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.
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