad that I am going back in a month with Kerry and Alex.

The thing is, it's an entire city, and I didn't really register what that meant before we got there. We walked through villas, shops, baths, theaters, temples, streets. The floor mosaics as well as tons of wall paintings were all amazingly preserved. We know from Pliny that the ancients did amazing and extensive wall paintings, but until the discovery and excavation of Pompeii, we didn't have extant examples. Imagine what it would have been like to be the one to unearth those frescoes...

PS: This is my last week with free, regular internet, as well as the last week I will have my laptop. I will do what I can to update about my nomadic summer, we'll see how it goes!

I know that it is way too early for this, but....

We had a conversation the other day about what we wanted waiting for us at the airport when we get back. I know that I am only halfway through my trip, it started me thinking. I guess that I think with my stomach because when I started thinking about what I will appreciate having when I get back, more than half are food-related.

For example, I haven't eaten peanut butter in three and a half months. It's here, just expensive and so I don't buy it. I also haven't eaten turkey since I got here, a little bit of chicken, but all the sandwich-like meats are pork (salame or prosciutto).

Here's what I have so far in terms of "things" (this list bars people and more intangible stuff)

peanut butter
tortillas
teflon frying pans that are flat and don't stick!
sharp knives
toaster (I don't miss the microwave, actually)
bagels
being able to call people when I want to
a bed that is wider than three feet
soy! (tofu, edamame, soymilk...)
enchiladas
cheddar cheese
reliable hot water
pureh (spelling?) tea
really good hugs on a regular basis
a down comforter
my bicycle (I am missing riding this week)
sushi
a yoga mat (I do yoga straight on my tile floor. It's cold and my feet tend to slide.)
maple syrup (Is 7 euro for a small bottle! We eat pancakes/french toast with jam or honey)
salsa

At this point though, I don't crave peanut butter, I don't miss turkey sandwiches. With the exception of hugs, they are things that I can do without. In terms of creature comforts and scarce items though, I will be excited to have them back again. But you learn, how to deal. My eggs alway stick, but I make toast in a pan and I move on. It works.

It goes the other way around too, what I will miss from here when I go home.

.70 euro caffe
gelato
my balcony
speaking Italian
buying sausage from the market
the sausage itself
cheap wine that is excellent
great public transportation
pecorino that I can afford
Rita who sells me fruit
Wheel of Fortune in Italian

Well, I am running out of steam on that one, best to wait and see how that goes.

Yesterday Elona moved in from Albania. We spent a long time talking this morning over breakfast, also a mix of English and Italian. She is an Italian teacher, here getting some courses in grammar. She hasn't spoken English a lot and loves the practice. So now days there is always someone home, it feels completely different from the past three months and I love it!

I am enjoying a relaxing weekend in Perugia, preparing a few presentations and enjoying the stability of having a home. Soon enough I will be on the road and these days of continuity will be a thing of the past. I basically have two more weeks of class then half a week of finals. After that I am hitting the road, going to Bologna, Venice, and the Dolomites (11 day tour of the northeast!) until I meet Mom and Dad in Milan. After some travel with them and Kerry and Alex, I am leaving Italy! My friend Cassiope and I booked flights to Barcelona for two weeks. Spain wasn't originally part of my plans, but now that we have decided to go, I am psyched. Aside from that, I want to get down to Sicily for a few weeks, then probably head back to the farm for the rest of the summer. I have a feeling that by the end of June I will be ready to stay in one place for a while. That's the rough plan anyway, after Spain, always subject to change. It's funny how when you look at summer from early March it seems an eternal amount of time that is terribly far away. Now that it is approaching and I am mapping things out, well, it is long, but not that long. There is never enough time to do everything, but it will be enough.

Until then, classes and a quick trip to Rome/Naples/Pompeii with Kate (CU friend studying in Ireland) next weekend!

I got a hold of a couple of pictures Melanie took on our adventures from last weekend. There's me and Bella Luna, then on top of the Rocca in Orvieto.

Primavera!

It's spring, finally, in Umbria. It's amazing what the simple factor of the sun can do. I spend two hours yesterday afternoon reading/sleeping out on my balcony, soaking up the warmth. The lack of school work this week has been reminding me to live slow...to take advantage of the sunshine and relax! I can hear the accordion player even now, wafting through the library windows. I am trying not to be too antsy; I reminded myself yesterday that soon enough I will be wishing for the peace of a city I know and an apartment to call home.

Speaking of apartments, Chen Li, my Chinese roommate moved out and we have two new members. Hannah from Korea (who also sings!) and Aliane from Japan. It feels much more lively and crowded, mostly I think because they are spending time at home and so we see a lot of each other. They are very friendly and our fridge is about explode (it's tiny!). Rumor has it that there might be a sixth moving in, but we are not sure yet. Should be interesting.

Orvieto was wonderful, the mosaics on the facade of the duomo were beautiful. Not often you see that much color on the outside of a building. We had some local white wine with lunch (I tried wild boar...tastes like meat, mostly) and wandered the underground caves.

Sunday was definitely one of my favorite days in Italy. We rode horses to a ruined castle/watchtower in the nearby hills. The woman who took us packed a hearty homemade picnic lunch and we sat amongst the ruins while the horses grazed on their favorite herbs. I made friends with Bella Luna, who didn't particularly like going uphill, and again, soaked up some spring rays. It was, as my friend Allan observed, all very romantic and idyllic.

We have to embrace those idyllic moments though, and make space for them in our lives. It's part of living slowly, and of appreciating the small things. There was a girl in the computer lab yesterday ranting about how Umbra requires us to do things that we need the internet for, yet it doesn't work half the time...and they should give it to us in our apartments...etc etc etc. Yes, I love the internet, and I use it a lot. I realize being here though, how dependent we are on it and I wish this were not so. It's part of the demand for constant stimulation, and perhaps we should wean ourselves away. Which is why I am going to finish here soon and go OUTSIDE to listen to my accordion player, and get some more wonderful vitamin D!

PS: My apologies to those of you who had trouble commenting. I forgot that I put the whole blog in Italian, I will try to change it!

M

It's all smooth sailing from here

Finally! All my papers are done and turned in. I am finished with field trips and most of all of my lecture classes. The rest of the semester includes two weeks of paper presentations, one week of special events, and one of finals. My sense of time is relatively distorted still so I can't really say whether I feel like time has flown or dragged. I have noticed this week that I have been feeling complacent about being here. A sign that it is getting to be time to finish this phase of my trip and start the next. I don't have enough time here to let myself feel complacent for too long. I am taking advantage of the general lack of homework the next few weekends to do some traveling. Tomorrow we are going for a day trip to Orvieto (famous for white wine) and Sunday will be a morning horseback ride through Umbria! I have been looking forward to this in particular all semester.

Last weekend was my class trip to Milan where I decided that 24 hours was enough time for me there. I won't go on about all the art that I saw, since I seem to be doing a lot of that here. The highlights were The Last Supper by da Vinci, the original preparatory cartoon for Raphael's School of Athens (see the Rome post), and a special exhibition of prints and drawings by Albrecht Durer. The last was completely unrelated to class. I studied him last semester and so made a point of slipping away from class for a few to take a look.

The weather has been pretty indecisive lately, snowing one day and bright and sunny the next. I am awaiting true spring expectantly. Of course, in the midst of the Easter weekend cold snap our heat went out. I was elected to make the call to Signor Goretti and was actually quite proud of my ability to explain the problem over the phone. Speaking another language face to face is infinitely easier than over the phone when you can't use hand signals. He and his wife are so nice and they came over right away. We were very happy to have hot showers again.

Ironically, it was hot in Milan while it was snowing in Perugia:

Spring Flowers! Cloister of the Church of Santa Maria della Grazie (while waiting our turn to see the Last Supper)

Duomo in Milan. The French helped, obviously. There is no building anything like it anywhere else in Italy.

Brunelleschi's interior of Santa Maria delle Grazie. It's cool because the nave of the church is the old Gothic building (tall, dark, pointed arches), but the apse, transept, and dome are Brunelleschi's open, lighted, Renaissance space.

PS: I would love to know how many people are reading this (and who!). If you feel like it, please leave me a comment, satisfy my curiosity!

Grazie mille,

M

Firenze, Finalmente

Si, finalmente sono andata a Firenze. Yes, I finally went to Florence. I had been saving it all semester knowing that I would go this past weekend and the next on field trips (thought I would save the money on the ticket). I won't go into to too many details, but it is enough to say that Florence is nothing like Perugia. There are people everywhere and it feels not like an Italian city, but an international city. It's an overstimulating place and I wouldn't want to live there, but it was a great visit. We did a whirlwind tour of important Renaissance pieces (all the way from Cimabue to Parmiggianino, yes, finally saw the alien baby painting in life. It's my least favorite in the history of art.) Spent a night with Cassiope and had a great time wandering the Boboli gardens (best ten euro I have spent this trip, the gardens are amazing!) But, since Florence is all about the visual, I will let the pictures tell the rest.

My favorite statue in the Boboli Gardens

Interior of Sta. Croce

Brunelleschi's Pazzi Chapel at Sta. Croce

Brunelleschi's facade of Sta. Maria Novella

Cassiope's favorite statues in all of Florence

Campanile of the fabulous Florence Duomo

View of the Arno

Tina and Metra, my lovely neighbors

Ghirlandaio's Last Supper at Ognisanti

Spring Break!

I spent this past week (spring break) as a volunteer on a family farm in the shadow of the Abruzzi Mountains south of Rome. It's a sort of experiment in alternative, sustainable tourism. They have several rooms they rent like a hotel as well as volunteers who exchange work for room and board. The idea is to promote visitors to the area and share with them the life on the farm as well as the surrounding natural areas. Sadly, it rained most of the week and I didn't get to do the hikes that I wanted to. But I did get my share of farm life including the hearty cooking and shoveling of lots of nasty things.

I really didn't mind that though. It was a welcome break from my school and city life. I brought nothing responsible with me, so when I was done with my work in the morning, I got to honestly ask myself, “what do you WANT to do today?”. I did lots of walking on the nicer days, to town and to the other farm that they own up in the hills. We spent most of the second half of the week piled onto the old sofa bed in front a the ever-roaring fire. (Italians don't heat their houses very well, so it was either that or crawl under the covers.)

I don't want to write a treatise on farm life, so I will try to just highlight the more interesting parts. The first morning I was there we paid a visit to the cheese-making shepherd who still heats his goats' milk over a fire and uses real rennet for the culture process. We tasted at all stages including a cup of warm whey with ricotta floating in it. I think this part grossed most of the people out, but I kind of liked it.

Maria cooked us a full lunch and dinner every day, including fresh or frozen veggies from the garden, pastas, beans and lentils, lots of bread, and plenty of their homemade wine. It doesn't take much to get used to drinking a glass of wine two meals a day. It was refreshing to sit down with no less than five people at every meal. I get so used to eating alone in my student life, but it something I generally regret. Living together that close, the four of us volunteers became friends fast. They were all great and little bit crazy. But that made it all the more interesting.

I also did what I could to make friends with Concetta, the donkey with the attitude of a fourteen year old. It was a sort of love-hate relationship depending upon her mood of the moment.

But my favorite part was working and talking with Giuseppe, an old Sicilian with no English and a lovely life philosophy. He got really excited when I asked him that first morning “posso provare?” (can I try?) in reference to the fresh goat's milk he handed me to take up to the house. For the rest of the week we spoke Italian, mostly me listening to his romantic memories of Sicily, which he misses very much. “Calmo, calmo, tutto con calmo” says Giuseppe, “il tempo non vale niente” (time doesn't really mean anything). He got mad at us if we dug our holes or shoveled chicken poop too vigorously. He was our daily reminder that everything comes in its time, and everything takes that time. No reason to rush. And when Antonello and Maria were in town and we weren't sure what to do, he told us to just relax, smile, and laugh instead of doing any work. So there I was on Friday morning, sitting in the heart of and Italian farmhouse, warm and smiling, with Giuseppe giving me a list for a tour of Sicily.

And yes, there were all the nasty parts, but we were all nasty and so no one cared. We all smelled bad and hadn't washed our clothes. Our hair was all a mess or under hats all the time. It really ceased to matter and that felt really good. As I walked through the streets of Perugia yesterday, I suddenly felt very self-conscious of my grungy jeans and tousled hair, of the fact that I hadn't showered that day, or maybe even the day before. I could already feel the city taking me back in and when I went out again later that day in my clogs and green blazer, I hardly recognized myself. It was a week of another of those space/time warps. I feel like I was there much longer, but at the same time, like I never left here.

Early AM at the shed of the cheese-making shepherd

View from the volunteer dorm

Jesse and Leslie

Olive grove in the hills

Abruzzi Mountains, almost felt like home!

On famous stuff (ie. ART!)

School of Athens, Raphael, fresco, Vatican Collections

One cannot forever avoid the beaten path, especially those of us who specialize in the history of art. I know that I cannot say that I lived in Italy for half a year and didn't see certain members of the cannon.

As a result of this fact, I found myself this weekend pushing through crowds on the Rome metro, standing in line for over an hour alongside the walls of Vatican City, and staring at the frescoed Sistine Chapel listening to security guards try to quiet the crowd and still all cameras (a task fit for Sisyphus).

As a result I have now in my collection the two following ridiculous photographs:

Portrait with a copy of the Doryphoros, courtesy of Hannah K, Rome, 2008

Portrait Feigning Astonishment at the Feet of the Apollo Belvedere, Courtesy of Hannah K., Rome, 2008

No, seriously, I had to do some thinking about the experience of wading through the throngs of visitors snapping photos of this and that famous art work. In the first place, I was very surprised that photos were allowed in the Vatican Museums (with the exception of the Sistine Chapel). I took very few as I felt very uncomfortable doing so. And besides, I have far superior reproductions in several books at home.

Out of respect for the less famous works, I did what I could to turn around and examine the fresco on the wall opposite the School of Athens, but it's hard. There is so much to see, you can't process it all. I love looking at art, and I reached a point where I needed to get out of there. So what do you spend your time looking at?

More importantly, what makes up that experience of looking? Hannah said that she was overcome to a certain extent by the experience of the Sistine Chapel. I felt like I should have been, it's the Sistine Chapel, for goodness sakes! But I wasn't, and I wondered why. Granted, I studied the ceiling, searching for those elements I had read so much about. Proximity, the space between the two fingers, Don't forget the frescoes on the sides, Did you know Boticelli, Perugino and others were also involved? I looked for something other than the figures, examined the colors and thought about how Michelangelo's use of color highlights for the creation of volume related to my term paper. But I was not awed. I felt like I could say I had seen it, something I had to do, and so I could move on.

The Apollo Belvedere, Laocoon, those were different. It still wasn't the feeling I remember having standing with a particularly unknown marble statue somewhere in Scotland, but I did have a hint of that grandeur.

So, why? More specifically, why not? Dr. Kwakelstein has talked about certain works within the idea that we are raised seeing reproductions. The Mona Lisa, the David, Pieta....the list goes on. I would hate to think that this has been what has numbed me to the the true experience of seeing a work of art. In the age of mass media there is a much smaller margin for surprise. I won't say it is gone, but you have certain expectations already for what you are going to be seeing.

I am not going to lie, the waves of people everywhere kind of ruined things for me. But that is a double-edged sword. As a student of art, I want to be able to sit silently with the work, preferably in its original context. I would re-create that original experience. On the other hand, I love that all these people are here! That they come from all over the world, that it is something that will not be forgotten. (The Vatican Museum is sneaky about this, they make you go through one half or the other of the museum before you ever get to the Sistine Chapel....they make you look at things some people would never consider, for example a hall of 16th century frescoed maps of the papal territories, very cool.)

I don't feel too guilty though. I could have sat in front of Bernini's Apollo and Daphne or Caravaggio's St. Jerome (both in the Galleria Borghese) all afternoon if they would have let me. It probably doesn't help that I have been slowly developing an academic and aesthetic aversion for a lot of Renaissance art. (I don't feel guilty about this either.)

At the end of the weekend, the beaten path is exhausting and sometimes frustrating, but rewarding. Best thing is to make sure you travel it with the right person and you keep everything in perspective. In St. Peter's Square, Hannah almost started crying; she said to me, "Monica, we're in Rome, I mean, we're really in ROME!"

Self-Portrait with St. Peter's Basilica (Or how I learned to stop worrying and be a tourist), Monica Butler, Rome, Spring (weather), 2008

Un viaggio da sola

Yesterday I decided to go it alone and hopped on the bus to Gubbio. Over an hour of windy roads later (bleh!) and I was on my way up the funivia (see silhouette below) to the top of the mountain. In the church of the Franciscan monastery at the top was the preserved (pickled) body of San Ubaldo in his vestments. I planned the ride so that I would be at the top for the funivia's pausa hour so I had plenty of time to wander around. A hike further up led to the ruins of an old medieval tower from which I took the 360 degree panorama photo of doom (email me if you want to see it. I don't think it will show here).

There is something very liberating about standing alone like that, with full visual command of the lands below. I sat at the backside for a very long time and I wished for my journal to record all that was running through my head. I have been wondering about the non-cultivated areas of the Italian countryside, and I saw a few yesterday. The pictures do not really show the contrasts of greens and browns. It's beautiful.

The rest of my day took me through medieval streets and a variety of churches, past bell towers and friendly local kitties. I stopped for a caffe macchiato in a local bar and realized as I was ordering that I picked THE bar in Gubbio where all the old me go to wile away their afternoons. I felt very out of place standing there, but I was also caught by another one of those "I'm in Italy moments".

These moments have a variety of forms.
1. "I'm in Italy! It's so beautiful and I feel like everything I see is a postcard photo."
2. "I'm in Italy! I can't believe it."
3. "I'm in Italy, wow, I am living in Italy. I know what I am doing here."
(Yesterday was of the third variety, particularly after on two separate occasions I was asked directions to places in the city by Italian tourists. I kindly responded, "Mi dispiace, no lo so. Non sono di qui.")


Like the sense of freedom of standing on the mountain, traveling alone was exhilarating. It is not something that I would want to do long term, it has the potential to be very lonely. But it was such a strong sense of self-confidence.

As the sun was setting, I realized that I had time before the return bus to step outside the city walls to the ruined Roman ampitheater. I don't know how many pictures I took, but I couldn't get enough of the site. Moss covered seats and the contrast of the two-toned stone construction. With the setting sun, it was perfect.