Buonasera!

CIAO TUTTI!

I am writing in the midst of mid-term weeks. As I learn more Italian, my English has begun to get worse!! It is very exciting to begin to understand what people are talking about as I walk past them on the street, or sit behind them on the bus. I am still veeeeeeeeery slow at understanding what people say when they ask me questions, and it of course takes time to form sentences. But it is so wonderful to be able to communicate a little bit!

In the past few weeks I have done some wonderful traveling. I have already been to Florence four times! The past two Fridays I have gone to Florence with my art history class. We went to Galleria Bargello, which houses the two bronze relief sculptures by Brunelleschi and Ghiberti. These were the first two pieces of art that I ever studied, I remember learning about them in high school. I had not even thought about them until I saw them in the museum, and when I saw them I was blown away. They were the beginning of the Renaissance! And Brunelleschi’s began the discovery of perspective! Amazing! At this Galleria, there is also a lot of work by Donatello, including his bronze David. It was so beautiful. Our art history teacher is wonderful and is originally from Florence which makes it especially interesting to go to these incredible places with her. We went to the Uffizi with class, but I had gone a couple of weeks before to explore without being in a class so that I could take it in myself. Walking in to the first room of the Uffizi, the pages of last semester’s art history textbook came to life: the very first piece when you walk into the door is Giotto’s Maesta (a Maesta is a piece of art that shows the Madonna enthroned, holding the baby, and includes one or more other people around her). I was blown away. Every room in the Uffizi is overwhelmingly jam-packed with Italian masterpieces. One of my favorite pieces in the Uffizi Gallery is a septych by Pollaiolo and Botticelli. It shows the virtues, represented by seven women sitting like men, holding a variety of props from swords, to goblets of wine, to babies. They look so strong and important; I had never seen a painting from this time period with such strong, gallant female figures. 

I saw so many paintings at the Uffizi that I have studied or enjoyed before coming to the museum. Every time I see a famous piece of artwork here in Italy, I feel like I am spotting a celebrity on the street! It is just so exciting. I am REALLY excited to go to Rome for SO SO SO many reasons, but I REALLY want to see Caravaggio’s Judith Beheading Holofernes at the Galleria Borghese. 

On Friday we went to the Accademia and saw Michelangelo’s David. He really is a GIANT! It is really truly beautiful. Michelangelo was amazing, I learned that he lived with the Medici family starting when he was five years old because he was already such a good sculptor by then! Five years old oh my.

About two weeks ago I went to Bologna with some of my friends. This was my first time outside of Tuscany since I have been here. Bologna is really great. It is the home of the first university in the WORLD–the University of Bologna was founded in 1088. WOW. There are definitely many college students in Bologna and it is a bit more modernized than Tuscany. Every sidewalk has a beautiful arch-shaped walkway over it, so that it rains, you do not get wet. These hallways are so beautiful though, they are painted with really rich, lovely colors. There are two towers in Bologna that lean into each other, I loved them! One of them really looks like it is going to plop over it is so funny looking! We also went to the church of San Domenico where Saint Domenico’s sarcophagus is! One of the sculptures on the sarcophagus was made by Michelangelo! It is a teeny tiny angel. This was one of the most beautiful churches I have ever been in. We accidentally entered from the back and saw monks walking around, but I kept opening doors until we found the actual sanctuary. We entered into the sanctuary and looked behind us and the door we came out of said “NO ENTRY.” Yikes!!

Also, Bologna is the home of tortelli, tortellini, tortelloni, etc. I ate tortelloni for every meal in Bologna. The tortelli is a bigger version of tortellini and tortelloni. Tortellini is made with meat inside, and tortelloni is made with spinach and ricotta. 

In one of my classes, Art and Society, our next big assignment is to create a public art proposal for a piece of art that we would ideally install somewhere in Siena. This is an exciting project! Our professor introduced us to Google SketchUp, a program that can combine with Google Earth to actually design the piece on the program and then insert it in a file of the location we want it from Google Earth. It is amazing.

Sometimes I feel frustrated learning about contemporary art and creating contemporary art because I am in Italy and I feel more excited about the historical art of Italy. This is a struggle for me! I think that it is difficult for contemporary art to be successful for this exact reason. Italy is a HAVEN for people interested in art of the past. One of my teachers feels that Italy is stuck in its past. I understand what she is saying very much, but I also think that we should always be proud of Italy because it is a treasure with all that it has. I feel like every square inch of this country offers me something interesting to learn.

One of my goals while I am here is to do something new EVERY DAY. When I am stressed with school and have homework or I am tired, I forget to do this! I must constantly remind myself.

On Friday la mia Mamma comes to visit! I am so so very excited. We will meet in Florence and then come to Siena for a few days, and then go to Israel to celebrate Passover with family.

A presto, tutti! Ciao!

Firenze e Venezia

Last weekend I had the opportunity to travel to Florence and Venice! I went to Florence with my Art & Society class. We went to La Speccola, which is Florence’s Museum of Natural History. This was not my first choice of museums but I tried to make the best of it. La Speccola contains a very grotesque collection of wax body sculptures that show muscles, nerves and bones. I think it is very important to learn about the human anatomy, but some of the sculptures were so creepy because they were made with real human hair and the faces of the bodies look like they are dying. The museum also contains taxidermy which are creepy too!

We walked around Florence and saw the house of the Medici family which is enormous but surprisingly very plain. It was so exciting to see! It was simply exciting to just BE in Florence, this city FULL of things that I have studied and dreamed of seeing. Unfortunately this trip did not involve did going to see the Uffize or the Academia, but I plan to go back to Florence several times, for field trips and with friends.

After the field trip ended, I got on a train to Venice! After a three hour trip, I arrived in what looked like a CRAZY town. Because it was Carnevale, Venice was FILLED with people in costumes, completely drunk. It was practically impossible to get through the streets! The streets were lined with vendors selling different kinds of masks, wigs and other costumes. Some people were dressed in Medieval outfits, but most people were wearing whatever kind of costume they wanted, like it was Halloween. I saw the Teletubbies!

The amazing thing about Venice is the water. I’ve been in cities that are famous for their canals, but Venice stands out among these cities because its canals are EVERWHERE. They twist and turn and start and end in random places. Sometimes the sidewalks randomly end and step down into water. It is so beautiful! The buildings look wonderful surrounding the water. It is interesting to look at the bottom of the buildings and see how the water erodes the coloring of them. We took a gondola ride which was awesome! I felt like I was in a movie.

Piazza San Marco is also really incredible. The palace that surrounds it is so massive. Its hundreds of arches make it look extremely powerful. And the Basilica of San Marco  makes this Piazza very special. This church is of Byzantine architecture, so you feel like you’re in Istanbul for a moment when you look at it! The church of San Marco has many different nicknames involving gold because it is adorned and decorated in gold. If it had not been Carnevale, I would have gone inside, but there was a looooooooooooong line. I spent a lot of time looking at it and looking at the details from the outside however.

One of my favorite things about traveling last weekend was practicing Italian. I was able to go up to strangers and ask question about how to catch this and that train, or where the bus station is and things like that. Every time I went up to someone I got very nervous, but I felt so excited that I could communicate and understand a little bit!

Today I am off to San Gimigniano with my Art and Society class. We are going with the Art History II class. San Gimigniano is a hill-top town and it is famous for having the best gelato in the world. Among other things…

Ciao!

Art is……..

GELATO! I just had my first gelato. We all waited until today, February 15, to eat gelato, because it was FREE GELATO day at several gelaterias! I got a flavor called Fondente, which is such a dark chocolate it is practically black! It literally tasted like frozen brownie mix with dark chocolate swirled in. It is fun to watch them scoop the gelato with the knifey-scrapey thing. Waiting until today was worth it and eating gelato made it feel like spring is coming which is a WONDERFUL feeling.

This week has brought a lot of thoughts to my mind about what constitutes art. When I decided to study abroad in Italy, I romanticized the idea of my time here, imagining myself studying the masters and the Renaissance and classic paintings and sculptures. As it turns out, what I’ve learned about so far in my classes has been quite the opposite! In my Art & Society class, the art we’ve been looking at so far has been extremely grotesque, erotic and crude. We are discussing the notion of the body as a social metaphor, and one of the two professors of the class has a very perverse sense of the body in art. We’ve looked at images by artists I am familiar with such as Barbara Kruger or Cindy Sherman (who does some VERY strange things), but we have also looked at gorey and distorted images of the human body that speak to sexuality in a very grotesque way. Our professor is also very interested in cannibalism, and shared this with us, along with a story about an artist he has worked with involving cannibalism. These lessons have been hard to sit through because I do not connect with many of these topics, especially cannibalism. And I do not feel that cannibalism is a form of art, either! I think it is a truly bizarre expression that some cultures might find okay, and luckily Western culture finds it to be taboo. I found it frustrating that our first classes were spent on such crude subjects, and I voiced this to the professor. This is the inaugural semester of my program, so I felt it was important to tell them about my feelings.

One aspect of our class yesterday that I enjoyed very much was talking about how we can describe ourselves as humans with bodies to other living beings in the universe. We discussed NASA’s idea to send a message in a bottle to the outerspace, describing humans. We were asked by our professors to come up with images and ideas of what we think is important to share with another living group in the universe. So many things to come to mind! Human expression through art, music, culture, fashion and physical communication would be important to share. Memory, moments in our lives, people that are meaningful to us, feelings we have, scientific discoveries…there is a lot that we know and have accomplished!

Last night at the weekly artist talk, a man named Piergiacomo Petrioli spoke. Petrioli is an art historian and art critic. His program was entitled, “Is Shit Art? Is Art Shit?” What an appropriate topic for this week! The first image he shared with us was called, “Shit-Rabbit-Shit.” From what I could gather (this presentation was given in Italian…) this piece of work consisted of human excrement, sticks, cigarette butts and other….found objects. It is very amusing to write this here, but I think it is important to share! Another piece he shared with us was Manzoni’s “Merde D’Artiste,” from 1961, which is an attractively decorated can (it looks like a pretty container of soap) which supposedly contains the merde of Mr. Manzoni. Another image we looked at was a painting of the Virgin Mary made with bodily waste, as well! What a day yesterday was!!! A happy Valentines Day for sure.

On Monday we took a trip to the only glass-blowing, stained glass window studio in Siena. The two brothers who work there were very kind and informative. They create stained glass windows using the same technique developed during Medieval times, and they create windows in the same Gothic style they were created in as so many buildings and churches were designed and built. It is a truly amazing process. The sketches, measurements, colors of glass, the cutting of the glass, and the painting on the glass itself to add shadow to the figures–it was all very wonderful to see! The brothers said the windows they create are made to last over 500 years. They said, “If the window does not last 500 years, we will give our customers a refund.” Ha ha ha!

Friday is our final Italian exam! Voglio fare bene! I want to do well!

I feel badly sharing my adventures of delicious gelato and crude artwork in the same post! I apologize!

Arrivederci!! Ciao!

Chiacchiericcio

Ciao Tutti! This was the second week of our Italian intensive. I am slowly learning more and more, but it is somewhat difficult to try using the bit I know so far in conversations. I can ask Italian people yes-or-no questions, or questions involving numbers which usually goes well, but often they answer saying more than “si” or “no” or a number and I get completely lost! This week in Italian class we learned tongue-twister words. Because different combinations of letters create completely different sounds, this was a very helpful thing to learn! My favorite word we went over was ”chiacchiericcio.” It is essentially prounounced “kee-ah-kee-eer-eech-ee-yo.” It means idle chat or gossip!

It snowed some again, and schools were cancelled, again! (Not my school of course!) Tuesday evening commenced a series of artists’ talks at my school. This artist, Ellen Altfest, is from the United States, and he work was incredibly intricate and meticulous. I can not even fathom trying to render the kinds of details she does. Much of her work was about nature. One of the most amazing pieces was of a huge piece of tumbleweed she had from Texas. She painted every single strand in the huge tangle, but she also gave equal care to the detail in the background. She also painted a lot of male nudes. I was amazed by the hair she painted on to their bodies. I asked her if she ever gets overwhelmed by these details and if she just makes them up sometimes. She said “I never make them up, I paint exactly what I see.” Wow! She did say that it is frustating when an aspect of her subject changes, because she only paints from life.

On Thursday I went to a dance class with two girls from my program at this cultural center called Corte dei Miracoli. This wonderful woman was the teacher, and it was a contemporary class. I plan on going back every week. She was kind enough to teach the class in English for us! We told her from now on she should teach in Italian because we can’t let ourselves be babied! I am a little nervous to take the class in Italian, but I will just have to WATCH carefully everything she does, and hopefully she will continue to use French ballet terms every now and then. Her style was very organic and loose and free-flowing and I loved it!

On Friday night we went to la discoteca! It was about a 30 minute bus ride outside of Siena. It was a blast!!!

Yesterday I went with a bunch of friends to see a movie in Italian! We saw Hugo and it was very good. I understood what they were saying every now and then. Luckily it was a very visual movie and fairly easy to understand without fully comprehending the dialogue. After the movie we went out to dinner at an osteria! Osterias are the best option for going to eat if you are young and trying to save money. In Italy there are pizzerias and cafes where you buy your food and leave with it or eat it standing up, then there are osterias which are sit down and very lovely and have a nice ambiance and it is around 7-12 Euros for a dish, then there are ristorantes and trattorias which are more expensive. Every restaurant is so different in its decoration and ambiance, but they are all beautiful and feel very intimate! There are usually only a few tables in most restaurants.

After dinner we went to this place called Tea House where they serve tea and desserts and wine and other nice things. It is beautiful and the ceilings are arched and the decor is jazzy/Alice in Wonderland/comfortable living room! They have wonderful teas and beautiful cakes and pies and other desserts.

I just ate lunch with my host family. I was asking them about Disney movies and they sang Robin Hood together and my host mom cries during Bambi and she does not enjoy movies where the mommy dies just like my mom detests them!!!! Now we are about to watch a Disney movie in Italian!

Sometimes I realize food in Italy tastes so good because they indulge in ingredients that make everything taste soooo good like olive oil, salt, butter and cheese. The other night we had a soup made out of butter and cheese. That is all that was in it. Annalisa asked “Ti piace?” “Do you like it?”. SI. YES. How could a person NOT enjoy a soup made solely of butter and cheese!!!!???

Tomorrow begins the final week of the Italian intensive. Then we have our exam on Friday. Saturday I go to Florence with my art class because we could not go due to the snow this weekend. I am hoping to go to Venice for the Carnevale after my trip to Florence. It is apparently something not to miss!!

There was an intermission during our movie! Italian movie theatre screens are so much smaller than American ones!

Decorative pots and pans in an osteria near my school

 

Wine and Food!

Ciao! Just had a very good lunch with my host family. We had a fried polenta, fried artichokes, fettucine in a ragu sauce and wine! Sunday is a nice and slow day in Italy. It is finally sunny today, which gives me hope that this week will be warmer!

Yesterday was a wonderful day! I met up with two friends in the center of town to go out to lunch. We decided to explore the streets until we found a restaurant we wanted to eat at. We met at the Piazza Gramsci, where the buses come in, and each of us took turns deciding which street to go down, until we found the right place! We decided to go into a Ristorante called La Buca di Porsenna. We had to walk down three flights of stairs to get into the restaurant, which looked like it was in an Etruscan cave! The walls smelled and looked like they were below the ocean! We ordered bruschetta, which came in the form of two large slices of bread. One was soaked in garlic and olive oil, and the other was covered in a thick layer of garlic-y tomato sauce. It was soooooo flavorful and good. I ordered housemade pasta with tomato and garlic sauce. The pasta was a realllly thick and chewy spaghetti, it was so good. It came in a little tiny mountain in the center of the plate. It was so cute! And filling. After our lunch, we met up with our school and went to the Enoteca Italiana of Siena, the wine museum and bar of Siena. This place had beautiful brick walls and ceilings, and the first thing I noticed was the cross-vaulting in the ceilings! It was exciting to apply my art history knowledge to an actual building I was standing inside of! Hundreds of wines from all over Italy fill the rooms of this museum. Some of the bottles were so beautiful with beautiful little pictures on the labels. One of them was metal and reflective. Some of the bottles were enormous and nearly 300 Euros. After we looked around the museum, we went upstairs to try three different wines. We learned the appropriate wine-tasting etiquette and proper steps to analyzing a glass of wine, from swishing it around in the cup to see it form “legs” on the glass, to swishing it around in your mouth to let your mouth adjust to the flavor. The first wine we tried was a rose from the very south of Italy. It was fruity and rather dry. The second was from the very north of Italy and was red. It was smoother! The third one was from somewhere near Siena in Tuscany, and it had a bit of a burn; it was more alcoholic than the others. Now I am a wine connoisseur! Ha!

I love watching the way people interact in Siena. It seems to be a very tight-knit city in many ways. Couples on the street are very intimate and walk closely together. Men, old and young, walk around together, out and about, which I never see in the states. I tried imagining my Daddy walking around with a group of Italian men from bars to cafes and it makes me laugh. A few days ago I saw a man and his teenage son walking on the street, arm in arm! It was very sweet! On a larger scale, too, the Sienese are like a giant family, especially when it comes to the Palio. On Friday in our Italian culture class, we learned about the Palio, the incredible horse race that occurs two times over the summer in the Piazza del Campo. The city is divided into 17 contradas, or neighborhoods, that represent a certain animal. For example there is the tortoise contrada, the caterpillar, the bear, and even the unicorn! For the Palio, each contrada has one horse compete, and a jockey. Often the jockeys are not from Siena; many of them come from Sardinia. Although right now, the best jockey who competes in the Palio is from Siena. But the jockeys are not considered the competitors in the Palio, the HORSES are! So, the morning of the race, the HORSES are brought into the church of their contrada for a blessing! The priest says to the horse, “GO, and come back as a winner!” We watched a video of this happening. The video also showed the actual Palio. There are about a gazillion people in the center of the Piazza del Campo. The mayor of Siena does a lottery to see which ten of the 17 contradas will compete, because there can only be ten competitors. Once each contrada is chosen, the people from these neighborhoods freak out and run around and wave flags and go nuts. A couple of days later, the actual race happens. There is a Palio march, and men in authentic medieval outfits are doing quite impressive flag dances. The horses and jockeys come out and get ready to race. They all fight for a good area on the line to start. Each contrada has an enemy in the race, so they try to push them out of the way at the starting line. But, only nine of the competitors are at the starting line. The tenth competitor gets to come from behind whenever he chooses, and when he emerges, the race begins! He has to carefully decide a good moment when the other competitors don’t look ready. Then he comes through and everyone else goes AHH and starts racing behind him. The race lasts literally 70 seconds. An entire year of preparation for this minute long race. In this particular race, one guy knocked two others over around a corner, and one of the horses went into the crowd. It’s crazy!

So after the race, all of the contradas celebrate in their neighborhoods. They line the streets with long, long tables, and hundreds of people eat this huge meal together outside. It’s amazing! It looks like an enormous Shabbat dinner hah. So this is why I think of Siena as a family. Their enormous Palio Shabbat dinner!

Last night I went to a bar called the Bella Vista Social Pub with friends. It was Cuban themed which was odd but also ironic because I was just in Cuba! The walls were covered with decoupage of movie posters and newspapers and magazine covers and the music was fun. They even use Havana Club rum! Ha!

Today I am doing homework and hang out around the apartment. I am trying to learn more and more and more Italian everyday! I am excited for my upcoming trip to Florence this Saturday!!! I have also been looking up where all of my favorite paintings are in Italy so I can visit them. So exciting. I am also excited to start PAINTING soon.

A Sienese snowman! They are so much classier about snowmen here! His eyes are made with slices of zucchini…very impressive.

wonderful little pasta mountain

Enoteca Italiana di Siena

CROSS vaulting in the ceiling, and the ASL interpreter Maggie, signing!

Walking in a Sienese Winter Wonderland!

Hello! I do not know how to change the top of this page from saying, “Just another wordpress site.” It is very pessimistic!

Anyways, I have arrived in Siena, Italy! I am living with a great host family: Annalissa is the mother, she is separated and has two children: Livio, who is 17, and Olga who is 14. They live in a really nice apartment on Via Avignone, which is about a 25 minute walk from the main walls of Siena. My school is also in the central area of Siena. It is around forty minutes from my apartment. It is near the Piazza del Campo, the very center of the city. Piazza del Campo is beautiful. It is the main “square” of town, although it is kind of shaped like a fried egg. It is on a hill, and therefore the main area is slanted downwards. Bars, cafes and shops surround this main square. Yesterday when it snowed SO much, people (of all ages) were sledding down the hilly sidewalks into the Piazza del Campo. It was so fun to watch. It was also so funny because they were basically sledding down slippery cobblestone because it only snowed a few inches.

Snow in Siena is ridiculous! The city is not prepared for snow storms of any kind. Therefore, everyone stays home. Except for our school…My host family took yesterday AND today off. They are very lucky. Italians seem to react to many obstacles such as a snowstorm in this way. They let it be! My host mother, Annalissa often reacts to things this way. She admires the Dalai Lama and she teaches seminars on movement therapy and other kind of natural healing remedies. She owns an herbal remedy store in the center of town, but she no longer works there. I would like to see it one day! Annalissa also speaks English VERY well, which is wonderful for me because it is a comfort sometimes. She also has a chic mushroom cut.

Olga and Livio are very pleasant to live with, too. Olga is 14 and uses the word “figo” to describe something that is cool or attractive. I guess it is short for figaro figaro figaaaarrrrrroooo!!!!! She is so nice and she speaks English pretty well! Livio is really nice, too, but he does not speak any English. We still communicate and he is a great help with my Italian homework! I enjoy eating dinner with the family and hearing their exciting Italian conversations. Sometimes I accidentally interrupt because I think they are done with a sentence, but I never know if it is a pause or if they are finished!!! Often Annalissa’s best friend, Andreas comes over for dinner. He is funny and makes jokes and speaks no English! We communicate in French, and in the tiny bit of Italian I learn every day.

I absolutely love walking to school. Sometimes it is really tiring, especially up the hill to school, or when it is really snowy and slushy like the past two days. I love walking by places and remembering little details. For example, there is a little house plant/flower shop on the way to school that I pass every day. An old woman sits in a little chair looking out the window all day. Sometimes when I’ve passed, she is not in her chair and I wonder where she goes!!

The shopping is really beautiful here. Yes, there are some tacky European cheapo clothing stores, but there are also wonderful privately owned shops with amazing leather shoes, leather bags, scarves, makeup and everything. Many stores are very specific and only sell one kind of thing. Like leather boots. !!! I am contemplating what leather product I will purchase in Italy. It will be special!!! There is also a store that just sells tights which is so fun. And another store on my walk home sells knight clothing and armour. Like the tin outfit. I am scared to go in but it appears that the clothing is authentic and I feel rather curious.

The group of students on my program is really nice and I am having fun exploring the city with them. There are about 30 of us, liberal arts students and art students combined. There are eight students in the Siena Art Institute. Everyone is American except for one girl from Sicily named Viola who won an award to come to the school and is so sweet, and two people from Serbia, and one girl from Macedonia. The school has started inviting Eastern European students to apply!  Everyone is interested in the city and what is to come and we are all friendly to each other and want to be friends! Eighteen of us are living with host families, and the others are living in apartments near the Piazza del Campo. One of the apartments looks like it is from the Real World.

The Siena School/Art Institute is in a building on the top of the highest hill in Siena. The view is AMAZING and so beautiful. I am posting a picture from one of the windows with this post. The school is two floors of a building. It is very cold; I wear like four shirts every day and two pairs of leggings and two pairs of socks. I have my own little studio area because I am in the Art Institute. We had a studio lottery, and mine is one of the crappy ones!!! I have a little sliver of window. But I enjoy having a little portal to make my art. I am excited to get  started. It is overwhelming though, the notion of being in this new city but also having to create a life and routine for myself. It is also overwhelming because I want to travel. I want to travel to Rome, Florence, Pisa, Bologna, Milan, Venice, Naples, Sicily, Paris, Greece, Morocco and everywhere! I am wondering how many of those places I will get to. But my friends and I are all very excited to travel and we’ve begun making plans! I am definitely going to Israel with my mommy for the first break. And I know I will be going  to Florence next weekend for a field trip, and me and my friends here in Siena will be spending the night and exploring! I am so excited to see paintings by Caravaggio. I will probably cry.

These next three weeks are an Italian intensive at school. I got placed in the Intermediate class for some reason. It is a good challenge, but I am often overwhelmed! I am excited to be in this class though, because I am determined to be able to speak Italian well by the end of this semester. One of my other classes has begun, too, called Art and Society. This will be an interesting class because I often think about the effects of art on..society! Yesterday we went to Siena’s Museum of Natural Science. There were some STRANGE things. Like thousands of birds in glass windows. They looked like a choir of birds. There were also terracotta reproductions of mushrooms. The Tuscans are obsessed with mushrooms! There were also Siamese animals and other things that made me feel rather nauseous. We will be going to the Natural Science museum in Florence next weekend, which is not my first choice of activities for Florence but that is okay. I will go to other places after. There are apparently wax anatomical body parts at this museum which will be very interesting and I hope I can look at them without vomiting!

Our whole school got to go out to lunch the other day at this place called Fonte Giusta. We were served a creamy barley and vegetable soup, then pumpkin ravioli, then ravioli in a tomato sauce, then gnocchi in a meat sauce, then thick spaghetti in a creamy white sauce and THEN tiramisu which literally tasted like coffee and cream. And we got pitchers of very good wine. It was so fun. I sat with the  two deaf students in our group and their interpreter which I was nervous about at first, but then we talked for the  entire lunch. It was odd at first communicating with their interpreter, but I had a good  time!

Two other important things I have tried here. Brioche cioccolato, basically a croissant filled with chocolate pudding/frosting, and a chocolate cannoli, its chocolate filling was basically Nutella.

Also  I must mention the pets at my apartment. Since I have been afraid of animals my entire life, this homestay has been a huge step for me. There is a dog, Macchia, and a cat, Willie (pronounced Wee Lee). Willie and I have become quite close. I picked him up the other day. He is a jumping bean and can open door knobs and likes to look out windows. I like him so much! But I am still occasionally freaked out.

On Saturday we are going to the Enoteca Italiana, a wine museum and wine bar in or just outside of Siena. I am so excited, it will be a very authentic Tuscan experience! Also coming up, I plan to take dance, hopefully ballet, and volunteer at an organization for underprivileged, at-risk Sienese children, AND I am going to get an Italian language partner! So many exciting things! But first this snow must melt because I left New England to get away from wintertime blues!!!

SNOW!!! People sledding down into the Piazza del Compo

The view from my classroom at school! (Before the snow)

CANNOLI