Kidding

This is the address of my webshots page: http://community.webshots.com/user/infinitchaos

I actually just filled it up a minute ago, so I need to make a new one, soon to come. I know you're all on the edges of your seats.

Fiesole, Ravenna Parts Deux

Yesterday we had a wonderful little time in Fiesole, which we had totally failed to fully explore on our first go round. This time it was me and Carla and TJ and Sara. We spent most of our time in the Roman ruins and museum, admiring the amazing views from the hilltops, lizard-spotting, playing on a delicious swingset, and generally coveting the lifestyle of all whom we saw around us. Last night, Tjs last evening with us in Florence, we had the good old feast-style dinner, and then Sara slept over, as she and I were to leave on the 7 frickin am train to Ravenna...

..which was amazing. Not only has all of Tuscany apparently chosen this moment to flower into stunning fields of green grass dotted with flowering bushes and trees and what not, but Ravenna was even more incredible the second time around. I love mosaics! They are shiny and stunning! Check out my webshots pictures, the link is under the entry title. And, since we got such an early start, we had plenty of time to get off at a certain small town on the three hour ride back, namely a little place called LUGO, where Sara and I roamed the streets taking photos of anything that said lugo, from the plaques that gave the house numbers to an electrical van, and then stealing more stuff from the church...what? It's Sara's town anyway, we can do what we want!

Tomorrow Carla and I are going to Cortona, a charming little medieval town, and tomorrow evening, out to dinner with the Dartses!

List

Places in Italy I have been:

Venice
Rome
Ravenna
Verona
Padua
Assisi
Orvieto
Pisa
Lugo

Places still to see:

Cortona
Lucca
Siena
Ostia
Tivoli

Frustration

This is the second day in a row that I've walked to the antiques market in Piazza Ciompi only to find it closed. It's supposed to be open all the time, wtf! I wanted to go back to pick up a record for Sean, High Society, that he's actually interested in, as opposed to all those I have bought for him in the past, which are kind of hit and miss.

Hey, blogger dashboard informs me that I have written 750 posts in this blog since its inception back in high school. Awesome!

Yesterday we traipsed over to Sara's studio to see the school art exhibit, which was nothing short of amazing. That people my age are capable of so much ingenuity and technical skill, while I, well, I can't even begin to imagine how incompetent I would look if I had tried to take a class like jewelry making. For a second there when I first went to Sara's studio last week, I was like, damn, I should have taken some kind of artsy hands on class, instead of all this Romanesque buildings business, but those really are not classes for beginners. Sara was pounding things with hammers and cutting metal and soldering, and doing all kinds of things that require patience and precision, neither of which I usually apply to things of a manual nature.

Anyway, so the things on display were awesome. Sara's treasure chest, made entirely of fabric for her soft sculpture class, was adorable, and her silk painting thing, which was a Lichtenstein print with embroidery, was in my opinion the best of all the ones that were on display. Of course, to actually buy this item it would cost me like 200 bucks, 300 if she really charged how much it was worth...admiring it is still good, right? The jewelry people had made was stunning, part of me wished there were price tags attached, but I'm sure that, being hand made, they would probably cost a small fortune, most of them.

This weekend I'm going back to Ravenna with Sara, yay! There are a bunch of other small towns I want to visit, as well, like Vinci, Lucca, Siena, Parma. Viva Tuscany!

Part Deux

Anyway, while I can't say that the trip lived up to every expectation, I can say that it has made me heartily adore the little city that is Florence. I love this place, yet I have less than two months left here. It's like a vise is tightening around every experience, I have to take it all in, as much as I can, because of the fear that too soon it will all be over.

Oh, and I hate trains, specifically trains that go through a million tunnels and leave your ear pressure begging for mercy. Booooo to trains!

Flight attendents that have domestic squabbles en route, along with entirely too chatty captains who sound an eensy weensy bit like terrorists, get the boooo as well.

However, I give a HOORAY to our apartment, because never have I been happier to see my own domicile, my own bed! Yipee!

Sardegna

Ah, Sardinia. I think we're just going to call it "the island" from now on, though that will always remind me of Sara's mom talking about Puerto Rico. What did I bring back from this island paradise? Seashells, a little bottle of mirto liquer, a whole lot less money than when I left Florence last week, and a bruise on my ass the size of a nectarine. But no tan, because oh no, my friends, despite lying on a beach, I gained no color anywhere besides my nose, which turned traitor and Rudolph-esque after a single morning of climbing around on some rocky cliffs near the ocean. The bruise was sustained the morning after a night of more-than-substantial drinking, wherein TJ and I consumed a bottle of rum between the two of us. While this did not bother him, my body was not amused and reacted accordingly, making for quite the night--only to be capped off, of course, by me falling down a flight of slick marble stairs the next morning, sustaining said bruise, and feeling shooting pains in my back whenever I laughed for the next couple of days.

I've never seen such green countryside in my life, nor have I ever seen clearer, more perfectly turquoise water surrounded by white beaches. Visually, the island was a gem, and I will preserve it as such in my memories. The people of Sardinia, meanwhile, are a mean-spirited and tricksy bunch, because I think we were lied to or misled by just about every damn person we asked for help! It must be a sport over there! We also didn't see any other Americans for most of the trip, which was rather refreshing. On our last night in Alghero, a guy from the room over popped in to ask where we were from, and he turned out to be an ex-pat from Storrs, CT, now living in Berlin.

Last Pre Sardinian Post

It's kinda sad, but I'd almost like to stay in Florence for spring break, especially because Zev is here, and I've gotten awfully used to this sense of hey, let's just wander around the city aimlessly for hours because it's warm out and I have no class...sigh. What a cool kid, and we're going to lose him! Sniffles! I also wish that Sara could arbitrarily skip her classes and come with us. I heart that girl.

Oh well--Sardinia, here we come!

And the Beat Goes On

Sunshine has finally returned to Firenze, bringing with it a passel (what a word!) of new friends. First and foremost, dear Zev Moses from Montreal who randomly met Sara in Spain and then met up with us when he came to Florence, and who is awesome, and who we would sincerely wish to adopt, were he not off to Israel at the same time we're off to Sardinia..also we have decided to adopt Sara once her program ends, so she'll stay with us! Anyway, next on our list of is Justin, Carla's Maltese god, who unfortunately doesn't say much because he thinks his English is bad, but when he does speak, totally sexy accent. Love it. Finally, we have Sean, no, not mine, but Sara's recent date, who stopped by our place with her, is quite cute, and who excited Anna by wearing Prada glasses. It's delicious to have the Y chromosome present. When the last of the men leave, which will be TJ, after his spring break sojourn with us, I think it's going to be pretty depressing.

Last night Anna's parents cooked us a feast, and I mean a feast, of pasta, and god saw it and said it was good. And then Anna and Carla decided to watch Noises Off---again, and god shuddered and said he had someone to be smiting.

A few days until Sardinia....drumroll please...Oh, and I not only survived midterms with all mental faculties intact, I got a perfect score on my Italian. What now!

Rain, Rain, Go Away

It's Thursday and still not a speck of blue sky has been seen since the boys left. However, I'm down to my last exam, having just left Renaissance Art of the Courts feeling quite good about it. The thing I like about that class is not so much the art we're studying, but more that it's giving me a well-rounded history of one of my favorite subjects, the families and the wars and the power struggles of the Renaissance courts. Also, the courts we're studying, which are all the fifteenth century families of Urbino, Ferrara, Florence, Milan etc, happen to be people who had cropped up here or there in things I've read, either for other classes or historical fiction--how I love those! One of my favorites, which is ridiculously long but still good, is "The Duchess of Milan". The main characters, Ludovico Il Moro, the Regent of Milan, and his wife, Beatrice D'Este, daughter of the Duke of Ferrara, are already people I knew the history of before I took this class, so reading about them and the court they created around them feels rather like getting more acquainted with old friends.

When I get home I'm going to read that book again. Yum. And you know, if I ever want to go over my textbook for this class at home, I certainly can, because guess what, I already owned the damn book in America before I came here! I got it from Dr Escobar when he had his book giveaway in our seminar, he suggested I take it, but never did I think it would actually be the textbook for the class of the same name in Florence. Therefore, I have refused to actually buy the book here, and I have been reading it in the library.

Sara wrote in her journal that she only has four weekends left in her program. I can't believe she would be leaving Florence only in a month! The four of us here in San Gallo have agreed that it would be truly excellent if she camped out at our apartment for a while before she goes home. She stayed over for like three days when the boys first got here, after having returned from a rather eventful spring break experience, and it was so much fun.

Meanwhile, I will be in Sardinia in a matter of days, where apparently a delicacy is toast with worms on it. Oh dear god.

I'm torn between really wanting to go home, because having seen Sean only amplified how much I've missed him the past couple of months, and really wanting this time not to be over. I know everyone talks about how when they get out of college they're just going to say fuck it all and go live in Europe for a couple of years, but the chances of that happening are quite tiny. For one thing, in my case, student loans would be a definite issue. The only plan I have for living abroad post-graduation is if I get a Fulbright to teach in Spain, which I would love to do, not for the children but for the location, but the chances of actually getting one of those, while not infinitesimally small, are rather limited. I don't have my heart set on it. It's probably just going to be grad school for me, and then someday in the future I know I will return to Europe and see places I haven't seen before. I just have to accept that living here again will never really be an opportunity.

Do Europeans know how lucky they are? Americans think we're luckier, but really only in material things. I think I could do without fruit loops, and water pressure, and a toaster oven, if in exchange I could have Tuscany. But Tuscany would be rather empty without Sean, and he would never be able to live abroad, as we learned from his traveling experiences lol. I suppose the idea of life in America can always be improved by the person who shares it with you.

Oh, Exams

Two down, three to go, and still it will not stop raining. I think Sean and Mike stole our sunshine when they went away. Literally and figuratively.

Last night I had a dream about my father, which isn't unusual, I have them often, except usually he hasn't died in the dreams and life is pretty much normal. In this dream, somehow I came across a spell or a potion or something crazy that could actually cause a dead person to be reconstituted for short periods of time. As in, poof! There they are, and then after a little while poof! they go away again. I don't really remember what I had to do, just something small and then he would appear, and he was a little confused and disorientated and I don't think I actually ever told him what had happened to him, or maybe he already knew. It's become mostly a confused muddle of a dream now, like they usually do. I just remember a feeling of such happiness, mixed with anxiety, because I kept doing the spell over and over again to bring him back, and I knew somehow that it wasn't healthy and I shouldn't keep doing it, but I did.

Oh, March and April, the things you do to me.

Update at Last

Aside from my little post from the hostel in Rome, I've had no chance to write anything on here for the duration of the boys' stay, which is too bad, really, because I wish I had written down every little thing that happened so I would always remember. Having Sean with me in Italy (and TJ and Mike, of course) has so far been the absolute highlight of my two months here, and now that he's gone, it seems that the sun doesn't want to shine on Florence anymore. No, literally, it was gorgeous the week they were here, and now, two days of clouds and rain. A sign, I tell you, a sign.

My second experience of Rome was far better than the first. The day we arrived, Wednesday, after taking a not-so-express train from Florence, was so warm I was actually sweating as we walked about the city. This time I not only saw the Forums but walked down into them, and it was an incredible feeling to walk amid the ruins, almost disappointing in that it's so hard to realize what these once would have been, but here and there there were pieces of the old magnificence, still clinging hardily after the centuries. It happened to be the Ides of March, and there was a fire burning on the Altar of Caesar. People had even left flowers on his statue. We also walked all around the monument to Vittorio Emmanuele II, which is even more impressive close up, and saw the copy of the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius outside the Capitoline museum. The boys went up into the Colosseum while I stayed outside rahter than pay the entrance fee again...I petted a Colosseum cat! Which Sean later scolded me for, saying it was filthy, but homeless cats need love too. I walked under the Arch of Titus, which I had also previously seen, but this time Sean had reminded me that the frieze on the interior showed the Roman forces stealing the menorah from the Jewish temple.

The next morning was the Vatican, where thanks to Mike's forethought, we did NOT have to wait in the huge line, but skipped ahead to the reservation area for a guided tour. It was almost twice as expensive, but this tour rocked so much more than the last one! We saw the Belvedere courtyard, with the original Laocoon, the Torso, and the Apollo, and we saw the Stanzae decorated by Raphael, all things our previous guide skipped right over. Then we hit the Sistene, which was still cool the second time, but I can understand why the boys preferred Raphael's more accessible frescoes. Finally we came to St. Peter's, which we had gone to see the previous night (absolutely spectacular--all lit up, with almost no one there), and despite the torrential rain outside it was a wonderful experience. Oh, and we saw a little procession of some Indian priests with hot pink vestments, and I got a compliment from a cute Vatican guard (ok, he whispered "speranza" to me, which means "hope", but the tone of voice was definitely there. meow.) After this, Sean dragged me aroudn the entire Vatican wall at a fast trot, because he had been forced to check his umbrella at the entrance, and feared it would close before he got there. Did I mention that it had not rained this hard since Noah's days? So naturally by the time we retrieve said umbrella and retreat to the guys' hotel, which was luxurious, I was pretty much soaked from shoe to knee. What better way to relax than with a jacuzzi bath soak? Unless you dont actually know anything about jacuzzis, for example that you must fill them up before turning it on, and therefore wind up with a demonic-sounding bathtub tuhmping and growling and shooting jets of water at random intervals, which leads of course to screams of "it's trying to eat me" and my rescue by Mike and Sean. Ah, adventure in the Eternal City.

Thursday night TJ treated us to a lovely dinner with the help of his aunt's gold card, so we all ordered the Italian way, with multiple courses, and it was good. Mmm. Friday morning we did a walking tour of the other side of the city, from the Trevi to the Pantheon, the Spanish steps and Piazza Navona. Friday night we had dinner all togehter, as Meredith and Carla had arrived, and then Saturday morning we departed for a 3 hr train ride to Pisa (saying goodbye to TJ before we left, but he's coming back in less than two weeks anyway). The Campo dei Miracoli, field of miracles, is a huge open area containing the Cathedral, baptistry, and of course the campanile, otherwise known as the leaning tower. It is indeed pretty cool, but I was not paying 15 euro just to climb it, so we looked at it instead.

Then the sadness started, because I knew the next morning I would have to say goodbye to Sean, not to mention Admiral Chickara, who I had entrusted to Sean's keeping (there were several important aerial battles fought in Rome and Pisa by opposing squadrons of paper airplanes and their respective commanders, Admiral Chickara and Emperor Fatty Cuckoo. Results were inconclusive, and both sides have declared a ceasefire until May 21st). We had to go to bed at 8pm so we could get up early enough to be at the airport by 5am, and I spent the night between Mike and Sean (not as sexy as it sounds, there was a dip). The next morning, if you could call it that, we went to the airport in the dark, and I found out unfortunately that I couldn't get out of there until 8am when the ticket office opened. Bah. Luckily Sean gave him his Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide, so I read through about half of that while trying not to be incredibly depressed. It was a losing battle. I've never had to say goodbye to anyone at an airplane gate before. It was so upsetting to watch him walking toward the security line that I had to run outside for a second and sit on a bench. Then I went back inside and waved some more, because it just seemed that every glance I got of him would somehow be able to make it better. But then they had to go through the doors and they were gone.

Now Carla tries to cheer me by saying, the next time you see him you'll be home for good! But that has its own downside, namely that I will have left Italy for good. For a brief ten days, I was having my cake and eating it too.

Mmm. Cake.

Rome Redux

Currently I'm in Rome, finishing up the boys' vacation in the Eternal City. The weather on wednesday was without a doubt the most amazing warm weather i have yet seen in Italy. It was then naturally followed by the worst day of rain Ive seen. Let's hope today is a nice mix!! Yesterday we spent most of the day in the Vatican, where we skipped the line because mike had gotten us reservations on a guided tour. sweet. I finally saw Raphael's rooms, as well as the chubby statue of Antinoo in the Egyptian gallery, plus the Laocoon, the torso, etc etc. It was great. Then I took a jacuzzi bath in the guys' hotel room, whihc is a sweet one, whereas TJ and I are sleeping in an OK hostel. REally we mostly live in the other hotel. For example, my stuff is all there now, we came here last night with a plastic bag with our pajamas in it, that's all!

Having Sean here has been the best week of my trip so far. It's scary to think he's leaving in two days. I'm going to miss him so much!! Italy is so much better with him in it.

Upcoming Craziness

The next few weeks are going to be pure insanity. Sean, Mike, TJ, Sinead, and Anna's brother Adam, as well as her best friend Lisa, are all coming this weekend, and next week will be one whirlwind Sean adventure in Firenze and Roma, naturally. The week after that is our exams, god only knows when I will be studying for them...eep...but both Capote and Pride and Prejudice will be at the Odeon that week, so I will be there! Then after that we leave for our spring break madness in Sardinia...then a paltry week of class before Carla and I jet off for our buddy-picture-esque revels in Spain! I'm going to be so broke, hahaha.

Sunday the 12th is Sara's 21st birthday!

Left Untitled

At this moment, almost to my own surprise, I find myself extraordinarily angry on behalf of a friend, to an extent that I haven't felt in some time. The cause of my anger is this friend's treatment by another girl at our school over the eternally provacative subject of "housing drama". The offender feels that she was duped and backstabbed by my friend, who, in her own best interests, found a future roommate from among that girl's current suitemates, who she was apparently depending on as well. That her own roommate and supposed friend of several years would want to leave her and live elsewhere, might speak to this individual's personality, or it might not; that's really none of my friend's concern. However, this girl's reaction and subsequent behavior toward my friend were unpardonable, especially since she apparently reacted a good deal less harshly towards her own deserting roommate! My friend was called by her, among other things, a "worthless cunt", on an internet journal for the world to see, a friend whose only real crime to was to secure her own living situation for the following year.

That this entry was later replaced by a flimsy "I was out of line" is immaterial to me. Nor would I accept any explanations on the part of mutual acquaintances who might posit that it was all done in a fit of pique and of course doesn't represent the girl's true feelings or manners. On the contrary, I feel that a person's true character is sometimes most clearly revealed by their reaction in situations such as this one. When given the choice between lashing out violently at perceived persecutors or calmly evaluating the possible reasons why friends seem to leave her like rats from a drowning ship, she chose the path of malice.

Her vicious attack on her journal came to the conclusion that all my friend's sins could be traced back to her "membership" in our group of friends, who have evidently made it our lives' mission to cause her pain. Au contrair, we, by and large, would like nothing more than to forget that a person by her name exists on the face of the earth. We do not have a cult. People are free to choose their own friends, and this girl resented that after knowing her for some time, we chose not to be friends with her. A lot of pent-up aggression exists relative to that point, and was apparently released in this pointed assault towards my friend.

My response to this is, if you will pardon my French, tough shit. If you cannot make and keep friends it is no fault of ours, and the same goes for roommates. Less time spent villifying others and more time spent examining your own conduct might turn up some interesting observations on this point. In conclusion, this girl demanded on her journal that whosoever chose to make comments against her and her behavior at least do the courtesy of signing their name, I'll do that.

--Michelle

Another Glorious Weekend

I can't believe it, every day moves me closer to when Sean comes to Florence! This is so exciting!

We had another amazing time this weekend, starting with me, Anna and Carla getting drunk on our cheap rum Friday night, culminating in yet another drunken dial to poor TJ, who I think was asleep and none too pleased to hear from us. But it was good. The next morning, remembering some of the things we had all said, admitted to, shared, etc, it was one of those awkward laugh-grimace moments, but it's OK, as Anna says, because we're closer now...right? Haha. Whatever, it was fun.

Saturday was even better, because we met up with Maria at 5:30 and went leather shopping. Because Maria is amazing and knows everyone, we were offered scandalous discounts at the leather place, ie, Anna wound up buying a 180 bag and an 80 wallet for 110 total. There was, surprisingly enough, a bag I actually liked enough to purchase, but they didn't have it in black, and no way will I ever carry something white--I would rather carry a puggle.

After this we set about having a traditional Italian evening--we went to one bar for an aperitivo, where I discovered they make delicious amaretto sours, then we went to the restaurant, which in this case was actually just a fifties-diner esque American burger joint because we all craved one, then to another bar for coffee, then finally to a lounge/bar place called the Blob. Here yet again Maria is hooked up, because she used to live right next door and has been friends with owner and staff, all brits, for years. The place was really well decorated and low key, and I had another amaretto sour which was incredibly sour and almost killed me. Maria is fun for many reasons, perhaps the most important being she is not the same person we see every day, ie each other, so there are suddenly NEW topics to discuss, and new opinions to hear. She's also really nice, and calm, and has an ironic little sense of humor that I quite enjoy. Plus, we know an actual Italian, who can ask questions for us at the bar! Yipee!

Yesterday it poured in the morning so we didn't want to go anywhere. Instead we snuggled up to watch Gallipoli, which was an early Mel Gibson flick ,and I will admit, he was heart stoppingly handsome. It was a war movie in part, which led me to determine that I must see Saving Private Ryan again soon. Also, Im going to go see Pride and Prejudice again at the Odeon...it's coming back!! Plus Capote is coming as well, I'm very excited to see that, I heard Hoffman won best actor for it. Oh, and Carla's mother was nice enough to bring us some magazines and books, so I read John Grisham's the Last Juror, and it was very good. I'm not usually partial to his books because I'm not big on law stories, but this one was actually told from a college boy turned journalist's point of view.

Christopher Moore has a new book out come April 1st, called a Dirty Job, I cant wait to read it!!

YES!

Carla and I just bought plane tickets for a weekend in Barcelona...I'm going back to Spain!!!

Rain, Go Away, Please

Yes, I know it's snowing like mad in the States, but this does not prevent me from being annoyed at the persistent rain here! Today I had to go on a class trip to the contemporary art museum in Prato, which was kind of a waste of time because I hate contemporary art. There is no way you're going to convince me that cutting a giant canoe in half and suspending it from the ceiling is art. Sorry.

Yesterday was a day of wonder. In the morning I explored the neighborhood of Santa Maria Novella, the coolest aspect being the church of Oggnisanti, where both Botticelli and Amerigo Vespucci are buried. In the afternoon I wandered into an Arab market store and found nothing other than my beloved, long last Syrian bread, here called panne siriano--sadly they did not know what Syrian pepper is, so my search must continue before I can make hushwei here. Then, in the evening, I went into the only second hand store in town that I know, where the fur coat still remains at 70 euro, and bought instead a green A-line coat for 30 euro that looks just like my ivory coat, just, you know, green, and not cashmere, but that's kind of good because my poor ivory coat was never meant to be worn regularly, I fear. I wore the coat today and it is sexy, I love it.

I've been writing poetry again! Yay!

Via Francigena

I just got out of the coolest lecture! Ok, it was nominally about the Via Francigena, this ancient pilgrim's road that led from Canterbury to Rome. The speaker was a man who, on the basis of a diary from 900 ad, plotted out the missing parts of the path, ie everything above Lucca in Italy, and traveled it himself, finding all these ancient stopping points--80 of them, according to him. He found pieces of ancient pottery, one of which was a 2 meter high bronze Etruscan vase, which he found in a barn somewhere in France, and found old Bronze age camps, medieval granges where there are just farms now, etc etc. He explained that the road was not merely a pilgrim's way, it was a very ancient traveling route that followed the primitive wisdom of traveling along the tops of ridges and in watersheds. Basically, because all of Tuscany is hills, you can walk from Lucca to Rome without getting your feet wet. He also explained that only in Tuscany are hills callled "poggio", or stands...everywhere else they're just called hills, but in Tuscany, they had a special purpose, to serve as stands or bases for Etruscan and Bronze Age settlements and stopping points.

This post is going to be exceedingly disjointed because I am in such a high tempo of excitement right now. Basically, this man inspired me to an immense degree. I want to explore, I want to hike, I want to uncover pieces of ancient pottery lying in vineyards! He told us so many cool things, like how many Irish saints traveled the road to re-convert an Italy that had been destroyed by the barbarian invasion. They settled in towns in Tuscany, towns which now have as their patrons saints with names like Brigida and Finiano--one town, he added, was ruled in the early medieval era by a single Irish nun! He went to some of these places and actually discovered the caves where they lived, covered in crosses.

This man, Giovanni Caselli, said that his purpose was to inspire people, to make them think differently about what they see. He said it's one thing to go on vacation to a touristy spot, and another to follow a road, an ancient one, and see the history it leads you to. He said when he crossed the Alps on this road, he was able to ignore the parking lots and hotels because he saw the Roman road marker, and fragments of their original road, and knew he was seeing history. He advised us to just climb a hill and start walking along the ridges, to look for hills that are "poggio tondo" because they were probably round camps in the old days, or things called Kalla, which were teutonic camps. Listening to him I suddenly didnt want to spend my money on a weekend trip to Madrid, I wanted to go into the countryside and start looking for the past.

Even better, I actually made a friend at this lecture. After the other students departed, one girl and I stayed behind to talk to this guy. He offered us his business card and said that he invites students to visit his town, north of Florence, in the spring, and he takes them on tours free of charge. He even told us there's a hotel there where for 38 euro you get two meals. This girl, Megan, and I exchanged info in case either of us goes hiking. She said she was thinking of going to Fiesole on Sunday, which is one of the places he said you could start on an ancient path, and I told her I'd definitely meet her there if she was going. He did mention that this is not the best weather, and that May will be better, but I'm so pumped I would go tomorrow if I could.

His book is out of print and only in Italian, but im going to hunt it down in used bookshops anyway. He published his maps and information online on his website, uncopyrighted because he says it belongs to everyone. I wish I could be like this man, and spend months just following my guesses and a 1000 year old manuscript. I want to have adventure!

Not Much

It's amazing how I can spend several hours sitting on my ass in this computer lab while outside the world of Italy drifts by. Ok, I intended to be productive and visit the Laurentian library this morning, ie the library where Michelangelo created his innovative and incredible staircase, but when I went in, that section was marked as closed indefinitely for restoration. Bastards. I fully intend to sneak in at some point. What are they going to do to me, arrest me?

The time draws near when the heavens shall open up and deposit half the contents of Fairfield's campus on our little Firenze! Haha, I'm so excited. The first week alone, we will have Anna's brother, Meredith's friend Sinead, TJ, Mike, and of course, my very favoritest traveler of all, SEAN!! Sara's mom will be visiting, followed shortly by Carla, Meredith, and Anna's parents (yes, I am the only one whose mom is not coming, it's kind of sad, but my mom refuses to travel alone, and she doesn't like the group tour idea like Sara's mom does, so, *shrug*). Anna's friend Lisa is coming too, as well as Fairfield's Glee Club, during the same week. Insanity. March 12 shall be a date that lives in infamy, for it is Sara's 21st birthday, and we will be celebrating it in style at Apartment 19, Via San Gallo 33! Main Chef Carla will be producing something like five courses, in addition to appetizers and a homemade tiramisu. It's going to be intense, as well it should because it is the birthday party of my very oldest friend and companion, the incomparable Sara Mari Juana!

Oh yes, and the week after the guys leave, midterms smack us in the face. But then we go on spring break to Sardinia! And then the very next weekend there's a trip to the Amalfi coast that I'm considering going on...it goes to Naples and Pompeii, and I won't go to Pompeii on my own, probably, but it's expensive, so I think I will have to explore and choose between Spain or Amalfi.

Last night we had a Tuscan dinner courtesy of the program, to which I showed up with a couple of shots in me, thereby creating a lovely beginning, and Anna drank so much of the table wine that she ensured a hilarious ending as well. Naturally, we had to call someone, and being in Europe drastically reduces dialing options, so TJ was the lucky recipient of Anna's drunken goodwill. Equally humorous was her telling me that we both scare people, and asking me point blank if I disliked her when I first met her, which I answered honestly, yes, I did, but we've become friends now, to my surprise, and I really enjoy Anna's company. Oh yes, and let us not forget her declaration of "Living in 121 was just not fun, can I just put that out there?" as she stumbled home on Carla's arm. Hahaha. Good times!

My Verona

So I had another post here, but I had to switch computers because I was once again stuck between two morons who needed to talk around me, so that is now gone. However, our weekend in Verona/Padua was really good! The Scrovegni Chapel was amazing. It was built in Padua by a man whose father had appeared in Dante's Inferno as a Usurer suffering eternal damnation, in order to expiate his family's sins. He had it decorated, on all four walls, floor to ceiling, by Giotto, one of the most famous artists of the Early Renaissance. Usually when you think of the Early Ren period, you think of a slightly inferior style of art that preceded the greats like Raphael--the colors and figures weren't highly naturalistic, there was still a great deal of stiffness and stylization from the medieval period, etc etc. I have never been that fond of Early Ren myself for these reasons. I had heard that the frescoes in the Arena Chapel, which is also what this place is called, because it was built on the ruins of the Paduan Arena, marked a turning point in Western Art, that Giotto became the leading force of the Early Renaissance because of this work, etc etc, but I didn't understand what that meant until I got in there.

First of all, Giotto rocks in what they call pure "painterly-ness". He decorated this entire chapel with a fictive architectural structure that makes it seem as though all the walls are covered with colored marble around the paintings and along the floor--but none of the marble is real. I never would have suspected it actually, had they not mentioned it in the introduction--unless, like Carla, I noticed places where the fresco was wearing off, taking the "marble" with it. More important, though, is the amazing level of expressivity that Giotto was able to give to his figures and to the narratives---there were several, including the lives of Mary and Jesus. Example: one of the paintings shows the moment where Judas betrays Jesus, kissing him in front of the soldiers to mark him as the condemned one. It was an extraordinary work because, despite the number of figures involved, it really appears to the viewer like time has stopped, that Jesus and Judas are, for lack of a better word, "having a moment". Judas is leaning in to kiss him and Jesus is not flinching away but his eyes are open, watching Judas calmly, understanding exactly what's going on. Another painting showed the deposition and burial, and here the most interesting figures were the cherubim in the sky, their features contorted into varying expressions of grief and pain, some scratching their cheeks, some howling. Best of all ,Giotto painted them in motion, their wings fluttering hummingbirds, as if he had captured them on a superfast camera. All in all I was hugely impressed, because never before had I seen these familiar scenes recreated in such a fascinating way, a way that really interested the viewer in the actions and motivations of the figures. Kudos to Giotto.

After this, we went down to the Basilica of St. Anthony, he of the "please find me this" prayers, because Anna had a strong yearning to see the mummified tongue and vocal cords of this particular saint. Don't ask. The church itself was massive, had four or five domes in it, and was breathtaking. The most amazing part of it, though, was the tomb of the saint, which has been turned into basically a shrine of thanksgiving by grateful believers. It was covered with ex-votos, pictures, notes, and photographs, all of them expressing thanks to St. Anthony for blessings given and graces received. Some of the most affecting were those people who left a photo of their cars, destroyed in accidents from which they miraculously escaped, and people who left photos of children, some who died young, others who survived childhood disease. There were gifts of needlepoint and embroidery, and notes from children, including one from a little boy who thanked St. Anthony for saving his mother's life. The notes were in many languages, including English and German and several written in Cyrillic. Walking around the tomb, many people stopped and pressed their hands and foreheads to the marble, while others left candles to be offered to St. Anthony. The tomb was incredibly affecting because it was such a proof of faith on the part of those who came to offer thanks. To think of all those individuals, many of whom must have traveled a distance to be able to make their offering, truly believing that somewhere up there they have a divine intercessor, is a powerful thought indeed. I felt somewhat the poorer for having no such belief myself.

My mother, however, has always been a believer in St. Anthony and his power of finding lost objects. Many a time I have lost things, my keys, my license, my glasses, and been unable to find them for days, but after my mom says a prayer to St. Anthony they turn up in a random spot soon afterward. This could be coincidence, of course, but it's happened too many times to be coincidence. I felt I should offer St. Anthony something on my mother's behalf, but lacking anything extraordinary, I left some money in the collection box instead.

After this we headed back to Verona, where we checked into our first hostel. It was a really nice place, in a converted mansion, with its own gardens, etc except it was dark and we were tired, so we just dropped our stuff and went out for dinner. When we returned, there were two other girls asleep in the six person room, so we went to bed early, and got up around 7:30. "Breakfast" was included in our 14 euro stay, but this turned out to be rolls and coffee lol. But off we went, four intrepid travelers, to explore the city of Verona. The first place we went was the Roman theater, which was massive and well preserved, although the climb to the hilltop museum was pretty tough. From there we visited several churches, but it being Sunday mass was in session. In one church we stayed for about ten minutes, while the mass was sung partially in Latin. That was pretty cool, it sounded very elegant. We also visited a Roman-Etruscan house museum, meaning the personal collection of someone dead.

Then it was time for the most touristy thing to do in Verona--visit Juliet's house. The museum, if it can be called that, was pretty ridiculous, there was nothing really of value or interest. However, they did have red boxes where you could leave a letter for Juliet, which are actually answered by a club which the museum runs. They even had some computers where you could email her, so naturally, Carla and Anna and I sent some ridiculous emails. The balcony itself was tiny, but the amusing part is that an older Asian guy, who I had waved ahead of us with his wife, asked me and Meredith to pose for a photo on the balcony. So now our photo is in some Asian guy's scrapbook! The final piece of ridiculousness was the statue of Juliet in the courtyard, where you're supposed to rub her breast for luck in love, so I made the other girls do it, but refrained myself, since I have already been so lucky as to find it, muahaha.

Verona itself, by the way, was quite lovely. Like all Italian cities, a river winds its way through the center and is crossed by a number of picturesque bridges. From the very top of the Roman theater's mini mountain, we had a great panoramic view. So after all this we hopped on the train home, and spent a good hour of the travel time in a theological debate on the nature of faith, which religion is the right one, etc etc. My position is of course a rather free floating one, as I don't subscribe to any particular religion. Carla is of course a Protestant, and Anna I would describe as a very liberal Catholic. Meredith didn't really join in the debate, but is nominally Catholic, I think. It was interesting, and certainly occupied our time. When we got home, Carla and I embarked on what would turn out to be a 1.5 hr walk around the city in order to locate a Blockbuster--because our other big news is that we spent 40 euro on a DVD player because we were dying without any American media to occupy our downtime--where we finally, successfully got Bridget Jones Diary. If we couldnt watch the new Pride and Prejudice, this was as close as we could get, and it was a damned good time.

Different Strokes

Reading Sara's journal entry about her weekend in Rome, I was surprised by the different impressions we each had from our time there. Sara said that she could "fall in love in Rome, and live in Florence", while I don't think I could ever find much to love about it beyond a few day's visit. It was too much of a city for me, a fact not even a plethora of Roman ruins could overcome, but hey, different strokes.

After seeing the highly Baroque adornments of St. Peter's, and then just the all-out crazy fest of St. Mark's this weekend, I still have to say that the most astonishing works of art that I've seen so far have been the mosaics of Ravenna. I have never seen their equal for sheer color and magnificence, undimmed by centuries. And Florence is still my favorite kind of place, small without being limited, relatively tranquil without being boring, and elegantly historic without being overwhelming or pedantic. I feel at home here, like I actually belong, while in Rome I felt like I was a mere spectactor in a grand drama that had been in the making for two millenia.

I remarked to Anna the other day that I had been thinking of people I knew back in America who take such overzealous pride in one part of their ethnicity that they really think it makes them better, and somehow distinct, from the people around them. Specifically, the people who are so proud of being Italian American that they wear things like those awful FBI (full blooded italian) shirts. Those people would be a laughingstock here, and would probably find themselves at an absolute loss, because the Italian identity they have constructed in America is quite unlike what you actually find in Italy. Actually living in another country, where people don't need to ask what ethnicity you are, because they already know, makes it so apparent how little that matters. What does it matter if I have Italian blood, or not? Here I'm just another ignorant American. They don't give a damn.

People put so much emphasis on this kind of identity in the states, but it is so often divergent from the actual culture from which it originated as to be almost unrecognizable. In the US there's always a lot of interest in your family's "heritage", but really, until you go to those places, you have no idea what you're inheriting. None of us are that special, if we're more than second-generation immigrants, we're just Americans, like everyone else, with no special claim to being "of" one country or another, especially one that doesn't want us anyway. For all my jokes about being Syrian, do I consider myself to be one whit like the people of that country? Nope. I have no idea what they're like, or their lives, or their culture. I could never understand what it's like to be them unless I lived among them, so why bother laying claim to a patrimony that I neither understand nor value?

I think ethnicities now are simply a method of supporting a shared pride and egotism at being more "this" than someone else, and preserving idiocies like how great it is to be Irish American, or Italian American, or what have you, because your "people" have so much culture. You're not Irish. You're not Italian. Those peoples don't recognize your claim to be one of them, nor do you really probably want to be, because then, once again, you would not be special in the way you can claim to be now. I'm not saying that we should do away with inherited traditions or knowledge and interest in our forefathers, but simply recognize that you are only constructing your own little dreamworld when you boast about how cool it is to be this or that. Accept being an American; we all have to do it someday.

Venice and Carnival

This weekend was nothing short of amazing. We left here at 7am for the lengthy bus trip to Venice. Naturally, everyone knows that Venice is on little islands with the canals, gondolas, etc etc, but I was definitely not aware that the lagoon in which the various islands of the city are located is enormous! It took us about half an hour to cross between some of them. The main island is where the stuff everything thinks of as Venice is located, but there were lots of other smaller ones: an island inhabited only by Franciscan monks, a cemetery island, Murano, island of the glass factories, Burano, ie the most picturesque place ever, among others. We went first for a tour of St. Mark's square, where the massive cathedral of St. Mark is located. I have never seen anything so highly decorated in my life. Every inch of the interior and exterior of this place was covered in multi colored marble, mosaics, or gilded. Gold mosaic tiles covered huge expanses of space in between the actual mosaic images inside the building--and not just up on the ceiling, either; the tiles went right down to the floor, so you could actually touch them.

The church was consecrated back in 700 AD and is the burial place of St Mark...the second burial place, because the Venetians went to Alexandria and dug up and stole his corpse in order to fulfill the prophecy of an old legend. Apparently, St. Mark was once shipwrecked in the Venetian lagoon when an angel appeared to him and the following: "Peace unto you, Mark, my evangelist. Here one day your body will find rest". So the Venetians apparently saw nothing wrong with divinely-sanctioned graverobbing. Part of the angel's phrase, in Latin, appears in almost every image of the icon of Venice--the Lion of St. Mark, who is usually depicted with wings and with one paw on an open book, which says Pax Tibi Marce, Evangelista Meus.

This lion is an awesome symbol. They have a huge gold lion perched on a column by the harbor in St. Mark's Square, next to an older statue of Theodoric, a Byzantine soldier saint who slew a dragon. This young man was once the patron saint of Venice, till the city decided it would not do to have a Byzantine as their patron, since that would suggest that they owed something to the eastern Empire. So they picked Mark as a sign of their independence, because really, who ever cared what Mark had to say anyway? People were more interested in Peter and Paul, but other locations had already bogarted those two as symbols. Venetian independence was extremely important to its people. It had the honor of being probably the longest running independent city-state in Europe, as it was never conquered until Napoleon invaded in the 18th century. It its prime, though, Venice was one of the most powerful forces on the Continent, since they owned the seas with their navy. In fact, a line from a really good historical novel, the title of which I cannot now remember, went "When the lion of St. Mark roared, the whole world trembled".

After our tour of the square, we got back on the boat and went to Murano, where they make the famous blown-glass items which are usually ridiculously expensive. We got to watch a demonstration in one of the factories, where the masters--who are trained for more than ten years--made the art of glass-blowing look amazingly easy. The glass, once hot, is as pliable as taffy, and we watched them make parts of chandeliers, vases, and even a little statue of a horse, in just seconds. They can blow the glass to such thinness that it's like plastic. We know this because one of the masters did exactly that: basically, he picks up a piece of molten glass on the end of a hollow metal tube about 8 feet long, then blows into one end to make the glass swell up like a balloon. After it had reached unbelievably large proportions, the glass exploded in a shower of plasticky fragments all over us, the audience. The shards, of which I naturally saved several, couldn't really cut you, but it was still freaky. After this we visited their shop, where we were delighted to learn that because of our tour we were being granted half off everything in the store. Delicious! I bought gifts for my mom and Hubbard for a much more reasonable price than I had expected.

Next it was over to Burano, a charming little village-island still populated by fisherman, which is reknowned only for the picturesque atmosphere of its houses, each one painted a different brilliant shade, like rows upon rows of jewels. This was apparently a local fisherman tradition dating back centuries, and only in Burano has it been preserved. I've never seen anything like it, not even in California where all the houses are pastel colors. Here they were every color and shade, from olive green to teal blue to lavender to crimson. It was gorgeous!

That night we were to go to a famous Venetian restaurant for a Carnival feast. This feast, which was quite literally seven or eight courses long, had several shady elements for me, including some nasty proscuitto, a polenta dish, gnocchi with radicchio aka bitter lettuce, etc. The final main course was a roast chicken, which I gave in an ate, despite all fears of bird flu, and it was freaking delicious. Now, the only problem with this feast was that they provided free and unlimited wine to every table. My table sampled the wine and declared it disgusting, as it was only a year old. Other tables, however, went through about ten bottles per group--that's more than a bottle per person, since only 8 people sat at a table. So you can imagine the hellish return bus ride to our hotel, with a group full of drunks who are idiots and asses even while sober. Naturally, one guy who had chugged his wine was puking in the stairwell of the bus shortly after we left, and I had to listen to the rest of the moron crowd shrieking, blowing their noisemakers, and calling and texting each other from different parts of the SAME BUS. Anna, Meredith and Carla, damn them, managed to sleep through this cacophony, but I was full of bitter rage by the time we reached the hotel (which was really nice, btw, and the four of us had our own separate bungalow apartment) and spent some time ranting about the cuntiness of the "swine" with the insanity born of being awake far, far too long for one day, which Carla found absolutely hysterical. I've never seen her laugh that hard.

The next morning, sadly, all of the idiots were still alive, although the one who is now officially known to all as the Chugger looked slightly under the weather. The morning was bitterly cold and foggy, to the extent that we couldnt see a thing on the crossing to the main island. We also had to stand in the cold waiting for the boat for half an hour because these same swine delayed our exit from the hotel, and therefore other groups got ahead of us. I'm pretty sure our poor guide, Stefano, wanted to kill them all, especially the girl who came up and started whining about when were we getting on a boat, because she was sooo cold, and she was getting sick, even though she was perfectly healthy in Florence. He looked at her in disbelief and said that at the meeting he had said it would be cold because--shocker--Venice is in the NORTH, to which she replied that she wasn't at said meeting because she had gone to the Olympics. Boo fucking hoo, although I loved Anna's response " If you're cold, zip up your coat, you dumb bitch".

Due to this delay, we were late for our guided tours of the Peggy Guggenheim museum. Ok, no big deal, you might think, but alas, the opening ceremony of Carnival was to be held in St. Mark's square at 12, and our 1 hr tour finally commened at the museum at 11:10. There was no way we'd make it, and we had heard that part of the ceremony was a person dressed as an angel jumping off the giant belltower, which was not to be missed. So naturally the four of us snuck out of the tour after seeing just a single Picasso (yes, it was that horror of horrors, the modern art museum) and raced back to the square. I've never been in the middle of such a press of people before, and now I understand how riots and stampedes can kill people. It's pretty tight in there. We couldn't see all that much in the middle of the crowd, especially not poor Anna, but there were knights jousting, a juggler, and two full courts of knights, ladies, lords, doges and a pope, along with a sort of fashion show of amazing Carnival costumes on this big stage (Carnival costumes are, btw, indescribably amazing. Some of them look cheaper and rented, but a great many are made of real lace, silk, etc, and these people go entire all out. Plus, unlike the crappy guys in Rome who dress up as gladiators, these people don't charge any money to take a picture with them; they love it! Look up some google pics if you want an idea).

Finally at noon the drumbeats came to a pulsing head and the "angel" began her descent from the massive belltower. It was not, however, as stunning as we'd thought. Her outfit was rather silly, no wings, even, and she didn't dive off, just came very, very slowly down a zip line. Oh well--it was Carnival! I have never in my life seen anything to compare to Carnival, except maybe partially a Ren fair on crack ,but that only accounts for the historical costumes, not the insane masked Carnival revelers. I didn't buy a mask, though they were beautiful, because they were also quite expensive.

We were some of the few who opted to visit the Doge's palace that afternoon instead of just wandering the streets. I'm glad I did, because it was really impressive, everything done in dark wood and gilding, and every ceiling covered with massive paintings and frescoes by Tintoretto and Veronese. We saw the armory, which had amazing pieces of armor, and some weird things like a combination gun-sword, and a real, live, chastity belt, with TEETH. We also crossed the famous Bridge of Sighs, which is so named not because of any romantic associations, but because it connected the palace to the prison, and if you crossed that bridge you were probably never coming back. The prisons were dark, completely without heat, and frightening. I can't imagine that prisoners lasted long there in the damp.

Our return trip was exceedingly long due to traffic and delays--we left Venice at 5:30 and reached home at 10:30. I slept for about 11 hours and last, and it was gooood. The weekend, I must say, was very much worth the $250 I paid for it, but I am so glad I'm not signed u p for any more of the group trips. I hate the people who go to this program, I really do! Swine. All swine.

The Pitti Palace Experience

Not even the idle blather of the surrounding idiots can really affect my peace of mind right now. I have had one of the most invigorating days yet of my stay in Florence! This morning I had to meet my Museology class at the Palazzo Pitti, a huge museum/palace/garden complex on the Oltrarno, aka the other side of the river. My professor is a charming woman, but there was simply no way I was going to be able to listen to anything she was saying about "orientation paneling" and "didactic devices" when I was plunged into that most haphazard arrangement of wonders, the Palatine Gallery (several museums actually occupy the vast Pitti Palace, among them the Palatine or picure gallery, the Modern Art Museum, the Ducal Treasures Museum, the Costume Museum, and the Museum of the Boboli Gardens). This museum has basically been preserved in its original "form", meaning, once it had been vacated by generations of Medici dukes, and then by the Hapsburg Savoys, and turned into a collection, nothing was really ever changed. This means that there is no organization, really, to the galleries, aside from one room full of devotional tondos, or round paintings. Nor are there detailed labels--the semi original lablels ae afffixed to the massive frames, but they offer only artist and title, no date of the work, which was MOST frustrating later when I came across several Titian portraits and was trying to determine, since I spent last semester writing papers on his portraiture for Jesus, which period the pieces were from. I thought one was definitely late period due to the brushwork but there was no way to confirm it. Curses.

Anyway, the galleries are also absolutely stuffed with paintings, basically floor to ceiling, and then the ceilings themselves have intense Baroque ornamentation, along with frescoes depicting how awesome the Medici thought they were, plus statues and the most amazing tables, inlaid with semi precious stone in a process called commesso, to produce the most fabulous designs, as though they'd been painted on. As we learned, commesso differs from mosaic because mosaics are created from hundreds of identical square tessori, or tiles, while commess involves actually cutting the many multi colored stones into the exact shape required to form a hummingbird's beak from yellow amber, for example, or a tiny grape from amethyst.

All this naturally conspired to make me ignore the poor professor, who was there not to show us the art, but to explain the many ways museum function with respect to their clientele, visitor programs, collections, etc. I think she likes me, though, since I always answer her questions in class, and also stayed close enough by to answer random questions she asked us about heraldry and mythology. Plus, from the giant grin on my face as I wandered from one masterpiece to another, I think she could tell that I was simply overjoyed to be there, and that it wasn't out of disrespect that I kept walking away. Unlike, for example, the Three Morons, whom I may have mentioned previously--three really rich stupid asshole guys from Syracuse, who wander off every tour, ignore everyone, and think only of drinking and spending money. How they wound up in this class I don't know. They didn't bother walking to the Palazzo, which is, unbelievably, a completely straight walk from my front door through Florence, across the Ponte Vecchio and up the hill--they arrived in a taxi. Nor did they stay the whole time, abruptly deciding to leave before we had the talk by the museum's educational coordinator. No, these guys weren't lacking in attention out of some kind of reverence to the art, they were more interested in finding more chairs to slump in. The only time I saw any of them show interest in a single work was a really gross martyrdom, where a naked, buxom saint was actually having her nipples wrenched off by two guys with pliers. Number one, OW, number two, wtf is wrong with you if that's the only thing that induces you to be interested in a painting?

But enough of my anger and back to the artwork. This place was absolutely littered with works that I've seen, over and over again in books. Paintings by Artemisia Gentileschi, Caravaggio (including his Sleeping Cupid and Toothpuller, which we looked at in Baroque class this week), Titian, who if anything I grew even more amazed by after seeing one of his Phillip II portraits along with an anonymous one called The Englishman, who was HOT...del Sarto, Bronzino, Rubens, even that famous anonymous portrait of Elizabeth I in that insane outfit was there. There were Botticellis and Raphaels, and even, hidden in the darkness of one of the shrouded rooms of the royal apartments, a portrait by Hyacinthe Rigaud of Louis XV as a kid. Perhaps the most beautiful and affecting work of art I saw was Raphel's Madonna of the Chair. Look it up on Google--even in reproductions it's absolutely charming, but in person, well, I actually started laughing out loud--quietly--because I couldn't believe I was standing in front of it. And it was just so damned amazing. In the great divide of Michelangelo and Raphael, I've always felt drawn more to Michelangelo's character, to his monumentality, to the force and passion of his work, but standing before this painting it was impossible not to adore this Madonna, immediately, as one of the most perfect beings ever depicted. I don't know what it is or how he did it, but she is breathtaking. Oh yes, and Jesus and John the Baptist are in there too, but who cares?

The royal apartments, which were connected to this gallery, also elicited an extraordinary response from me. These were some of the rooms of Italy's first king, Vittorio Emmanuele II, when Florence was briefly the capital of the united Italy for five years. They are preserved, immaculately, with their original furnishings, down to the tapestries on the walls, but this also means that the drapes must be kept closed to prevent all the colors from fading. Although it was chilly and dark when I walked through the apartments, I was much less impressed with the bright, almost tacky-looking postcards of these same rooms available in the gift store. There was a mystery and a grandeur in the gloom of those chambers, especially the throne room, which was entirely done in red, and marvelous to behold. Now, when I came into the throne room in Versailles, I was immediately disappointed. So much had I heard of the wonders of the Sun King that I was expecting much more than a fairly plain chair on a single dais, without even a canopy. This, by contrast, the throne of a king I had never heard of three weeks ago, was just what I thought a throne should be--surmounted by a vast canopy of crimson velvet, with the arms of Italy and Savoy on a crest at the top, the back of the throne itself adorned with a fierce golden eagle, and the whole of it set a few steps up on a red dais. I had the most fanciful desire to bow to that throne, though I restrained myself from doing it because there were other people in the room.

Perhaps it was the absence of harsher museum lighting in those long galleries that made me so susceptible to fantasy and daydream, or maybe it was just the rush of pleasure of being around so many beautiful objects, like my soul itself were drinking in huge draughts of the freshest air. At first all I could imagine was being there a few hundred years ago, in a courtier's array, moving through those careful orbits of ritual and courtesy; then on my way out, passing again through the muted grandeur of the throne room, I imagined that I was no mere courtier, but the absolute ruler of those magnificent chambers and everything that lay beyond. Italy has never known a queen in her own right, and I don't even think I was thinking about the office in terms of gender, just that I was the monarch, that all this was mine, forever. It was a giddy and wonderful daydream, and I left the royal apartments half-hoping the visitors outside would, upon seeing me, sink into the kind of elaborate court bow I've only read about, but alas, I had no such luck, and remained only a modern woman.

This was not, however, the end of the wonders that the Pitti Palace had to offer. The scheduled tour over, we were free to leave if we wished, but since I have the wonderful Uffizi card that means I don't have to pay for entrance to state museums, I decided to check out the others. The Argenti Museum, or the Ducal Treasures, were very satisfying, as I had just had about as many paintings as I could take (and I just realized that neglected to mention the sculpture corridor! They had a gallery of ancient sculpture, including several of Marcus Aurelius and Antoninus Pius, a rather unattractive, massive Augustus, and one glowering bust that I immediately recognized from Roman Art as my darling Caracalla, who ordered a damnatio memorae on his own brother, Geta, and massacred a thousand of his supporters. I still absolutely love his statues, all of which are intended to be gruff and menacing). The one room which overjoyed me the most was the Room of Jewels--now, sadly, there were no rubies the size of chicken's eggs to be had, nor a casket overflowing with diamonds and emeralds, but it did feature huge cases of marvelously whimsical concoctions from gemstones--miniature bouquets, each flower's petals formed by tiny pieces of different colored gems; animals and figurines out of gold, silver and jewels, many of which's bodies were formed by large pieces of mother-of-pearl, in addition to exquisite miniature cups, vases, inlaid jewel boxes, etc etc. All the lovely things I would so love to have!

You think that my adventure, and this scandalously long post, is over, but no no no, my friend, not so. After the Museo Argenti, I explored the massive garden complex behind the palace, the famous Boboli gardens. Now, when you look at a map of Florence, and you see the sprawling green section that appears so invitingly behind the palace, don't be fooled into thinking that that large expanse of territory is in any way flat; rather, expect to ascend many weird terrace-style sorts of ramp/stairs that include at about 35-40 degrees. However, you may expect to be duly rewarded for your efforts by the glory of the natural splendor around you. Well ,I shouldn't really say natural since it's all man-made; there are several ponds with large statues in them, as well as three terraces levels with their own paths, plus yet another museum at the far end, the Porcelain Museum, housed at the top of a tower-like edifice that affords some of the most amazing 360 degree views and Florence and its countryside that I've yet seen. This is one of the highest points around; the Campanile of the Duomo might be higher, but it doesn't provide the view into the land on the other side of the Arno the way this place did. I was also blessed by today's being an exquisite day of weather after yesterday's rain. Droplets did begin to fall while I was up on this tower thing, and I was less than excited about walking all the way home--which I could pretty much see the direction of, from where I stood, in the rain. However, God smile on me and brought out the sun again. Flowers were blooming too, daisies, pink and purple flowers. Ducks were swimming around a statue of Neptune in a pond; in another little clearing stood a colossal head, fragmented--not the famous one of Constantine, and there was no label, but spectacular, nonetheless.

Finally, I found my way out via this a strange little side path, which led into some back roads of the houses which are so incredibly fortunate as to border on this garden. I had no real idea of how high up I had gone until it took me 15 minutes of walking down a sharply inclined road to ead anything approaching level ground, by which time my knees were not appreciating me. However, I must say that I absolutely, whole-heartedly consider this one of the best days I've spent in Florence so far...and now I must get some food before I die, because my fuel for the entire morning was a bag of M&Ms because museum food is so expensive, and then a little pizzette, which is a fashionably Italian snack but let's be honest, they're not that good tasting. Mangiamo!

Michelle's Good Luck Suspiciously Continues...

So I almost died today, while making lunch in the apartment. ...ok, maybe I didn't almost die, but I probably would have been quite injured, since the red pashmina scarf I was wearing, which I bought from a wonderful street vendor in Rome, went up in flames from the gas range. The front burner is rather whack, ie, tends toward uncontrallable bouts of fire, but as the largest burner it's best for pasta, so I was trying to boil pasta there while making my sauce in a pan on another burner. Apparently I leaned in to far, because hey, something smelled like burning...and then I looked down and I was ON FIRE. I believe there was screaming, and then Anna directed me to the sink, where we doused the fire, albeit not in time to save the scarf. Requiescat in pacem.

In other news, Monday night we all went to see Pride and Prejudice at the English theater, along with Sara, her amusing friends, and about 100 other females, plus the odd unlucky male. I definitely didn't expect the movie to be as entertaining as it was, but I absolutely loved it! Carla said that it was one of the best movies she'd seen lately and I quite agree. It was funny, and had a lot more fun with sly jokes than the six hour series could manage. Mr Darcy was smoking, and even Keira Knightley I didn't hate quite as much as usual. There's something extremely enjoyable about watching such a film with your close friends and having the entire audience oooh and ahhh at the same favorite parts. Except for the end, where they apparently cut the kissing scene. So yes, I felt cheated that after a two hour romantic comedy it ends with a kiss ON THE HAND. Come on. Europeans love sex! What's the deal?

Tuesday was of course Valentine's Day, except it didn't really feel much like it here. There are very few stores that put up any merchandise, Europeans apparently being above such a holiday, plus it was very warm and sunny, unlike the cold drudgery I tend to associate with the holiday. And, of course, there was the added detractor of being about 3,000 miles away from my valentine. But guess who still got roses, on another continent, from the best boyfriend ever? Yes, you are correct, me!!!

Ravenna and the Weekend

Saturday morning we arose early to walk to Campo Di Marte, a little train station on the other side of town. From there we took a train to Bologna and thence to Ravenna, our destination. Meredith paid for both the train tickets and a delicious lunch from her grant money, which was sweet! We did encounter a snafu on our first train, which apparently required a reservation in order to obtain an actual seat in the compartments, in addition to the regular tickets. We found this out after being ejected from our first seats by the German ticket holders who had gotten reservations. However, we made the rest of the trip without any problems.

Ravenna itself is a very small town with literally six attractions, five of which you gain access to with a combined ticket for six euro. That's a hell of a bargain, especially because of the quality of the places we visited. We saw several basilicas with absolutely incredible mosaic decorations dating from the Byzantine/Romanesque era. The thing about mosaics is that unlike paint, they never lose their luster, so we were seeing the colors in all their original splendor. Mosaics also include a lot of gold, which makes it all the more awe-inspiring. Mosaics also decorated a Byzantine tomb, Gallia Placida.

Best Emails

Can I just say, that I opened my email account this morning to find two really awesome emails that made me smile--one drunken email from Sean of undescribable sweetness, and one long-awaited communique from Rae, headed thus:

To:Ms. Heather Alyssa Flanagan, Ms. Sara Marijuana Lugo, and Ms. MichelleMari DiMarzo,
My Most Esteemed ComradesCurrently Abroad in France and Italy,
RespectivelyWhile I Continue to Suffer the Misdoings of Our Government


and ended thus:

Dr. Rachel Mari Buglione-Corbett, MD PhD Esq.,
In Chemistry Lab,
Probably on the Floor,
Under the Table,
Eating Chocolate.

heehee.

Explorations

This morning I got up and went to the Museum of the Opificio del Pietre Dure, or the museum for this workshop of precious and semi precious stones that was established in the time of the Medicis. It was incredible workmanship, and yes there were many shinies. However, since this is not an uber popular place the placards were all in Italian. I muddled through as best I could...I now know, for example, that "porfiro" is the Italian for porphryr, or however you spell it. I spent only a short time there, and then I went to the Museum of San Marco, where I get in free because I have this handy dandy membership card they gave us for state museums. I wasn't really even thinking when I went in there what exactly was IN san Marco...so I get inside, where once again, there are no English explanations of anything, and I start realizing there's a lot of stuff by Fra Angelico. Ah, very nice, lovely, lovely. Including one piece, Sacred Conversation, we just looked at in our Renaissance Art of the Courts. But I'm still somehow not putting two and two together from my Art History survey classes, not even after I see on the map "Fra Angelico's Cells Upstairs". I think ooh, those frescoed cells! Awesome! But I still don't even realize, until I reach the top of a flight of stairs, exactly what the important artwork it that resides in San Marco--Fra Angelico's Annunciation, one of the most famous of all the works by that name, adorns the wall directly opposite the stairwell. My jaw, quite literally, dropped, partly from seeing this iconic painting and partly from my own stupidity at not remembering the connection.

The frescoes themselves were great, and the cells weren't small and dank--they had pretty windows onto the courtyard and ample space. However, they were freezing even with the benefit of space heaters. There were no fireplaces in the rooms. These poor monks were probably too busy freezing their balls off half the time to care about sinning. Interestingly, not all the frescoes were unique...there were two images that he repeated, identically, over and over. They were both Crucifixion scenes, very gory ones, with blood spurting dramatically all over the place. One had a black background, one had a white background and was differently shaped. I counted 5 of the black ones and no less than 7 of the whites. It interested me to think how they divvied up the room selection--I mean, did you have to have a certain level of seniority to get a cell with a nice fresco like Noli Me Tangere? Did the newbies get stuck with the Crucifixions? Or was there some sort of merit system, like if they catch you eyeing the nuns you get a bloody Christ...maybe if they catch you eyeing the choir boys you got a Virgin Enthroned in Heaven, or something. All very interesting. I bought a print of the Annunciation, and then I went back to this shop I was in yesterday and bought a seal in the shape of a D, and some wax, so I can make seals on my letters. Heehee. I feel deliciously medieval.

Random Musings

I realized, while watching Meredith pen the great american novel last night, that I really need to include more information in my blog. Because, you know, this is going to be my basic memory of the entire trip, having, as I do, a terrible memory of my own. I got up early today to do some homework and check out a vintage shop meredith had mentioned to me near the school. It wasnt so much vintage as your basic secondhand, BUT I found a gorgeous rabbit fur coat for 70 euro. Thats $85 for you gringos. Luckily or unluckily, I had decided not to take my money belt with me today, so I had no credit card and not enough cash. Im going to ask Meredith to go back with me after our Baroque class to see if I actually want to buy it or not. My worry is getting it back to the States, together with my cream colored coat. Thats a lot of coat to fit in my suitcases. I stopped in at a Mailboxes Etc, we have not one but two of them on our street alone, and found out that to ship merely 1 kg to th east coast it costs 35 euro. 10 kilos costs 100 euro. Jesus! Oh yes and my other worry is being stoned by my anti fur mother. See, but the rabbits are already long dead, and its so pretty, and I wants it, I wants it!

So, random things about the city in which I live....Im having the hardest time trying to find something to get drunk on. I dislike wine immensely, beer is out of the question, and Ive asked several liquor dispensing individuals about the possibility of an Amaretto sour with no sucess. Sara reported having had one but that it was terrible. Now, if I can just find out where one purchases sour mix, being unable to find it at the tiny supermarket where we shop, I can pick up the lovely economy size bottle of Disarrono and have myself a wonderful time. As it stands, this Friday we intend to purchase either the $4 vodka or $6 rum and get drunk in our apartment before we go out.

Everyone and their mother here wears boots. I don't know how they manage it with the insane cobblestones that are far too easy to trip over. In Rome, I actually saw a woman at the Colosseum--which had some of the worst cobblestones, plus slanting, uneven stairs inside--in stilettos. The insanity! So basically you're easily pegged as a foreigner or just a poor dresser for not wearing your jeans tucked into some kind of boot. Ah well. I have been spoken to in Italian several times, so maybe I just look like some kind of Italian country mouse to them. Oh and I helped an Asian lady find the Duomo yesterday! Except I think I sent her the wrong way, and I lost my wonderful Rae-given Berlitz map shortly thereafter. So it wasn't really a good thing.

I must admit that I'm suffering from the lack of reading material. I was very excited by the idea of the Paperback Exchange, but sadly it was not at all as whimsical and cheap as I had hoped. It was depressingly upscale and used English novels were priced about 6 euro. There was a bargain section, but the selection was so meager I almost considered buying "Middlemarch" because it was fifty cents. Except then I realized it would probably make me want to kill myself. I've finished reading Lamb twice, and read Carla's pride and prejudice, but I need more books. Stay tuned for news of Michelle's Booksearch.

I started classes yesterday. Italian looks like its going to be fun, if I could just stop calling it Spanish class. Museology looks to be hard but interesting; we go to six museums during class hours, and have to visit another six on our own and write reports on them. I didn't really know what museology entailed, but I started reading the textbook today and spent half an hour learning about market research and viability assessments. It's eerily utilitarian, something I never expected from any art history class.

Meredith and I have Baroque in about an hour, but I think I need a panini to hold me over until then. Yes, I have consented to like these meatless sandwiches--and I like the ones at the bar across from the school best because they're 1.80.

Note

Also, I bought Italian sneakers because my darling pink ones are dead. These ones are basically the colors of the german flag--red in front, black in the back, and yellow in the center. I feel so European.

We're going to Venice for Carnival on the 18th!!!

Back in Firenze

Home, sweet home, or at least close to it. It's wonderful to be off that damned tour, since most of the kids we were with were more interested in getting shitfaced every night and stumbling around hung over the next day than with actually enjoying what we were seeing. After a large group of these moronic girls stayed out till 630 am our last night in Rome, wake up call being 7am, they were all complaining when we stopped in the gorgeous hilltop town of Assisi for a tour of St Francis' birthplace on the way back to Florence. We're off the bus for five minutes and one of them is whining, "ugh, i've already seen enough of this place. let's go". Five of the guys didn't even bother with a tour, they just slunk off to a bar and came racing to catch the bus when we left. It annoys me, so much, that they're wasting this opportunity, when so many people who would have a far greater level of appreciation can't be here. Anyway, we don't have to associate with them anymore. Thank god.

I don't have any classes today, so it's mostly errands. It got colder...apparently we were just being treated nice the first week! Oh well. Ps, my webshots page is up, I put the link up top. If it doesnt work, just search webshots home for my username, which is infinitchaos.

Roma

So here we are in Rome on the orientation tour. I'll be honest--I already miss Florence. Florence is an adorable mini city, everything is reachable on foot, everything is clean and mostly quiet besides the hum of Vespas; Rome is a real city, complete with filth, homeless people, noise, scary people, etc etc. Florence already feels like home compared to this. However, Rome does have amazing sights, many of which we saw today--MANY, I say, because we walked all over the freaking city. And this is not a walking city entirely. We walked from the Vatican to Castel St. Angelo, across the river, took a bus to the Coliseum, and then walked back to our hotel which was not exactly nearby. Its been a long day and I have earned the booze I hope to shortly be imbibing. The Vatican was maginificent, although we didnt get a full chance to see its treasures; it was mostly St Peters and the Sistene Chapel. Ive taken a ton of great photos, so exciting, plus surreptitious video inside the Sistene Chapel. Carla has been taking short, humorous videos of all of us at various points of interest, which we will soon compile into a wondrous cd of hilarity and friendship.

First Post From Florence

Where to begin, where to begin...well, the apartment that I share with Meredith, Carla and Anna is utterly gorgeous. I was expecting somewhat of a slum or at least cramped accomodations, but we have more space than we know what to do with! This place, 33 Via San Gallo, was built mid 17th century by a Florentine musician. It was passed around from hand to hand before being purchased, 100 years ago, by my landlords great grandmother. In short, I live in a former Renaissance palazzo! Our ceilings are like 20 feet high, we have a closet complex thats like the size of my room at home, antique furniture, a washing machine in the kitchen, and a window that opens onto an interior courtyard. At night, delicious smells of cooking from someone elses apartment float up.

The past two days have been orientation, as well as exploration. Unlike many of our fellow compatriots, we've been doing our best to explore the city, which is small and quite safe. The men are just as appreciative as the stories claim, though I haven't been physically molested yet haha. More like they whistle and say things to us in the street, or in one slightly pathetic case, run up to us from inside a store window waving madly. We haven't gone out and partied yet--it's incredibly exhausting after we walk for hours and hours, especially to come home to a building that requires about 60 feet of staircases to get to the second floor! Old, vastly elegant stone staircases, with marble statues in the walls, but it's still a goddamned hike to get up there. Sara lives about a 20 minute walk from us. It's so surreal to be with her in the same city! The food is ok, we haven't really gone out to a fancy restaurant yet, though, just little bars and cafes for food. Pasta is not available here as snack food, which is disappointing, though I did get some nice penne at the Mercado Central, the giant fresh food market, yesterday. Tonight we're making dinner at our apartment for the first time, just spaghetti and risotto, plus we bought a dessert wine to go with it--this will be my official first wine. God knows if I'll like it or not, but I intend to try. Last night was our welcome dinner at Palazzo Borghese: this is a picture of where we ate . http://www.dimorestoriche.com/immagini/dimore/539_01.gif Now, it would have been a lot nicer had we actually sat down, since we'd been walking all day, but they had us do it buffet style at these little standing tables, which was kinda weird.

I really can't say enough about Florence. The city itself is gorgeous, everywhere you look the most exotic sights are attracting your eye. The architecture, the art, the landscapes, even the people are fascinating. It's rather embarassing that I can't communicate with them, so I look forward to my Italian class.

Tomorrow morning we leave for Rome, Orvieto and Assisi, where I can finally be a tourist and take a million pictures! I haven't been bringing my camera anywhere because I don't want to be looked at as a tourist lol. They advised us that if you frequent the same bars and cafes a lot, eventually they will warm up to you and start talking. PS, bars here serve soda, snacks, and pizza as well as alcohol. Coke is dispensed from a tap next to Heineken. All the bottles are slimmer because the fridges are smaller. The people all smoke, and there are no fat people--none. There is a bidet in our bathroom which no one will use. Our shower is the equivalent of a gentle rain, and the heat is only permitted to be on 10 hrs of the day, by national law. The insanity! I love it. I love every minute of it.

Tonight we went up to Fiesole, a little hill town above Florence, to watch the sunset. It cost a whole 2 euro and it was perfect. Most of the kids on this trip have been preoccupied with seeing how many bars they can hit in one night and how many bottles of wine they can swill down---at the 2nd day of orientation people were already hung over. I don't need the alcohol nor do I need the clubbing, but there was something in the air up in Fiesole, something incredibly tranquil, exactly what I was hoping to find.

Sonnet for Sean

The Road to Florence

I read the maps, the guide books until my
head fairly swims with the unfamiliar:
the names of streets, plazas, the proper way
to greet a man or a woman, tips for
hiding the fact that I’m just an ugly
American at heart. Hard enough to
absorb it all, more so since I can see,
so neatly drawn out, the distance that you
will be from where I am—even the stars
will differ in our two hemispheres.
And yet, there is a piece of what is ours
that in me scoffs at such immature fears,
that, knowing what challenges lie ahead,
rises to meet them, arms calmly outspread.

The problem with having other people read your sonnets is that if they're not trained to recognize what makes a sonnet a good sonnet, it just looks to them like fourteen lines that rhyme here and there. It's not all about the iamb, people--give the spondee and the trochee their due! Ah, English jokes....speaking of English, yesterday when Sean and I visited Northwest, I introduced him to Mrs. Juda, our beloved fierce little AP English teacher, and was shocked when she started telling him what a wonderful girlfriend he had. Such a display of sentiment from her is rather surprising as she's generally a very sarcastic and blunt lady. Fitz, true to form, merely pointed out "whip marks" on Sean's back and asked if I'd fitted him for a collar yet. Unfortunately, I neglected to ask him if that "Dating for Dummies" book we gave him junior year has paid off yet.

The best of all was seeing Mr. Tressler. Sean kindly refrained from telling him, as he previously threatened, that he looked just like the tiger that is his namesake...I don't think he needs to know that Heather transformed a stuffed animal into a likeness by sewing on a mustache. I discovered that the HILL class is going to France this year--bitches! I hate them all! Last year they went to England, the year before that to Italy, and where did we go? THE SOUTHWEST!! Bah. The sting of that loss has not been forgotten, I tell you. Ok, our trip didn't suck as much as the class before us--the 9/11 bunch--they had to go to Canada. But you know I think both trips probably wound up being the same temperature. Now, the HILL class going to France means two things--number one, that when they hit Paris, a certain H. Flan had better be ready to swoop down and attack with witty comments and scathing criticism of Mr Tressler's organizational deficiencies, and perhaps the tale of Tumbly just for good measure. Number two, it means that I am now, more than ever, committed to making it to Portugal! Just for spite! Sara and I will go and dance upon the soil and shout curses in the language, which we do not know, and perhaps hunt down that boat made entirely of wine corks, which was really the only part of our itinerary which we had even discussed before George Bush ruined my life by invading someplace. Rae suggested we make a point of the four of us journeying to Portugal one day, and I agree, I also feel we should return triumphantly to the Southwest, no earlier in the season than May, or perhaps June to be safe. Oh well--watch it snow on us anyway, just for the hell of it.

Time to Say Goodbye

After Sean had left last night to return to Fairfield, I was really confronted with the immediacy of my departure. Now I'm feeling more sad, and more nervous--not about the change, or the culture shock, I don't think I'll have a problem with that--about leaving my loved ones behind. As independent as I pride myself on being, I think I will in fact have a hard time learning to adjust to a Sean-less life. In one year, the longest time we've gone without seeing each other is two weeks. We'll have to wait three times that to see each other in March, and then even longer till I come home. As I said to him last night, if I were still dating some of the guys he so charmingly dubbed the "MacDonald's hamburgers" (to his top sirloin), I'd definitely have many more reservations about such a separation. Everything will turn out ok, I know, but I think homesickness is going to be more of a problem for me than originally anticipated.

Tapping My Fingers...

I noticed today how many more people are on my AOL screen name's buddy list than my AIM one. Then I remembered how I've steadily pruned people off my AIM list, not just people I rarely talk to, but also people whose sole purpose on the list was to be AIM-stalked, plus some people I do kinda talk to but don't want to anymore, and then a couple of people who I just want to forget exist--muahaha. The result is that I've got about 20 people on my AIM list, which is small but just fine. Why bother with people I don't care about?

Last night, with nothing else to do, I spent three-and-a-half hours watching Seven Samurai, which is supposed to be Kurosawa's masterpiece. It was really good, better than the Magnificent Seven, though I like that movie too. I should email Dr. Brill and tell her how much I enjoyed it; she had us watch "Ran" for tragedy class, and it was incredibly intense. She also recommended Rashomon as another of his best films, so I got that from the library too. I have to say, Japanese is not the prettiest language, especially as samurai-actors tend to yell their lines a LOT for no apparent reason. I laughed out loud when one character in Seven Samurai actually asked another "why do you yell so much?".

Four more days of work. I can make that. Wednesday our CEO, Jeff Fluhr, is visiting, so they're paying us overtime to attend a dinner in his honor. I'll just pretend it's a send-off bash for me. They shorted me on my paycheck this week, paying me for 1 week instead of 3, so my director was nice enough to have the accounting people Fedex me another check that came this morning; I now have $1300 sitting at my right hand and mmmmm does it feel good! Today while my mom and I were shopping I saw a white rabbit-fur throw for $125, the softest thing you have ever felt, and I was so incredibly tempted. Well, not really tempted, because that is a ludicrous purchase and my mom would rather put me in a neck hold than let me buy fur, her enemy, but oh god, it would have felt so damned good! Why must such a delicious pleasure require the sacrifice of several dozen small mammals? Why can't they ever make a fake fur that doesn't feel fake? Bah. I wish I were rich and conscience-less, then I could buy fur, fur, fur and never care where it came from...

Anniversary

Where to begin the story of the fabulosity that was our anniversary weekend? Well, Friday night I took the train down to the Havens to play poker with Sean's friends, which is always a fun time. About ten people wound up playing, the only women being me, Richardson's mom "Happy" Richardson, and Little Richardson's rather pissy girlfriend who didn't say anything the whole game. Naturally, Sean and I both lost, and I still don't even know who won, because when we left around 1am there were still three people playing. It was a long game.

Saturday we came back up North, and yes there is a division because the Havens have no snow and we have plenty, to go the the bed and breakfast. It's called the Mansion Inn, it's in Manchester, and I absolutely recommend it to anyone and everyone! To begin with, it's an absolutely gorgeous place. Today we ate breakfast in the formal dining room, just six people but spread out on this massive table, and I felt like I was eating at Norland Park. Yeah, that's a little Jane Austen reference for you literati, you love it, I know. The innkeeper, Marianne, is an interesting woman, full of quirky comments, a former librarian and also justice of the peace who has married couples at the inn---cuteness! Our room was the "Lilac Suite", so named because the wallpaper was dark blue dripping with lilacs. It was amazing. The preciousness cannot be described. I didn't bring a camera unfortunately and then I was going to buy a disposable but then I decided, no, for once I will not rely on pictures to capture a moment, I will force myself to remember it on my own! Ok, so this room had a massive bed in one corner, with five gazillion layers because Victorians didn't like fluffy things, just lots of thin things. It had a fireplace. It had a sofa. It had a wood-lined study with the little roll-top desk thing, and old-fashion closet space, and a gorgeous art-deco peach-colored bathroom. It had a portrait of the girl who used to live in it, there was fresco by Marianne on the bathroom wall, there were two giant bookcases and--love this--a little sign that told you to take any book you wanted home with you (I took "Day of the Jackal", Sean took "The Fat Boy's Book"--long story). And, best of all, there was a diary--the diary of the Lilac Suite itself, with entries from all the people who have stayed there. It was so awesome to read people who had spent their wedding nights --one couple wrote that they had been married by Marianne--or their anniversaries in the same room. This morning, as I sat in the adorable little study, I wrote that I really hoped that the inn would become our anniversary tradition. It was so incredibly special--not the least because, you know, it was my anniversary of one year of being with sean, which is just INSANITY because it feels like we've been together for so much longer!

Oh, but the inn's fabulosity is not over. This morning we had breakfast with the two other couples who had been staying at the inn, both older couples, with such diammetrically opposed lives. One couple, Bill and Shelley Browne, were from Brandon VT, a town of 4,000, where Bill was the town pharmacist. The others, Richard and Thelma Boudreau, were from Baton Rouge. Richard, as it happens, is a foreign correspondent for the L.A. Times, and tomorrow he's leaving for Iraq for six weeks--he was already there last March. His wife travels the world working with developing nations on improving their water supplies--she mentioned Cambodia and West Africa as two places she's been. So it was very interesting, I really enjoyed the company if not the food, which was cinnamon french toast, blegh. I won't provide any graphic details about our private celebrations, but there was a fireplace with a couch in front of it, and that was awesome, enough said. Best anniversary ever, to go with the best boyfriend ever.

Muaha

So here I am, blogging sneakily from the Stub...muahaha. Luckily I do emails so quickly that I can basically chill out my last hour and I've still done more than anyone else. Thank you AIM for training my fingers to superhuman quickness.

I'm excited for the weekend, which is....drumroll.....my one year anniversary with Sean!!!! The only other guy I've had an anniversary with was Greg, and it was the day after we got back from the Southwest and I was so beat--we wound up going out for Chinese. Nice Chinese, my favorite chinese, but nothing spectacular. This time around--oh boy---we're doing it the old-fashioned way, a bed and breakfast in Manchester. So excited...fireplaces and antique books and all!

The time of departures has begun; Jen went back to Brooklyn and Rae to Wellesley, and I won't see either till May (guess which one saddens me more). On Monday Sara leaves, then Heather on Tuesday. People here at the office were talking about making plans for Friday the 13th and I was initially like ooooh but then ohhhhhhh, if that makes any sense...although the next day we will be making the trek to Norwood for Sean to meet the extended fam.

Only two weeks left at Stubhub. Yes. It's so hard to encompass the idea of actually leaving, and I haven't had the anticipated panic attack yet over leaving my mom behind alone....but neither have I attempted to teach her the internet, so we'll see how that goes.