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