You and I

I'm in Italy and it's Tuesday night and don't have any homework due until Friday. So what do I do?

Learn a new song on my ukulele of course! I watched/listened to this video a few times, repeating the tricky parts, until I figured it out:


I sang it to Somers a few times (and Somers' mom with whom Somers was Skyping) and then she recorded me singing it. Unfortunately, the video refuses to be uploaded. It is on facebook, however, and in the meantime I will keep trying to post it here for you non-facebookers.

Pat-pat-pat your weave, ladies

Finally! The end of the laundry list! I know you're all very excited.

Well, I'm here in Siena and I am LOVING it. Siena and Florence have always been fighting against each other in wars, and once the Renaissance started revolutionizing everything Siena kinda took a backseat while Florence exploded into the capital of the Renaissance. The city isn't very big, and when the plague came through it ravaged all the people, who therefore couldn't change the layout/architecture of the city because they were dead. Thus the city pretty much looks like it would've looked 500 years ago. One of our favorite things to do is to go to the main square, the Piazza del Campo, and people watch. It's fun to see all the people - old people eating gelato, people napping in the sun, teenagers with their over-the-top PDA, and of course the little tiny kids who run around chasing the pidgeons. Audrey always insists we go to the Campo to take pictures of the people, especially the little kiddies. Creeper. "I just love people. Don't you??"

I really lucked out on my living situation. My roommate, Somers, and I get along really well. We have a lot in common. We even have the same toothbrush, which is kinda weird. We didn't really know each other at all before this, but I feel like we're pretty good friends. Unfortuanely for her, she has to listen to my little gripes when we get home, but she's still talking to me, so I guess that's a good sign. My host family is awesome. It's just Paola and Marco, but they are super nice and easy-going. I feel bad because I'm usually gone off to school before they wake up and then I don't get home until an hour or two before dinner, which is at 8pm every night. We have a fun time at dinner, though. They don't speak a lick of English, so it's all Italian, all the way. I feel like my comprehension has gotten a lot better. Marco and I have a fun banter back and forth at dinner because he picks on me for being so tall. He told me "it will make it hard for you to find a husband." It's just fun. Paola doesn't let us help with dinner at all. We keep wanting to help because we're American and we want to be polite and not be an imposition. But no. No setting the table, no serving ourselves, no clearing the table, nothing. It's an Italian thing, apparently. And she gives us so much food! Oh man. Every night after dinner I just want to explode, but the food is so good I can't help it.

It still seems weird to me that I'm taking classes here. We live outside of the city walls, and it takes me about 25 min to walk to the Campo. It takes another 7-10 min to get to the DA (Dante Alighieri, the school). And of course all of Italy is one giant walk uphill so I'm usually sweaty by the time I get there. My class schedule is nice, though. I'm only taking 12 credits - Italian 321 (3 cred), Eng 355 (3), Humanities 201 (3), an online religion class about the history of the LDS church in Italy (2) and a one credit class called "cultural proofs" which basically just requires me to do one Italian activity (like ask locals to teach me a song or look at art in a small church) a week and then write a one page paper about it. The coursework isn't too heavy, but I feel like our time is always spoken for in terms of extra trips and lectures. I really enjoy it, though.

Last weekend we went to Florence/Firenze for the first time. We didn't really do anything there except walk around and "get oriented." I wished we would've been able to go into the Academia or one of the Uffizi galleries, but I think some of us are planning on going back next weekend. We went up to a lookout and got a great view of the city and the hills of Fiesole:

Yesterday we went to San Gimignano and Volterra. We didn't have much time at either place, but both were very cute old towns. We climbed to the top of the highest tower in San Gimignano and had the most amazing view of the area. When we got back to Siena, we went to the Campo where we found that the city was honoring the Lupa contrada. They had a procession of the flag bearers from each of the contrade that competed in this year's Palio and we saw two flag spinners from Lupa do their thang. It was soooo cool. There were two guys in their get ups twirling flags and throwing them and catching them and stuff. If you've ever seen the movie Under the Tuscan Sun, the part when the Polish boy gets hit in the head with the flag, that's basically what we saw. Minus the injury. All that stuff takes place in Siena. The Palio is a big deal here. It culminates with a horserace around the Piazza del Campo twice a year, as it has been run for the past 350+ years. The entire city is divided into neighborhoods, contrade, and each contrada has it's own colors, animal and patron saint. And everyone has a contrada. It's like if everyone in the US was born with a devout loyalty to an NFL or NBA team that they support and cheer on until they die. And probably even after that. Each contrada has their own contrada fountain, museum and church. Diehard. You should probably wikipedia the Palio. It's like a religion. Seriously. Seriously.

Speaking of religion, we went to church here for the second time today. The branch is tiny. There are probably fewer than 20 people, including children. Today in RS there were only two other women besides the teacher who weren't with our group. And one of those was the RS pres. One of the elders is the branch pres. and the whole meeting is conducted in Italian. It's a really great branch. Everyone is so nice and they seem to be glad that we're there, if only that our group is like a choir. We sang We Thank the O God for a Prophet at FHE last week and it sounded amazing. Like gave me goosebumps awesome. We have just the right balance of sopranos and altos. And one bass. Not bad for only having two boys with us. Maybe I should learn the tenor part for the hymns. Inni, as they're called in Italian. Oh and I was asked to say the closing prayer in sac meeting last week, and I said it in Italian! It was terrifying and I was shaking like crazy but I was so glad I did and I think the members really appreciated that I had decided to honor their branch and language even though there were more Americans in the congregation than Italians. It felt really good.

I can't believe I'm actually here. I can't believe all of this is acutally happening. I feel like the luckiest girl in the world. I love Italy. I love being able to understand people when they speak Italian. I love speaking Italian. I love Italian food. I love the idea of "dolce far niente / how sweet to do nothing" while sitting in the Piazza del Campo. I love gelato. I love window shopping everywhere I go. I love that I've purchased four scarves already. I love seeing multiple ridiculously attractive Italian men every day. I love seeing multiple ridiculously attractive Italian women every day. I love the walking the streets and seeing the contrada's colors on lampposts and flags to mark their territory. I love Siena.

I love my life.

Mangia Mangia

Ugh I'm so far behind on these posts.

Day 6 - Friday!
Long version: We switched things up a bit and instead of having a free afternoon our morning was free. So the team (Audrey, Olivia, and me) decided to sleep in a little bit and then start our morning at the Piazza del Popolo. We had gone there already, but this time we wanted to go to the Santa Maria del Popolo which had been closed the other times we stopped by. Inside this church are two huge paintings by Caravaggio: The Conversion of St. Paul and The Crucifixion of St. Peter. Maybe you've seen/heard of them. That was another one of my highlights from Rome. They were so massive and really just amazing. I can't wait until we get to go into the museums in Rome when we go back in November. After the Caravaggios we headed out of the city to the non-Catholic cemetery to visit John Keats' grave. The cemetery is really cool because no only is it really old, but there are all kinds of people buried there. It used to be that if you were not Catholic you could not be buried inside the city walls. Keats was a Protestant, if that. It was really cool to walk around and see all of the tombstones. Some were more elaborate than others, and we found that most of the tombstones were written in Italian, English or Greek. We even found one written in Japanese. After that we went back into the city to go to the Santa Maria della Concezione, which we dubbed "the creepy church." We called it as such because it used to house Fransican monks, and on the side of the church is a crypt. It's not very big, just a hallway with some niche-like rooms off to one side, but it was veeery very interesting. They have used all the bones of the skeletons to decorate the rooms. For example, some of the walls were lined with stacks of skulls and femurs to make niches for a robed monk skeleton. Like, hundreds of skulls. And the ceilings were decorated with patterns made from vertebrae and other little bones. It was so bizzare. Olivia and Audrey have both taken anatomy (Audrey was a TA even) and so they were both geeking out and identifying and naming all the bones in the decorations. After the creepy church we went back to the Vatican to see if we could manage to get into St. Peter's. The line was insanely long, again, so we decided we'd just wait until November to go back in. Instead we had a snack by one of the pillars in the square and then went back to our hotel where we were supposed to meet up with the rest of our group. Talbot took us to San Pietro in Vincoli which translates to Saint Peter in Chains. Under the altar are some chains that are reported to have held St. Peter bound when he was in Rome before he died. And not only were those at that church, but it is also the home of Michelangelo's Moses. Oh man. The Moses was incredible. So life-like, so powerful. It was really awesome. It was interesting for such a grand piece of art to be in that church, though, because the rest of the interior is really kinda boring. No massive frescoed walls or anything. An interesting juxtaposition. Anyway, our next stop was another church - San Clemente. Upon seeing it, it's really not that exciting. But as we've been learning, it's not just about the outside. San Clemente is a Catholic church that was built on top of an early christian church that was built on top of a Roman pagan church to Mithras. So a triple layer church. We had tickets to go down to the Mithras church. It was hard to imagine that that place was once at ground level and was where real people would go to worship Mithras two thousand years ago. Paul and Peter may have even seen/been inside that very place. Crazy. It was very fascinating. We've seen so many examples of how Catholic churches and traditions take their root from the basic designs of the ancient Romans. What a rich history.

Short version: Caravaggios in Santa Maria del Popolo, cemetery and Keats' grave, creepy church - Santa Maria della Concezione, St. Peter's square, San Pietro in Vincoli (chains of St. Peter and Michelangelo's Moses), triple-layer San Clemente

Day 7 - SIENA!
Long version: This was our last view of Rome! We left in the morning for Siena via a hired coach. About halfway there we stopped at Sarteano, a small town just inside Tuscany. Here we met up with Luca Bonomi, who works at the Dante Alighieri (DA) and is basically our ambassador. Our Virgilio, you might say. He took us to a very little know place in Sarteano where they have discovered Etruscan tombs that are hundreds and hundreds of years old, and one of the tombs still has vibrantly colored frescoes on the walls. This was also the spot where we got our first real view of the Tuscan countryside and I'll tell you what, it looks exactly like all the pictures you've ever seen of the place. It was absolutely beautiful. Luca had arranged a lunch for us at a local cafe, so we ate lunch in Sarteano before getting back on the bus to finally get to Siena. Everyone was nervous to meet their host families, but we were all very excited to get into Siena. We got dropped off at the train station in Siena and then our families came to pick us up. I'm rooming with a girl named Somers (like summers), and we have become pretty good friends. I like her. Our family consists of a husband, Marco, and his wife, Paola, who are both in their 60s. Paola and her sister in law came and picked Somers and me up from the train station and took us to Paola's house. They live northwest of the city center in a cute little apartment on the first floor. And they don't speak any English. Gulp. After we had unpacked all our stuff, Marco took Somers and me on a walk to the Piazza del Campo, the main piazza of Siena and the city center. It's where they run the Palio. We got back to their house just as Paola was finishing making dinner. We eat at about 8pm every night. And we eat a lot. Paola and Marco don't eat very much, but boy do they fill up our plates. And of course genuine Italian cooking is excellent. We always eat a first course of pasta or rice and then the second course is usually some kind of meat and a vegetable or potato side dish. We finish off usually with fruit or cheese or both. And I had mentioned something about how I was excited about the gelato here, so we typically have gelato after the fruit almost every night. It's a good thing I've been doing so much walking because my eating is rivaling that amount. It's all so good!

Short version: leave Rome, Sarteano and Etruscan tombs, Siena!, meet our family, walk to the Piazza del Campo, eat, eat, eat, eat and eat some more

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita...

I'll send a postcard to whoever can tell me where this blog title comes from without cheating!

Day 4

Long version: In the morning we went as a group to the house where John Keats lived when he moved to Rome from England after finding out he had "consumption" aka TB. We sat in a big study and one of the curators of the house told us all about Keats and his life and friends and all that. I wished I had known more about Keats before we went - it would've given me a better appreciation for being in his house and learning about his life. When we were done it was about lunchtime so Audrey, Olivia and I (when I refer to "we" this is usually the combination of people I'm talking about) went to a little trattoria near the Piazza del Popolo for lunch. That was actually the only sit-down meal we had in Rome besides the hotel dinners. From there we went to the Vatican again. When we were there the first time half of St. Peter's was closed off for mass so I didn't get to see all of it. Well the line to get in was huge so we decided to skip St. Peter's and started on a walk that Talbot had written down for us to do. We walked from St. Peter's toward the Castel Sant'Angelo which is a big castle-like structure that was originally built as a mausoleum for the emporer Hadrian. In subsequent years the Popes used it to hide from invading armies and stuff. We then crossed the Ponte Sant'Angelo and headed toward the Via dei Coronari, which was probably my favorite place in Rome. It was just a little, quiet street with a great history. Christian pilgrims would walk down this road along the Tiber River on their way to the Vatican. Naturally, vendors sprung up offering all kinds of trinkets and the coronari, rosary beads, were the biggest sellers and thus the road is named. Now there are mostly antiques shops. It was so different than any other part of Rome we visited. We walked along the Via dei Coronari until we hit the Piazza Navona, at which point it started to pour buckets of rain. And of course, we weren't anywhere near a Metro stop. So we cut our walk short and went back to the hotel. It stopped raining while we were en route, but we were soggy and didn't feel like resuming our walk. We had a nice night in instead.

Short version: John Keats' house, Vatican, Castel Sant'Angelo, Ponte Sant'Angelo, Via dei Coronari, Rain


Day 5 - giovedi'

Long version: What a day. We went to the San Castillo Catacombs in the morning. Getting there was an absolute disaster. We had to take the Metro to a bus stop near the edge of the city and then catch the 118 bus to take us on the Via Appia (this road has great religious significance for anyone who believes in the New Testament). Easy peasy, right? Wrong. We waited for a half hour for a bus to come by. But when it came we were down two people who were taking a potty break. Some of us got on the bus thinking they would just catch the next bus, but Talbot decided we should just wait so we got off the bus. That is, most people got off the bus. I, however, did not make it off the bus. Instead me and Travis took the bus to our stop and decided to wait for our group at the catacombs. And wait we did. It was an hour and a half before the next 118 bus came. An hour and a half. 1.5 hours. Travis and I basically had to wait under a little tree by the road unable to communicate at all with our group. In the States I would've just whipped out my phone and texted my peeps, but no. Not in Italy. No phone. When the bus finally came, I realized we had gotten off a few stops too early, so Travis and I had to walk up the Via Appia to meet up with our group. Fun fact: the Via Appia is an ancient Roman road. It is cobblestone and is lined by 13' walls. It is wide enough for one car to comfortably drive through. So naturally it is a two way street. The shoulder is about a foot wide in most places. Yep. Travis and I almost died a few times while walking down this ridiculously tiny road with cars zooming past us. It's a miracle we're alive. Seriously. But the catacombs were pretty neat. Kinda spooky, but neat. Instead of waiting for the stupid 118 bus to take us back to our hotel we took the 218 bus which went a different way but still got us to a Metro station. And we only had to wait 10 min or so for it. Boo 118 bus. Hooray beer! I mean, hooray 218 bus! After composing ourselves at the hotel, our mini group set out to finish our walk from the day before. We started this time at the Piazza del Popolo were we got to see two gigantic Caravaggio paintings in a church nearby. Those were definitely a highlight of Rome as well. We then set off down the road where we passed by Caesar Augustus' mausoleum. We also peeked inside a church called the Santi Ambrogio e Carlo al Corso which was gorgeous, and also where a couple was being married! As we continued down the road we passed by the Ara Pacis (Altar of Peace) and eventually met back at the Piazza Navona where we had abandoned our walk the day before. We seized the opportunity to go back into the piazza to check out Bernini's Fountain of the Four Rivers and look inside Borromini's Sant'Agnese in agone. Afterwards we took the Metro to the Piazza della Repubblica so Audrey could check out the Fontana delle Naindi with its "sensual nymph" statues. Yeah. And then that night after dinner we went to the Colosseum so we could see it in the nighttime. They had turned out some of the lights so they could shine some projection on it, which was a bummer, but it was still very pretty. I didn't have a tripod so I couldn't get any good pictures. Oh well. Still a good day.

Short version: Via Appia bus disaster, San Castillo catacombs, Piazza del Popolo and Caravaggio paintings, Augustus' mausoleum, Santi Ambrogio e Carlo al Corso and wedding, Ara Pacis, Piazza Navona, Piazza della Repubblica, Colosseum

You aughta be in pictures

Here are a few of the pics I took from the first three days in Rome :)

Cathedral at the top of the Spanish Steps:

Views from the Spanish steps:

The Pantheon:

The occulus of the Pantheon:

Inside the Pantheon:

The facade of St. Peter's Basilica:

View of the Vatican from the Duomo of St. Peter's:

Light from the windows in the Duomo of St. Peter's:

The Roman Forum:

The outside of the Colosseum:

The inside of the Colosseum:

Throwing a coin over my shoulder into the Fontana di Trevi: