In which: I successfully do my laundry

I would have it be known that this week I have again provided evidence for the old adage, 'third time's a charm'. I have finally figured out how to wash and dry my clothing without disaster and I am proud to announce that happiness is clean laundry, among many other things.

A quick, update, with room to breathe.

1. I made an amazing (simple and delicious) mushroom sausage pasta dish last night. I am inspired here to actually do the cooking that I always said I would do before. Perhaps it is because I don't really have a choice, but I think it is more that all the ingredients are so fresh and delicious. The red peppers in particular, I could eat them like candy.

2. I think that I finally have ideas for all three of my term papers. I know it is early in the semester, but the semester is short and I need to to some leg work before writing proposals. I am interested in all three, though sometimes the reading gets overwhelming. I am going to (with professor approval) be writing on the painting of the Lady with the Ermine for my da Vinci class, Mannerism with a historiography approach using Pontormo's Entombment as an example, and grocery shopping in the US and Italy for my food cultures class.




Lady with the Ermine, Leonardo da Vinci




Entombment, Jacopo Carucci da Pontormo

3. I met with the museum today that I am going to be doing a small internship for. The project is doable, but a little daunting. I will be writing a report providing background information for certain items in their collection. It involves working the in the museum library as well as looking for materials in the library of the Universita di Perugia and the Galleria Nazionale d'Umbria. Sounds fancy and that part scares me a little, but it is going to be a wonderful learning experience. I get to do some real art history.

4. At home the other night, Aurora (my Korean roommate), Hai (my Chinese roommate's friend), Ashley, and I had a great time trying to speak Italian. It was somewhat of a three-ringed circus including Chinese/Italian dictionaries, Korean/Italian dictionaries, hand gestures, drawings, and lots of laughing. It was great.

5. I experienced my first Italian train strike, apparently they happen a lot. Long story, not that interesting, but definitely an adventure in travel. Lesson learned: pad your travel time and beware when the lady at the counter says the word 'sciopero'.

It's a new kind of awareness, not only of space and time, but also of self and potential. Because it isn't just some kind of warp of distance and the passage of time that creates it. Every day is new, everyday is something different and not just the pizza, or the pasta, or making my own macchiato this morning. Those are the concrete things, the things that they use to sell a country, to try to convey experience. But when I sit here, thinking about this place, that isn't it. Those things are symbols for something else. I wanted to live in a different paradigm, that is what I said. And it's happening, so strange, but so true. The insecurities that I thought would bind me, that I couldn't escape from during my first week start falling away. Because we are all in the same boat, but also because there is no tomorrow and I think that we are all subtly aware of that. How we all get excited to go to the un-signed fruit lady after her extra-long pausa this afternoon like it is something that we have always done. It's so hard to describe and you won't believe the pages I have filled with words since I got here. It's like I can't stop. I am not sitting at my kitchen table every night writing about the things I have seen. I try to throw some of that in to track what I am doing, but it takes so little space. No, it is as if the analytical part of my brain is on some kind of steroids that makes it unable to shut up. I also didn't used to have a place (person) to unload it all, but even as I am making friends and we are getting beyond the mundane, I am this wealth of thoughts that I don't have room to carry around every day. Because I keep finding new ideas, and like I said, new potentials. Because suddenly, potentiality has lost the theoretical aspect and become reality. And I can't say when exactly that line started disappearing, but I can barely see it anymore. For example, my roommate was talking about going to Egypt for spring break, I told some friends about it and we couldn't stop talking about it for a few days. Granted, after some more research and some more serious consideration, we all agreed that this is not the time for that. But it was like, yes, yes, I could get on a plane and go to Egypt and ride a camel if I wanted to. There is nothing to stop me. Nothing to stop me aside from some kind of interior belief that I could not do it.


And so sometimes, I don't know what to say. I still email my mom to ask her what she thinks about things like dropping classes, finding internships, my inability to do laundry....but what I really want to say, is, well, I feel different. And I don't know how to properly convey that without becoming obtusely cliche or abstract.


I also read a Cohelo book last week, and that does crazy things to my head. But I had a realization of one of the reasons that I like his books so much. He writes the way that I think. The kind of broad brush strokes that characterize people and become more abstract generalizations. The words, the contemplative tone, it is like the way I think about the world. And that kind of thought pattern has become exaggerated since I got here. Every thing I do, everything that happens today seems to throw in some kind of new perspective onto my reality and I have to digest it right then and there. Hence me approaching 1/6th of the way through my journal already. It is kind of ridiculous.



So you ask me and I will tell you about my Saturday afternoon laundry debacle, my new ability to make (and love) espresso, ordering salami in Italian, talking about Angelia Jolie with one of the staff at a movie shown in a several hundred-year-old opera house. I will write you postcards about the hills and the ridiculous fog, about pasta and unsalted bread. Because that is my life right now and I am settling in after the initial shock of it. It scares me, because I fear that spacetime, fear what it will do.


I can't even articulate how excited I am, excited just isn't the right word. I have started dreaming again and sleeping lighter the past few days. I don't like the restlessness, but welcome the ability to see so many simultaneous possibilities.


But somewhere in there I have to cook dinner, meet Italians, learn my vocab for my quiz on Thursday and steel myself against 28 pages worth of term papers. Gahhhhh. I can't think much more than a few days at a time, though I want to be able to plan my entire life from here on out. I can't even fathom April, yet I can somehow see themes emerging that I know I will carry with me for the rest of my life. And somewhere in all of that, I am still me and I am feeling the freedom to be just that.


It isn't that I was constrained before, rather, restrained. Perhaps it is because I feel like I fit into this kind of rhythm. I don' t know what I am trying to say, really. Mostly that today I am not crying uncontrollably and I love Italy. They say that this is a natural psychological cycle, and I try to keep that in mind when I find myself up there in that position of looking down at myself.


Oh, by the way, I have a new roommate. She is from Korea and she and her friend are here to study Italian because they are training to be opera singers back in Korea. It's neat until I step away and think "I share a kitchen with a Korean opera singer..." It's crazy, that's what it is.

La pace francescana

It is strange, and I have said this to a few people I have been talking to, that I am experiencing a kind of time/space warp in which physical distance translates itself into a different perception of time. I have been living here for only two weeks now, but it feels today like two months. It isn't simply a kind of warp in space-time, but it also has to with how suddenly on my walk home, my feet recognize the feel of the cobblestones. What was once something completely new and boggling, starts to feel familiar. This is not to say that I feel at home here yet. I am still figuring a great deal out by trial and lots of error. Yesterday was a great laundry debacle, let's just say I walked across half of Perugia (including climbing about 200 stairs) with wet laundry. I won't go into the details, but it was definitely a matter of operator error and ignorance at the Italian laundromat. So now my clothes are all clean, but I am not because I can't take a shower until my towel finally dries out. So it goes, and we move on.

It was our friend Amanda's birthday this weekend and Thursday we took her out to a wonderful little restaurant. The school guidebook lists it without a location, but recommends it as one of the best places in town. Renee wheedled the location out of one of the staff and we spent three hours at one of the best meals I have had since I came. I took the opportunity to try the local delicacy, truffles. None of us could decide exactly what it tasted like, definitely something entirely its own.

I have been doing some reading, prompted by my experiences here and the titles of the books on the Food Cultures reserve shelf, about Slow Food. Thursday would be a perfect example. Slow Food is actually a movement begun here in Italy, now an international organization, that promotes, of course, a slower approach to food consumption and food experience. It is so interesting though because they incorporate all levels of eating experience, including promoting local products and traditions, nutrition issues and whole foods, as well changing our perceptions of the meal and how we experience eating. I could write a lot more here, but there is a lot of information online if any of you are interested. I am going to try to write my paper for my food cultures class about culture differences in grocery shopping. It sounds strange to simplify it like that, but basically I want to make a comparison between supermarkets and the kind of shopping people do here (open markets, alimentari, etc) because it is a very interesting way of looking at cultural perceptions and traditions about food.

I started classes this week, and though I thought it would be manageable, this weekend I am starting to reconsider. I don't want to bite off too much because I want to be able to spend time relaxing and not living in the library. So I have to figure out in the next few days if I am going to drop one of my classes. One way or the other I have 28 pages worth of term papers to write and the semester is very short. Besides, I am working with one of the staff to try to set up a 3-4 hour a week internship and I think that this experience would be more beneficially than that fifth class. I feel bad about it because the professor is a great guy, but I don't think I want to be taking seventeen credits here when I never take that many at home.

But now, sorry this is very long, the highlight of the past week was our trip to Assisi on Friday. It is only about a 30 minute train ride away plus a little bus up the hill so we had a relaxing morning a made a nice little day trip out of it. We spent the whole time gushing about how much we loved it and taking tons of pictures. What struck me the most was how two cities (Perugia and Assisi) could have such completely different moods about them. Granted, Assisi is a much smaller city and the tradition of St. Francis is inseparable from its heartbeat. It could have been the weather (sunny and beautiful, just for our pilgrimage) or the light colored stone that composes all the architecture in the old city, but there way just something about it that made me feel like I was walking through a kind of fantasy. All this made possible also by the fact that we were there in January. In the travel/vacation season here, I would never go there because of the crowds and junk shops I know will just explode. The famous Basilica of St. Francis was a church like I have never seen one before, frescoes covering the walls and vaults of both the upper and lower levels to the extent that I know I could return again and again and see something different every time. Were I alone, I would have sat there for a longer time, just to try to digest the juxtaposition of the visual sensory overload and the sense of complete peace. I could talk about it for another page, however, I will let the pictures finish the story.

My travel buddies.



St. Francis, patron saint of animals. Apparently you can have your pets blessed on his saint's day.















Finally, proof that I am actually there!



Corinthian columns on at the ancient Tempio di Minerva, now the facade for a Catholic church.



The Basilica of St. Francis.









Views of and from the Rocca Maggiore, castle on top of the city.

Il gennaio, piove molto

It is still raining. I am learning quickly that winter in this part of Italy means rain and fog. The weather is serious about it's fog here, not just a mist over the far hills, but sometimes it is so thick that I can't see my apartment building until I am within 100 feet of it. The warmth of making a cup of tea forms condensation that covers at least half of my kitchen window, though this morning the panorama from my balcony is a little less covered in cloud.

It is hard to get motivated in such weather, especially when custom and safety dictate that we close the shutters at night, thus barring the entry of any possible natural light in the morning. Yesterday, however, we rose to the occasion and got on the 9.01 train to Todi, a little Umbrian town about 45 minutes from here. Yes, it did rain off and on all day, but we were dry enough to enjoy walking around and slipping in and out of shops and cathedrals.

It had a much quieter sensibility than Perugia, of course, and I enjoyed really enjoyed this. Perugia really is a cosmopolitan place, a different kind of city, but a city nonetheless. Todi is definitely your Umbrian country town and has the quaint atmosphere to go with it. Like Perugia, however, it sits on the top of a hill and the cardinal rule of walking continued to apply. Any going down will always result in a climb back uphill.

The highlights included the Duomo (main cathedral at the central Piazza), San Fortunato, and Il Tempio Maria della Consolazione. Though it might bore some, I think I could look at old churches all day. They each have their own character and breath that you can feel as soon as you step through the doors and lower your umbrella. The Duomo, for example, had a heavy sense of responsibility and majesty overseen by a giant fresco of The Last Judgement over the entrance. In contrast, the white ceiling and high vaults of San Fortunato spoke of the Gothic appeal for height and luminosity. It is still driving me crazy that I can't remember the names of the different kinds of vaults, it has been too long since I did any work with cathedral architecture. My favorite part of San Fortunato were the frescoes in the side chapels. Like a procession of little installations, each presented a different subject in a different state of repair. I apologize in advance for the photo quality, there was no flash allowed so they are a little fuzzy. I had a great time deciphering the images from a combination of my own knowledge and what I could understand of the few signs posted in Italian. In the crypt of San Fortunato is the massive tomb of Jacopone, an ascetic saint of the 13^th century. He was so extreme that even the Franciscans wouldn't have him for a long time. The eventually did admit him to their order and Todi is very proud of him to this day. Also, I saw my first reliquary (I know it is nowhere near my last).

We spent the first part of the pausa getting warm and eating lunch including l'antipasto misto della casa (house appetizer sampler) and polenta with local sausage and mushrooms. A perfect lunch to stick to my insides on a cold rainy day.

So, I am trying to accept the rainy weather and not let it keep me from exploring and going out. I'll just try to blend in with the Italians and carry my umbrella everywhere with me, ready to go at the slightest potential of a drop.

Tempio Maria della Consolazione (based upon plans for New St. Peter's in Rome)


Picturesque hills, I would recommend Todi on a clear day, though.


Santas all climb ladders, no chimneys in these old places





Interior of San Fortunato



Tomb of Jacopone, Crazy martyr saint





Ruined San Fortunato Fresco



Unfinished Frescoes, San Fortunato



Duomo

Sunday

In the face of rain and a valley full of mist, they bussed us on Sunday out to Lago Trasimeno for a day on a local agritourismo. They fed us a traditional breakfast of bruschetta (in this case, il panino commune and olive oil only) a a drop of red wine. We got a tour of the oil pressing process, some more orientation information, and a demonstration by several local nonne of how to make fresh pasta from the farm eggs and semolina flour. The watching them roll out the pasta dough reminded me of pounding out tortillas on my counter at home; it takes a similar kind of pressure, though I think the dough is a little more responsive. Il pranzo (lunch) lasted over two hours and everything served came directly from the farm or wild from the land around it. We started with the pasta they had earlier showed us followed by a delicious bean dish, a local specialty. I wish I could remember any of the names of what we had, but they washed right over me all day. Apparently though, the beans grow wild and are very difficult to process; they have to be separated and processed entirely by hand. They come in a range of about fifty different colors, each color with its own slightly unique flavor. The soup was very simple with a crusty piece of bread to soak up the salty broth. I tried to figure out what the seasoning was. At first I thought it was something like fennel, but then my dinner mates pointed out that it could have been something unique to the beans themselves. It was truly a full-experience food because I definitely found that I started at one flavor and ended up somewhere completely different by the time I swallowed. For il secondo (second course, usually some kind of meat or fish) they served a homemade sausage in the same beef sauce served with the pasta. I don't think I have ever liked sausage as much as I did then. It was so delicious and fell apart with the touch of a fork. The people I was sitting with were very concerned with thinking about the pig that made the sausage. Instead, I found myself satisfied that I knew exactly where that pig had come from and how it had been raised. It really bothered me less than thinking about what is in some of the bratwurst and pepperoni I have eaten before. All this was of course accompanied by homemade red wine (excellent). For dessert we ate a traditional kind of rum cake with a very special dessert wine (again, I wish I could remember the names). The wine was a very sweet and strong red reserved usually for Easter only, but they opened it special for us. After dinner drinks, even wine are always served in small shot-glass sized cups. And a tiny amount of this wine was certainly all I could have managed. When we studied the food chapter in my Italian class last semester I wondered how they could possibly go through the whole series: l'antipasto, il primo, il secondo, e il dolce. But if you draw the whole thing out over that many hours with wine, conversation, and rest in between, it is perfect (body warm, heart warm). I think we Americans need to observe and learn to adapt our Thanksgiving accordingly.

I think though, that my greatest impression was one of earthly simplicity. Ours hosts were very warm and kind people who took their holiday (Feast of the Epiphany, the last day of the Christmas celebrations in Italy) to put on a wonderful day for us. I loved feeling the rich heartiness of the food and the work that I know went behind its trip from the field beyond to the plate in front of me. And I am learning that even the Italians in the city maintain that sensibility about their palate. They go the to the grocery store every few days and only buy small amounts (COSTCO would not do well here, I am sure). You only buy about 3 etti of prosciutto at a time (about enough for three hearty or four normal panini) because they eat it fresh and won't leave it sitting in the refrigerator more than a day or two. The way the stores are open, it is very simple to walk past your local grocer on your way home in the evening to buy what you need for dinner that night. This would be easier if I weren't cooking only for one, but it is something I am trying to adapt to.

After writing this, I realize that I need to branch out in terms of what I have been cooking. So far it has been a variety of combinations of tomatoes (not good this time of year, note to self), garlic, onions, olive oil, mozarella, and bread or pasta. I want to try to get together with people to cook meals as I know some other houses are doing. I don't think it is necessarily going to work with my roommates, but I hope that I can pitch in and work with some other people as I meet them. I visited the covered market today, the place for fresh food. I hit the end and only a few fruit and veggie vendors were still open. When my schedule is more fixed I am going to try to work in my shopping there. They are open only in the morning and I think the earlier you go, the better it is. I will check that out more this weekend or next week when I don't have three hours of Italian class starting at nine.

On that note, I recommend fresh bruschetta with garlic and tomatoes, bake with a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil, and don't kiss your significant other afterward. (I feel like I ate nothing but garlic today).

Homemade pasta






Jugs of olive oil, best I have ever tasted.



Rolling out pasta

Via della Cupa, 86

Un appartmento italiano

Requesting a challenge, I signed up to live with international students rather than other Umbra participants. I have yet to see fully how this works out. My roommate is a full year student, she has so far very patiently answered my multitude of questions. I hope she doesn't think that I am crazy when I can't open the door for the third time or I run in at eight o'clock to tell her how I managed to successfully light the stove without burning myself. Our other flatmate so far is from China. Her name is Li and through our mutually broken Italian I learned that she is 19 and studying at the Universita per Stranieri. We and miscommunicate more than we get through to each other, but a lot of smiles and the addition of some very useful hand signals gets the main ideas through.

Our apartment is not as homey as some of the others I have seen, but the view makes up for it. Off our balcony (which I look out on from my desk) you can see Perugia as it cascades down the hill. On clear day, which we haven't had since Saturday morning when I took this picture, I can see beyond to the surrounding hills. When I am more adept with the stove and it is a little warmer out it will be a great place for sipping my morning tea.

As a Means of Introduction

I made it here, I am actually in Italy. Though some I have talked to are still in disbelief about that fact, I am sitting here trying to figure out what to do with this simple, yet so very overwhelming fact. What I have realized so far, in my very short three day experience so far, is that every day is going to be so full. I don't know why I wasn't really expecting this kind of mack-truck overload, but it is very real and I am navigating it one day at a time. The idea is that my mind is overflowing, but I don't want this to be the place where I distill that, it can't be, you won't want to read it. The truth is that this blog is meant for people to read, not for me to write. It is a new kind of writing for me, so bear with me. I don't want to bore you with too much detail that isn't relevant, but I do want to keep you updated and give a taste, at least an impression, of my experiences here. That being said, I will try to avoid the kitchy, sometimes overly-effusive kind of travel narrative in favor of a few details, pictures, and whatever else I think this blog will lend itself too. So in that way, I expect that it will also evolve as learning process for me, a series of public writing exercises. I hope you enjoy!

Grazie a tutti,

Monica

I can't believe I leave tomorrow!

So, are you allowed to post on your travel blog before the actual departure date?