begin scene of nostalgia.

After Venice I had a decently hectic week. Kate was in town so I had to juggle schoolwork and finding time to hang out with her. Mostly she wandered around on her own while I was in class, which she is used to because she is quite the traveller. I did accompany her to the Pantheon, unfortunately just too late in the day and we missed the sun, Trevi Fountain, and attempted to at the Vatican. We didn't end up finding each other there, but that was cool with me cause I really just wanted to get home and work on studio. We also made some pretty delicious Italian dinners throughout the week after going to the open air market Monday morning and doing all the shopping for it. Kate left yesterday morning very early, and I left a couple of hours after her for a class trip to Fabriano.

This trip was our last here, not including Spring Break, and was technically for Italian class. It was a lot of fun. Fabriano has been famous for paper making for hundreds of years, and we got to make our own paper. We had lunch in this amazing little restaurant, a kind of artsy store and restaurant fusion. The food was delicious and we had this salad with barley and carrots and peas and it was amazing. The second I tasted it I could imagine myself eating an entire bowl of it on a hot summer day. It was perfect, and I'm going to figure out how to make it. The part of our day yesterday that was by far the best was on our way out of Fabriano where we stopped in a couple of parks with playgrounds. Some people took turns on the see-saw, and most everyone took at least one turn on the zip line. I was taking pictures of it all and got some priceless photos. It was such a relaxing day, and we were able to forget about school and reality for a little while and just be kids again. It was great. I think we all miss those days sometimes.

Today we made our way back to Rome with stops in a couple of towns. The first place we saw a gorgeous cave. It's amazing what nature can produce. That took longer than expected, so we switched up our itinerary and went straight to our final stop in Spoleto. It was raining and I didn't have my umbrella, but it wasn't cold so I was fine with it. We saw a former papal fortress that was converted into a prison until the 1980s, and got to go across this beautiful medieval bridge over the valley between the mountains. The view was breathtaking, and all I could really think about was how much I want to go back to Ruidoso as soon as possible. I can never get enough of that place.

On Friday night or Saturday morning, I have yet to figure out which, I will be heading off to Budapest to kick off Spring Break. I am very excited, but I just have to get through my Italian final on Friday first. It should be fairly easy considering I've got A's on every quiz in that class. Now it's time to get some homework done. Not the best way to end a relaxing weekend, but it's gotta be done. Only 5 more weeks!

waterworld in real life.

This past week was my class trip to the Veneto region. After returning home from Barcelona, I worked all day Sunday and through the night into Monday morning to do my final project for theory. Tuesday morning we caught a train to Verona.

Verona was quaint and cute, although rather expensive. We were told that the Veneto region was home to a more wealthy class of people, and that definitely showed. Verona did, however, offer very good fruit cups for only 2.50 euro. First we saw the Castelvecchio, a museum whose exhibit I could tell you nothing about. Our purpose for being there was to look at the modern installments by Carlo Scarpa, and architect who would dominate our trip. It was interesting, and some people were fascinated by the questionable architectural moments, but it didn't particularly peak my interest. We also went to a photography exhibit, and that I loved. It made me kind of sad that I don't have my SLR with me here, although since it's manual that would cost me so much money. One day I need to invest in a digital SLR so I can more easily experiment with photography.

On our way from Verona to Venice we made three stops. First was at Le Bolle (The Bubbles) by Fuksas. This project is a meeting and laboratory space for a grappa distillery. From the outside I found the building to be a bit ugly, but from the inside it was absolutely amazing. I particularly enjoyed the diagonal elevator. It felt like we were in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Our second stop was another Scarpa intervention, but this time at a cemetery. I do not like cemeteries, but this one wasn't so bad. I was still not overly impressed by Scarpa's work, for some reason it just wasn't my cup of tea. My favorite part of the day was our final pit stop at the Villa Emo by Andrea Palladio. Of all the classical architects Palladio is my favorite, and although I didn't get to see my favorite Palladian Villa, the Villa Barbaro, I still enjoyed seeing one of his works outside of my history books. 

Venice was very relaxing. You are always by water and that was a nice feeling. It was amusing how dependent they are on their canals -- even garbage trucks and DHL trucks are boats there. They gave us more free time instead of walking, walking, walking all day, but I found out why. There's really not very much to see in Venice. It really only deserves two days out of your life, after that it's almost a waste. We arrived in Venice Wednesday night, and I decided to stay through the weekend. Kate flew into Venice on Friday and she's back in Rome with me now on her Spring break. I now realize that staying in Venice through the weekend was quite possibly not worth the extra money spent for it, but it was fun and it was good for Kate because it was finally a city that her dad had not been to before.

Yesterday it was back to classes and reality. We only have five weeks left in Italy. I'm not sad that I'm going "home" soon, I just don't understand how we're going to finish our design projects in such a short amount of time. Although after Spring break we have two weeks solely devoted to design, so I'm sure it will all come together. Now I need to get to some design work, however I am finding myself somewhat uninspired by this project. A lot of people really enjoyed all the Scarpa work we saw on our Veneto trip and are now decently enthusiastic about our design project. I was not so mesmerized, and am still not very motivated, but hopefully something will come to me.

head over heels in love.

Best weekend of my life. Last week was pretty busy as I had a midcrit in studio. It continued to be busy because today we had our final theory project due -- which I pulled an all-nighter to finish. So I'm currently waiting for our trip prep for Venice, went on a 2-hour walk this morning to a few churches -- it was supposed to be 3 hours but our professor decided to give us a break since we were all basically falling asleep while standing up. So nap after class, then it's off to Venice first thing in the morning.

Now about the weekend. I went to Barcelona and it was absolutely amazing. We knew some of the things we definitely wanted to see, so we just took a map with us and basically walked the entire city -- eventually getting to our destinations and seeing so much stuff along the way. That, in my opinion, is the only way to explore a city. The receptionist at our hostel told us which metro to take to get places, but why would anyone want to do that? In a new and beautiful city it's such a waste to go from stop to stop underground where you can't experience the city for yourself. That's the one thing I love about all cities -- you can walk everywhere. Technically I could walk to some places at home too, really only the CVS down the street, but a city is so much more adventurous. I do love living in the suburbs, but I also have a great love for the city, as long as it's not NYC. Maybe I haven't experienced NYC the right way yet, but out of the few times I've been there I'm not impressed.

Barcelona, on the other hand, I could stay there forever. It's probably as big as NYC, laid out on a grid pattern which makes it really easy to get around, but there's a completely different feeling about Barcelona. There aren't many highrises, only a few in one district. And everywhere I went there I felt like I was in a completely different place. From the main part of the city to the gardens to the sea -- all just so beautiful. I did not want to leave, and I do want to go back. I'm thinking about looking into doing grad school there -- there's one program I found that's only 2 semesters and probably about a quarter of the cost of Northeastern. I will definitely be doing some intense research during my downtime this week.

Besides going to places such as Sagrada Familia, La Ramba, Casa Mila, and the Barcelona Pavilion, we used part of our day and took a little vacation at the Barcelona Zoo. It was 16 euro, a bit expensive, but so worth it. Barcelona was a vacation in itself, but what we did most of the time there and what we do all the time here is look at buildings. It was nice to forget about the buildings for a few hours and check out the kangaroos and zebras and monkeys and meerkats. It was a very refreshing day, and a great addition to a great weekend.

Tomorrow morning it's off to Venice. Hopefully the weather will be nice!

a new approach to this blog situation.

As a way to remember the more detailed information about my time here and to generally keep up better with my blog, I am going to try and do shorter, more frequent posts as things occur. As a part of my one credit Italian culture course, we watch about a total of 5 movies and have one cooking class. The first movie we watched was Amarcord, then the second film I missed because I wasn't feeling well. The third film was entitled Mio Fratello e Figlio Unico, and the most recent film was La Vita e Bella (Life is Beautiful, which many people had already seen). Amarcord was very different, even for my taste, and the other two I saw were very good films. There's still one more left, and I'm quite excited for it, and I think I'm going to ask Claudia (my Italian professor) if I can borrow the one that I missed.

Last night I had my cooking class. It was amazingly delicious, and surprisingly very simple to make. Yesterday afternoon we went to the market to buy all of the ingredients, and she read off everything we needed as we wrote it down so we could ask for the items and do everything ourselves. Somehow I ended up at the counter most of the time, so I did practically all the talking, in Italian. It was a little bit difficult, and sometimes the shop guy couldn't hear me or I put the emphasis on the wrong syllable, but it all worked out and I felt very proud of myself.

For dinner we made lasagna with a meat sauce, parmesan and mozzerella cheese. It was delicious -- especially since there was no ricotta cheese like traditional lasagna. I am in no way a fan of ricotta cheese. Our second course was mortadella, a kind of ham or bologna, wrapped in veal and cooked in tomato sauce, and Roman broccoli on the side. One of the most delicious meals I've ever had. And the best part, dessert, was a strawberry tiramisu. It didn't have cocoa or coffee like traditional tiramisu, it instead was made with lady fingers soaked in pineapple juice, had a kind of strawberry cream/puree, and topped with homemade whipped cream and fresh strawberries. We get to keep all of the recipes, so I will definitely be attempting them again in the future.

procrastination has gotten the best of me.

Although I have not fallen behind nearly as much as many of the students here in Rome, I realize that I have not been very punctual about keeping up with my blog. I feel like the pace of everything here has been much slower than I am used to, and because of that I've been having more time where it seems I don't have much school work to do so I just sit on the internet or watch a movie. I really need to find post-it notes, although I have yet to stumble across them in this country, and put them on my wall reminding me of all the little things that still need to be done. Those things, such as updating my blog, starting my digital portfolio, doing some reading, etc., never come to mind when I have "nothing" to do. I do have paper and tape, however. Even though we're not supposed to put anything on our walls because they're a few hundred years old I think I'm going to start my things to do notes on my wall, with tape, since I've already broken that rule anyways with my pictures from Martha and Dane.

Now for a recap of the past week or so. Naples was gorgeous as everyone might imagine. The vast countryside of hills and villas was one of the most picturesque things I've ever seen, but I have to say I'm not that eager to go back anytime soon. Siena and Florence were wonderful cities, but fairly small and very touristy. I still can't imagine actually living here forever, as many people here have said they would have no problem doing. I much prefer living in a culturally diverse country, and this preference stems mostly from food. I was discussing this last night with a friend as we were eating at a Chinese restaurant. I love being in Italy and having great Italian food, but I'm so excited to go to Barcelona and have Spanish food, and go everywhere else and have other kinds of food. I could never live off pasta and bread, even though back home I've probably said I could many times. Actually being in a place where that's true, I have definitely changed my mind. I will definitely be glad to be back in the states where I can have any kind of food I want. I also miss the atmosphere back home. Here in Italy you always have to go out to a pub or a discoteca to hang out and have fun. That's just not what I like to do. I'd much rather hang out at home or a friend's house with a small group of people and just have a good time. No massive amounts of creepy Italians, no dancing, no worrying about how you're going to get home.

Now I need to get some work done since I now have an extra three hours. I got up this morning at 7:30, showered and got ready, all to find that our walk today has been cancelled. I'm glad I am up and ready, however, because if I had found out about the walk last night like everyone else, I would have slept in today and not been able to get as much done as I can now. This will definitely help my whole procrastination issue.

Ciao! (And I will be posting again very soon...)