I got hit by a car today...

but it wasn't serious, I was just trying to get in the door of studio and it backed up into me and I shouted and they stopped. I wasn't hurt at all or anything, but that should tell you something about Italian drivers! I also was proud of myself for going for a run today- I've been struggling with exercising, trying to find a good time and someone to go with, and a good path to take. My options for the path are either 1) randomly through the city, which means stopping every 10 feet for traffic 2) along the tiber embankment, which has a lot of homeless people under the bridges or 3) above the tiber embankment on the sidewalk, which is next to the busiest streets in Rome and has a lot of exhaust. I think #3 is the best so far, but there's no perfect route. There's a gym that I could belong to, but it's like 50 euros a month, which seems like a lot when I could just go out and run. I think that might be the most frustrating thing here so far- I feel like my healthy food options are limited and I can't exercise as much as I used to. The way to get full when eating out is to order either pasta or pizza, and I'm at the point where I'm craving veggies. I made my own meals about a third of the time this last month, but I think I'm going to up that this month because it's cheaper and I think I'll feel better about it. Veggies are cheap at the grocery store too- I got a zucchini and a huge red pepper there today for like a euro and fifteen cents. Coming out of ND I think that's especially pronounced because the dining hall is so good and there is always someone ready to exercise with you. I feel like so much more of a grouch when I don't exercise, I've noticed. So I think I'm really going to try hard to go running more frequently and I'm seriously thinking about doing another triathalon over the coming summer so I'll have motivation to really get back to where I feel like I could and should be.

Recovery

Well we are back from the field trip, which was pretty good. I was disappointed in Venice, but I really liked Verona, which I thought was just going to be cheesy Romeo and Juliet but was actually really nice. I'll update at more length when I have more time at the computer, but it was a good trip and I have to go take a shower tonight because I am gross and I'm going to head over to St. Peter's for mass tomorrow at 7. Yikes! I hope I wake up...!

Field Trip coming up!

Another week will have to go by without updates... we are traveling as of 6:45 AM tomorrow (ahhh)
The schedule:
Day 1: Bologna
Day 2: Parma
Day 3: Mantova and Verona
Day 4: Verona and Vicenza
Day 5: Vicenza and Venezia (Venice)
Day 6: Venezia
Day 7: return to Roma

I just finished up with our most recent project and had the review. I have mixed feelings about this project- I feel mostly negative about it I guess because I was in a group with three procrastinators, which was bad. I did a lot of the work and it didn't turn out very well, and since so much of it was last minute it was high stress. I feel on the one hand like I did I very good job with my individual sheet and rowhouse design, but our overall group design and presentation was embarassing, and the group part was 50% of our grade, so I don't know how that will turn out. We'll be switching groups for the next project, and hopefully I'll get in a group that fits my style of working a bit better. The next project takes the rest of the semester, so it's pretty in depth- I think it's going to be exciting to be able to go in depth with the design and pace yourself to paint as well as you like. That's what happened with this last project- I paced myself so I had a lot of time to paint my sheet as well as I liked, but the group didn't leave enough time to paint the overall sheet well at all.

I've also been trying to pick up some italian- some of the people I meet on a regualar basis can see that I want to be able to speak some italian, so the guys at the panino store will speak to me in italian and try to help me understand- and if I get really confused they actually speak excellent english! The janitor in studio (his name's Pino) speaks no english, but he's realy nice, and he'll hold conversations with you, and try to help you out if you get confused. I got him to tell me how to say 'same' the other day by holding up two spoons and comparing them and saying the spanish word for same. It took a while, but he finally got it and told me the word was "iguale". There's also a chinese resturaunt up the street, where I learned that chopsticks are "pastancini". That's about the total of my italian knowledge lol, but I signed up for an italian class that will start after the field trip, so hopefully that'll bring me a bit further up to speed.

Totally unrelated to studio- I think I got into the Assisi retreat! They said they had a spot open and I replied and signed up. It's 20 euros for hotel, transportation, breakfast, and dinner for a weekend, which sounded great to me, and Mara will be there so that should be amazing! I'm so excited about that- it's November 11-13 and I'm ready to go now! OK, I have to get my laundry and get to sleep so I can wake up for the bus tomorrow. Ciao from Roma for now!

USC

@%$&#@%?!?!

ND-USC

I'm sure you've all heard about the game. It sounds huge and it makes me want desperately to be in the stadium with 80000 other screaming people for the game and with 10000 other screaming people for the pep rally tonight. I've heard that Bruce Springsteen and Bon Jovi are coming to the pep rally and they're holding it in the stadium because so many people want to come, and the campus has been inundated since yesterday. And even though the game airs on national TV and is the prime matchup of the weekend, I won't be able to see it here because NBC has the rights so none of the stations over here get it. So it'll be me and 50 other students here with all of our computers playing the audio and going nuts tomorrow. I can't wait... I'm staying up tonight to watch the pep rally, which ND is webcasting here:
http://und.collegesports.com/
One arkie actually flew home to go to the game... I admit the thought crossed my mind, but never seriously! Oh well. Otherwise, stuff is going well... our project is due Thursday and I think I'm on track and even have time to put in details that I never had time to do before. So hopefully this will come out amazingly well for me- but the rest of my group is way behind. We each have to sign our drawings, so that shouldn't impact my grade, but I'd feel better if our project was developing as a whole. I hope the other people in my group finish! I've never been the furthest ahead before- it's a weird feeling, but it's also a lot of extra work because I had to design the sheet layout and lettering and all that stuff.

Aww...

For Colleen, who sent me her very cute homecoming picture which I am posting. She's in the middle in the green dress.
Meanwhile I am in studio wearing jeans and a t-shirt and in need of a shower.

I got an email from Mara today saying that there is a retreat in Assisi in November that she's doing, which I think would be really cool to go to, so I might end up doing that. I've wanted to visit Assisi since that's where St. Clare is from and they cut it out of our field trip because of budget problems, so this sounds like a golden opportunity. I think otherwise it's business as usual- I have a project due in a week so I'm in a designing/drafting/watercoloring rush.

Pictures!

I have a few pictures I've bummed off of people of the Villa d'Este, so knowing how anxious you are to see these, I present:


Angelo, pretending to eat an acanthus leaf (this is kinda an architecture picture because there's a myth that the Corinthian column was created by a man who saw an acanthus plant growing around a basket, so all of us architecture dorks were really excited to see an acanthus plant!)







On the right is the view down one of the walkways I described with about 300 fountains lining the path on the left. It's hard to see, but at the end of this walkway there is a fountain celebrating Rome.





And this on the left is a little bit better view... in the foreground is Jessie taking a picture of Cailin pretending to fall in.





This was facing the other direction from the previous two pictures. I thought it was pretty cool- and it looks like there's a lot more water there in real life than it does here! I guess hearing the water makes it seem like there's more of it.




Nina and I are waiting out the storm inside after she sprained her ankle. I think that's it for my show today. Time to get back to work :(

Going much better

Well as you might have gathered, I wasn't particularly happy as of the last post, but it's been going better since then. I'm feeline a lot better, and I even went running this morning which was great because I've been getting a little antsy about not swimming and working out. Our field trip yesterday was pretty cool, although it rained about half the time and the other half it just threatened. So there was no sun, but Hadrian's villa was pretty interesting- it had some great landscapes and it's always amazing to see what people 2000 years ago could do. It really makes you feel like we haven't progressed as much as we should have in that amount of time!
I actually liked the second place better thought- that was Villa d'Este, which despite being built by a cardinal had pretty much only pagan iconography in the entire thing- statues of Venus, Rome, and a whole bunch of paintings inside. The real attraction is the gardens, which have so much water in them that they actually diverted a whole river to supply the fountains. There was one where the water could play organ music, and whole walkways with fountains on each side. One walkway had about 280 fountains on the left side as you walked through! We were supposed to sketch there but since it was raining we only got a little of that done. Really, the only downside was that I didn't get to finish my sketch and that Nina fell on some really steep steps and sprained her ankle pretty badly- she's on crutches today. But otherwise it went very well, and I'm just doing laundry and studio work and some assignments for history and graphics today- interesting, I know, but it's really rainy outside. Rome may have had some great engineering feats in building aquaducts to bring water into the city, but the drainage to take the water out of the city lacks a little bit!

Quick update

Well:
1) I am sick, I have a cold but I also have medicine and it works, so that's good.
2) I have a field trip tomorrow morning to Hadrian's Villa and the Villa d'Este. I haven't looked up the links for those, sorry, but hopefully I'll get some pics from people and pose those soon.
3) Our studio project is horrible and we haven't designed anything yet that hasn't been shot down and I'm getting really sick of it and it's due in 2 weeks.
4) I think we're going to Cinque Terre for Thanksgiving and hiking and looking at pretty mountains and seas.
5) I am running out of laundry. One washer and one not working dryer per 50 people is not good, and Italian laundromats are really expensive- like 8 euros to wash and dry one load!
and I think "that's all folks!"

I just wanted to say

GO IRISH! Good game against Purdue, and I even stayed up til half time at 3:30 because it was so worth watching. Now, about USC...
And I also added a link to another arkie blog in my sidebar- it's Rome and Rachael if you want to check it out.

My fingers will be tired by the end of this

OK, the promised summary of the field trip. LOTS of sketching- I never want to see another sketchbook again (except my new ones, but that comes later), LOTS of walking; we pretty much walked from 8 AM to 8 PM every day except when eating, sketching, or riding the bus- so for like 6 hours or so a day; and some shopping and fun stuff.
Day1: Orvieto and Todi
At left- the Duomo at Orvieto

The first several days of the trip we visited all mountain-top towns. They were butt-kickers, and as the program director said "you will find out on our field trips, if there is a hill, we must climb it." So very true. Orvieto was like a bigger version of Bagnoreggio, the first field trip we had that I posted the picture link for, so the sides were also sheer cliffs, and Todi was basically the same.
Todi's claim to fame is that it has Santa Maria della Consolatzione, a famous church designed by Bramante which is centralized. It's basically a cube with a dome above and half spheres on the sides- it's very geometrical and precise. I thought it was ok, a little overrated. Then in the evening we went to this hotel in a place called Citta di Castello, which was basically a dead town. It was really weird, because we would get in a from the trips at about 9 pm and go out to eat dinner in this town, which was all dark and pretty much deserted. There weren't any kids, and there were only people at this cafe and one restaurant that we saw each night. So that was a pretty dead place, and we stayed there for 3 nights.

Day 2: Gubbio and Perugia
This day was pretty cool. Gubbio was another mountain town that started in the valley and worked its way up the mountian. It had a huge medieval fortress at the top which had a piazza in front of it that was level. The reason it was level on the side of a mountain was because the Romans had built a grainery below it, so there were these huge 50 foot arches on the side with a drop off, supporting the piazza above. We had to sketch that piazza and then we had a lunch break and wandered through the town, which seemed like it was still stuck in medieval times- they had a lot of stores that sold ceramics and crossbows etc. After lunch we left and went to Perugia, which was a bigger city than Gubbio, and it was on more of a hill, less of a mountain. While we were there they were having their Notte Bianca (white night), where they celebrated their heritage and opened museums for free- but we couldn't go because we had to sketch. While we were there they had a bunch of people in medieval costumes- like Romeo and Juliet, when they guys wore hose and that tunic shirt! Only these people were wearing city colors, and the group of them tossed flags in unison and played drums, eventually parading down the main street. It was so hard to sketch and not to pay attention to this! That was fun, but we had to leave and go back to the dead town of Citta di Castelliano at night. Grr.

Day 3: Montepulciano and Pienza
Montepulciano, as all those of you who know latin might guess, is on a mountian (monte- mountian, pulciano- beautiful? I think?) It was another pretty small, mostly residential, gorgeous view city. However, there is a church at the valley at the bottom of the town, so we climbed up, then down, then up, then down... my butt hurt the next day! I didn't even really like the church that much either! Pienza was after lunch, but we didn't really spend that much time there. Pope Pius II I think it was decided to show his humanism by ordering the building of a well-designed piazza there in like the 1400's,so we just went there and sketched that piazza. This was a view from behind the church, which I just thought was amazing. That was pretty much all we did there, then loaded up and went back to Citta.

Day 4: Arezzo and Siena
Arezzo was just our stop for the morning; it was of course on a mountain, but not all the way up, and we walked through for a little bit before sketching the main square and loading back up on the bus and heading for Siena. The picture below is the head of my history teacher, Ingrid Rowland, in front of the city hall and the campo of Siena. Siena was, I think, the coolest part of the whole trip (and it had the amazing sunset below on the right). It was basically a rival to Florence until 1348? when the Black Plague hit, and the workers that survived started wanting higher wages. The Sienese said no way, and all the workers left for Florence, leaving Siena in the dust afterward. Siena is divided into 17 "contadinas"-basically neighborhoods, each with its own flags, colors, history, traditions, you name it. In July and again in August they have a race called Palio, which each neighborhood sends a horse and rider to compete in. This race is huge! It's held in their main square, the Campo, and all the important families have houses with balconies that open onto the Campo so they can see the Palio. Other people crowd in the middle, and the horses race alond the outside. In July, the Torre neighborhood won after not having won in 40 years, and I know this sounds like I made it up, but some of the Torre adults were still wearing their contadina colors and lanyards and pacifiers (a symbol of being reborn). You would even hear the occasional chants of Torre! Torre! in the street. I bought one of their neighborhood flags because it was so cool. We walked around at night looking for a place to eat and stumbled upon Torre, with their colors still hanging from the houses, having a victory dinner! They had tables in the street and the resturaunts opened their doors and had a buffet for their contadina. All this was despite the fact that they hadn't even won the last Palio in August! The Caterpillar contadina won that, and they had their flags and street lamps out too. The only downside to Siena is that their region doesn't like to cook meat, as we found out that night going to an italian resturaunt where Yacintha and I ordered beef- which came sliced thin and uncooked! They saw that we were confused and apprehensive, so they did take it back and put it in the oven, and it was really good once I felt better about it! The next night (we were still in Siena) we went to a different resturaunt and they had asterisks on the menu next to the "typically underdone" dishes. Note: in Siena, "typically underdone"= RAW.

Day 5: Siena and Florence
You've basically heard all about Siena- we just sketched and walked around a bit, then left to stay at a hotel in Florence that night.

Day 6: Florence
A little of the Duomo, a little of the tower...
I didn't like Florence so much- it was about twice as large as Siena (which had 400,000 people, I think Florence had over 1 million) and infinitely larger than any of the other towns we visited. It was a huge tourist hub, but that meant that the lines were so long and the prices for museums were so high that our group didn't have enough time and money to see most of the things. The Uffizi museums cost too much, and the line to get into the Duomo was too long, so we walked around and talked in our groups mostly. We did get a lunch break during which I got a RED LEATHER JACKET and some shoes (Yacintha had a leather jacket already and Rachel got a jacket in Florence too, hence the picture of all of us wearing one), but it was mostly a lot of walking, talking, and staring at Renaissance palazzi, which really all look the same. Florence was all sort of monochromatic and washed out, except for the Duomo and Baptistry, but they were packed with people. My favorite place in Florence was San Miniato at Monte (Saint something of the Mountian) which was (of course) up the mountain- but you got an incredible view of the city, Brunelleschi's dome, and the mountains behind Florence.