The Leaning Tower of Pizza

So... yesterday was Pisa day! The original plan was to go to Venice for the day, but we decided that we wanted to go to Venice when the canal water was in the canals. So we got up at un ungodly hour and went to the train station and booked tickets to Pisa. I was the one person separated from the group and stuck in a compartment of 6 seats with two very angry French women. One of them, seriously, was even glaring while she slept. We went past some gorgeous scenic views and got to see the ocean. Karma: Angry perpetually glaring French woman tried to take a picture of the ocean when she woke up and every time she held her camera up, we went through a group of trees. No, seriously this happened about ten times. I think she liked me even less when I snickered. Three and a half hours later, we arrived in Pisa. We walked through the town, stopping about every 10 feet to take pictures, until we reached the leaning tower. Crazy, crazy thing to actually see. I shot 2 rolls of film and a ton of pictures on the digital, but the little in the pocket camera died fast, so here are the couple of pictures you get from Pisa:

Crazy angry statue! I would not want to go to church here.

Street in Pisa. Cute little town.

Pisa graffitti. And Alex.

Pisa clock tower. I had no idea what time we started walking around until I saw this picture.

I really liked the decoration on this building in this picture, but in essence, another picture of the clock tower.

River in Pisa. No idea which one. It could totally just be a different chunk of the Tiber than I see daily.

Um... pretty building in Pisa.

So this is the building next to the one that leans. I really thought I had taken a picture of the leaning tower for the blog. Whoops. Oh well, you can see them when I come back. I took TONS.

So when we got to the piazza with the buildings we took tons of pictures and walked around. We (by we I totally mean I) went shopping for loads of tacky souvineers. Be excited. They are awesome. Had a picnic with some pidgeons. Alex and I, the only person besides myself who didn't bring lunch demanded that we stop somewhere so we went to a Trattoria and got lupper. I got a calzone which was amazing. By the time that the slowest waitress EVER gave us our change, it was time to go back to the train station. We were smart when booking tickets for the return trip, so we were mostly sitting together instead of scattered all around the compartment. We came home and saw the prettiest views ever. The sun was setting when we passed the ocean and the sky was the pretty pinky-orange color and looked gorgeous with the rocky jettys. I even put my book down and looked out the window. When it got completely dark, it was still exciting because the reflections of lights made the windows look like fireworks were going off. Good train trip. When we got back, however, we learned some not so fun things about the Vatican and Obama that have made us all a bit freaked out. You really don't realize how much influence the pope has until you live one metro stop away from him. We were all sort of hoping that Obama finally coming into office would make the foreign opinion of us a bit better. Apparently, the pope is not impressed. The feeling is mutual.

Today, I got checked out by a super skeezy man on the metro, so I got off the metro and had to wait for another one and totally made myself late to class. But it was worth it to avoid gross Italian! I stand by the decision. We went to drawing today because we had to reschedule class from Friday's transportation strike. Drawing was miserable. We got the location of where we were supposed to meet the drawing teacher wrong so we were about half an hour late to class. It started raining and the teacher (Paulina) decided that we needed to go to a church to sit and draw. When we were walking to the church, it started POURING. We were all completely drenched by the time we got there, and that was with umbrellas. I, being the brilliant woman that I am, forgot my umbrella at the apartment and had to buy one from a fake gypsy. This may be a good time to tell you about the gypsys. Gypsys are magical people who walk around on trains and play the accordian and then expect you to give them money. Often they are men accompanied by small children or pregnant women. I have seen the same gypsy 3 times and I've decided he's going to be my own personal one. I may have to start paying him, though. Then there are the fake gypsys who are people who follow you around shoving stuff at you and charging a crazy amount for it. Today the fake gypsy tried to charge me 5 Euro for my umbrella. Terrance told me to say 3 and I did and he almost left. But then he came back and said 4 and I caved. I probably could have gotten him down to 3.50, but I was wet and not in a bartering sort of mood. We call them fake gypsys because we thought they were the real ones when we got here. They are not. Anyway, we all got sent home early from drawing because we were too cold and wet to draw (that may literally be the coldest I have ever been in my entire life) and all the Japanese tourists kept coming up and trying to look at our drawings. A woman brought her daughter up to see mine. I'm pretty sure they were hideously disappointed. Oh well. Never look over people's shoulders when they're drawing! We came home and took hot showers and then had to go try to get a machine in the laundry room. Apparently, because everyone thought that no one would be doing laundry today, everyone was. Terrance and I met tons of people from Temple. Apparently they have a huge group of students living at the Residence. Who knew? But we fought for an empty machine and I now have one clean dry outfit to wear tomorrow! Yay! The rest of it is hanging up awkwardly in our entryway on a drying rack. We memorized the names of body parts in Italian for class tomorrow. The il braccio bone's connected to the la mano bone by the il polso bones. I'm going to rock this quiz. I also made dinner tonight. I am getting to be quite the gourmet out here. I made salsicce/fungi/vino/basilico sauce to go over orccietta. I've discovered that the secret to being a creative cook is to not have a cookbook. Sigh. But it has been a long night and tomorrow is long class day. We apparently get to go to a ghetto metro stop off of the B line. Wish me luck!

Sike

Went to Pisa today. Saw a leaning building. Crazy exhausted, dead camera so inability to upload picture of the day, necessary to draw for art class tomorrow so my teacher doesn't yell at me anymore. All reasons why this is a fake blog entry and I will write all about my life and the excursion to Pisa tomorrow.

Yay for American books!

So... no wandering last night. My apartment of 3 decided to watch Amelie and then go to bed. I know, we are party animals. We'll try to tone it down. Today Danielle and I went on a mission to find a watch! We failed. Well, we found watches, but they were very expensive and we're looking for a cheap watch. They did not meet our criteria. We went to a new metro stop because I thought that my politics teacher, Fabio said that there was a good shopping center down there. We did not find the good shopping center, so I might have been wrong about which stop he said.

Pretty walls in the new metro station (Repubblica)

Really pretty fountain that we saw as soon as we got off of the metro.

These are statues on a building that I liked. I have no idea what the building was.

Another amazing building. I think that this was a museum or a theater of some sort because there were all these banners advertising like coming attractions or exhibits or something. I would know if I could speak/read any good amount of Italian. But I can't.

Our first stop was at a bookstore because they looked like they might have some American books. They did! We found one aisle of them after wandering around in there for half an hour and then we bought several. That's all we're going to say about that.

After that, we wandered down the row of shops and looked at shops we couldn't afford at all. We went to a sock store and a tourist store. I got a notebook with the God and Adam part of the Sistine Chapel ceiling. I must think of something to write in it now. Then we went to a perfume store with many sections that were way out of our price range as well. But, I found body spray that smells like lemons and vanilla and awesomeness. And I got a sample of Valentino's perfume when I bought my cheap body spray. Which is probably the only Valentino anything I will ever own. Then it started raining the worst rain we have seen since we got here. Pouring rain. Even with our umbrellas we had to duck under an awning for shelter for a while. And then we realized we were hungry and we caved and went to one of the two McDonald's that were right by that metro stop. They had like 4 sandwich options, but they gave you the option of patate vertigo! (Curly fries) And they charge you for ketchup. Lame. But it was tasty. I have missed French fries. I bought a kilo of them at the GS yesterday, but there is something amazing about having them fried for you. Don't judge me. Plus, Micky D's in Europe is crazy nice. Behold, the wall decoration:

Right? Nicer than American McDonald's, yo. And then we came back and I decided to go to Pisa with the rest of group tomorrow (sans Danielle and Haley). I am excited except for the fact that we are leaving at a crazy early hour and we're going to be on the train for 8 hours to see it for like 6. I'll let you know how it goes.

Italian Snow Day!!!

Not like... literally. The sun was actually shining today for like the third time since the day that we got here. But today we got a phone call from the Drawing teacher and she said that the transportation people decided to go on strike and there were no trains and no buses so she had no way to get into Rome to teach our class. So we had the day off of class! It's rescheduled for Monday, but for those of us who decided to load up our schedules like idiots, it's nice to have a three day weekend. Woot! But, back to the beginning of the day. In the wee hours of the morning, we decided that Alex needed to be cheered up, so we decided to make crepes at about 2 o'clock this morning with a mix that I got at the GS. It was a raging disaster. The crepe mix went everywhere when we shook it up in the bottle like we were directed to do. It stuck to the pan no matter how much butter we put on it. It refused to flip. Disaster. I rock at crepe making usually! Those of you who have been a part of Crepe Time at the house know this. I was incredibly upset at my crepe failure. It bothered me all night. I had a dream where I wasn't allowed to come back into the U.S. of A. because I couldn't flip a crepe. And when I say dream, I mean nightmare. So this morning when I woke up, the first thing I did was go to the kitchen and attempt to make more crepes.

And it totally worked! Crepe #1 was a bit brown, but...
Crepe #2 was pretty! Alex was still sleeping so I didn't get to make him the promised crepe, but the roomies enjoyed it. We discovered several things last night: a) always use a nonstick skillet to make crepes. You still have to oil or butter it, but it must be nonstick to start with, or there is no chance it will come off the skillet in one piece. Ever. b) Make sure that all the batter is mixed in. When you get near the bottom of the bottle and you realize that there's still half of the powder, there is a problem. No wonder the stupid runny crepes were sticking to the non nonstick pan. They worked fine in our awesome skillet this morning.
We've had a completely slackerish day since then. We went to the GS (again) because we got the urge to cook, but then we were talked out of cooking because we heard that we were going to a restaurant that might be edible instead of the Ethiopian place that some members of our group wanted to try. It was a lie. They went to the Ethiopian place and my apartment stayed here and ate the awesome ricotta & basil pasta with pesto. It was amazing, in case you were wondering. There is rumor that tonight might be a go out and wander around Rome night, but we're waiting to see what happens when they get back from dinner.
Also, on a lovely side note, I'm reading The Codex, by Douglas Preston, who was the cowriter of a book that I read in middle school that I had to do a project on and my group emailed him to tell him about our project and he totally wrote us back. So... major connection.
That is all.

Vatican Day!!!!!!!!!

Guess who saw the Sistine Chapel will-God's-hand-ever-touch-Adam's-hand painting today? I DID!!!!! Let's start at the very beginning... it's a very good place to start.

Told you- the very beginning. This is where I was at 8:15 this morning waiting for my teacher for 15 minutes. When we got into the museum we had to go through a security thing, but the super nice guard hand checked my film, even though the machine said that it was film safe! Yay! I thought it would be light enough to shoot Tri-X, but it was not, so I ended up backing out my film and using 3200. Just a note for the film people.

This was the first piece we stopped to look at. I don't remember who did it or what it's called. But look at the Byzantine influences! Ooh...

Flipping amazing Vatican ceiling. Most of my film shot at the Vatican was of the ceilings. Look! Amazing!

My teacher told us to not pay attention to the ceiling and to look at the walls of the Sistine Chapel. Seriously, who was she kidding? I barely know what was on the walls. And Botticelli did something on the walls and I HEART him. I talk a lot of smack about Michelangelo. I'm usually not a huge fan. I could've sworn the first time that I looked at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel that the paintings of people were actually coming out of the ceiling. It was by far the most amazing thing that my eyes have ever seen. Everyone, get on a plane, fly to Italy and to see the Sistine Chapel. Do it now.

So... in the Sistine Chapel you are not supposed to talk at all and you are not allowed to take pictures of any kind- with flash, without flash, or videorecordings. Guess how many people follow any of those rules? No one. I got two awesome pictures of the Adam/God part before our really nice personal Vatican guard who took us into normally restricted areas of the museum told me that pictures were very very forbidden. I felt bad. Of course, I still took pictures, but I did it in a much more discreet way. But those two... they're going to be gorgeous. I already can't wait to see them. So most of my pictures were shot at waist level with auto focus on my other digital camera. Shockingly, some of them came out really well I think. No, you don't get to see them yet. If I show you all the good ones now, I'll never convince you to sit down and look at all my Trevi Fountain pictures when I get home.

Awesome statue that was in a pillar as we were leaving. Yeah, those things are just carved and sitting out in the open at the Vatican. That's what's so flipping hard to get over. They just sit out in the open!!! Insane.

See this guy? Note how he looks funny and it kind of makes you want to go up and play with his hat to see if he's not allowed to move like the British guards. Don't. He is a Swiss guard and he will kill you. This is not me being funny. It's happened in the past. Don't mess with people in funny clothes. There's a lot of pent up anger there anyway.

So thus end the Vatican pictures for the day, but hopefully there will be many more. Maybe I will even show you a few. After the Vatican roommate Danielle and I came back to the apartment to get lunch and then we went to Italian- half an hour before it's supposed to start. Plenty of time to jump on the metro and go to class. Here's the catch: the Metro decided not to work today. So we run and jump onto the metro and it's not moving and the doors aren't closing. And we wait there for about 7 minutes. And then the announcements start. Being that they are in Italian, it doesn't make much of a difference what they're saying, but then about half the people on the Metro get up and leave. So we leave and go to the bus stop right behind the metro station and even come up with a plan of how to get there on the bus. And then there's no bus driver. And we sit and sit and sit some more. And then someone comes to the bus and says that the Metro is working, so we go get on the Metro and get onto a train with about 3 times the normal amount of people and we're all shoved in there like cattle going to get slaughtered for McDonald's. Not good times. We got to class after an hour of commuting and half an hour after class started. There's never a dull moment here.
After class I got my first crepe of Italy doused with Nutella and amazing. It makes any bad day better. I wish I'd taken a picture of it now.
Then we went GSing. It seems to be an every other day thing here. I found crepe batter. There is no pancake batter, baking powder or baking soda to be found, but crepes are always within reach. I also got some amazing sounding pasta filled with ricotta and basil. I'll let you know how it is tomorrow.

Happy Belated Obama Day!!!

I know, I am a liar. There's too much to do here, okay?

Tuesday was amazing. My ancient art class took place at the Capitoline Museum, so we spent 4 hours running around there and getting information about tons of the works. Awesomeness.

Giant foot. This is all you get from the museum for now, though! I shot good digital for most of the day.

After Ancient Art we went to Italian class, and we were supposed to have a wine tasting at the Wine Academy after that, but being that it was Inauguration Day, all of us wanted to go home and watch so our Italian teacher asked if we could reschedule. We could! So... wine tasting a different day. People in the group discovered this amazing Italian sausage (salsicce) at the grocery store (GS... no really, that's the name of it) and we had all been craving that from the night before, so we stopped by the GS and got salsicce and 2 Euro wine and came back and realized we had missed most of the Inauguration anyway, but we toasted in President Obama with cheap wine in plastic cups and we totally sang the national anthem when it was on TV and we were a very patriotic group last night.

Most of the group hung out and watched CNN some more, but Terrance and Danielle and I bailed and spent most of the evening on one of the boys' balconies talking about our everythings and nothings.

Look at the roomie bonding, people. Amazing, I know.

Today was a later day, I had my politics class and managed to go to and fro class all by myself!!! I have finally learned where I live and it only took 2 weeks! After politics I had my drawing class, which I am awful at, but still in love with. Since it was raining all day, we went to a church to draw instead of where we were supposed to originally go, which was like a bridge over the Tiber. We went to the Santa Maria Soppa Minerva (I think that's what it was called)

This is the Michelangelo (they think, it may not be a Michelangelo at all) that I made a mockery out of with my sketch pad. My teacher demoted me to drawing lines and dots. It was like making my own activity book.

Saint Catherine, who is aparently the co-patron saint (I didn't even know they had those) of Rome

The ceiling of this church that I couldn't stop looking at. If it wouldn't have been crazy rude of me, I totally would have laid down on the floor and just stared at it for a very long time. That and if the floors hadn't been made of very cold stone and the building hadn't been colder than the outside.

The elephante that we drew after the statue! I did much better on this one. Although I had like an eighth of it done when everyone else had completed theirs.

My new favorite statue. She lives inside the church. What must it be like to be stuck in such a miserable position for eternity? Sad.

Tonight was a delightful low key evening. We made scrambled eggs with salsicce and swiss cheese for dinner and I'm planning an early night this evening. Tomorrow we must be at the entrance to the Vatican museum at 8:15. It promises to be an exciting, but also very long day. I'll keep you posted, eventually :)

Hello again...

Sorry, I know I promised a picture of the day, but that was before the bronchitis. That story comes later, let's start at what we missed. Tuesday the internet didn't want to be cooperative, so I couldn't put up the tons of amazing pictures I took that day. Tuesday was the first of my long class days. Two classes only meet one day a week (one Tuesday, one Thursday) but they meet for four and a half hours. 8:30 to 1 we wander around the streets of Rome and hear information about the art and artifacts that are everywhere. Here is a bit of the amazingness that we learned about on Tuesday:

The column of Marcus Aurelius- slightly smaller than the column of Trajen, but who's measuring?

Better view of same column

Column at the Roman Forum

Arch way also around the forum-ish area.

Crazy piece of a the temple that was dedicated to Neptune. Apparently, everything had to have symbols because like 20% of the population of ancient Rome could read, so seashells = sea god! This lives on the back of the pantheon, by the way.


Pantheon occulus!

Side of a crumbling temple. There used to be three of them that were built right next to each other, but alas, now the only one that survives is the middle one. And it's been like, crazy rebuilt.


This is the Tiber. Well, this is an interesting part of the bridge crossing the Tiber.


Dirty, dirty Tiber trees. The level of the Tiber rose crazy, crazy high recently and so all this debris is still stuck in the trees that line the river.

This is the Temple of Hercules. Funny, I always thought he was Greek. Oh well, when in Rome...

Fontana di Trevi (The Trevi Fountain to those of you non Italian speakers) I am in love with this fountain. Expect to see LOTS of pictures of this when I get back. Lots. You have been warned.

Another group of once shared columns that are now falling apart a little bit.

The Teatro di Marcello. Theatro di Marcello? I don't know. Marcello's Theater.

Statues on an amazing building near the next picture.

Giant phallic sundial.

Crazy old columns. Out of like three or four temples that were here, this is the only temple that is recognizable. And how people recognize it is beyond me.

More pantheon ruins!

"Here lies Raphael, whom Nature feared would outdo her while alive, but now that he is gone fears she, too, will die."

Awesome broken column. Columns are everywhere here, people. Everywhere!

What's that? The Trevi Fountain? Seriously, get used to it.

So Tuesday was a crazy intense day. We walked like up and down the length of Rome. And then we went back to the Wine Academy for Italian class. I can introduce myself and spell my name now. And also say that I am from Albuquerque and that we have coyotes there. Don't ask.

Wednesday was a more relaxing day. I had my politics class in the morning and then my drawing class in the afternoon. I cannot draw. I tried to draw something to show her what level I'm at... my masterpiece was called "lop-sided lamp on invisible table". And when we went out to draw, my lion statue looked like a dog. But it doesn't matter, because I totally adore the class. So much more fun that running around Italy to see how far we can get each class period.

This is my class trying to draw each other's eyes. Clockwise from back boy: Alex, Haley, Terrance and Christina. Danielle and I are not pictured for obvious reasons. All these Japanese tourists kept walking by while we were sitting on the steps and they took pictures of us. I blew my nose in as many of their pictures as I could. May their stalker-like memories be tainted by my American phlegm!

Thursday morning is when the awful started. I woke up with no voice and it was hard to breathe. So I went to the sitting portion of class and then when they went to go run around Rome I took a cab to the pronto soccorso. (Emergency Room). The woman at the front desk took one look at my passport and told me that if I wanted to wait, I could, but it would be at least 8 hours before they could see me because they had "real emergencies". She also told me to go back to my hotel to ask for somewhere better to go. Bitch. So... I took my passport and 2 metros, 1 bus and a long walk later, I went back to the hospital by the Vatican that we took Haley to earlier. And still waited about 8 hours. There was like a massive car accident that day and my illness was way low priority. But, when I did get into the room, I got checked out and got a chest x-ray to make sure that my lungs weren't gross. Don't worry, they weren't. There's a whole other story about doctors and inappropriate touches that goes along with the chest x-ray story, but in the hopes of repressing it, we're going to skip over those details. Paul came to meet me at the hospital because my roomies thought I was dead. It was really nice to have a translator and we went and picked up my pills and went back to the house. Let me tell you about the magical pharmacies in Rome: when you bring in your prescription, the pills are already counted out. All they do is scan in a box and hand them over. It takes literally about 2 minutes. Greatest thing ever. Get it together, America!

See? Premeasured pills! 2 minute transaction!!!!

I don't remember my life on Friday. I was conscious a total of 4 hours. I watched a movie. I'm honestly not sure which one it was. I also remember that Paul and my politics teacher Fabio came to check on me. They don't do that in the States, kids. Never have you felt so awkward in class as when you realize that your Irish/Italian teacher has totally seen you in your pajamas.

Saturday I was up for slightly longer. Still watched movies. Kung Fu Panda and Stranger Than Fiction. In case you were wondering. The rest of the group had get-drunk-and-stumble-through-Rome-night. Honestly can't say I'm sorry I missed it after hearing their stores.

Sunday was laundry day! It's nice to have clean socks again. And clean PJ's. I was spending a lot of time in those things.

Which brings us to today. Still don't have a picture of the day. I'll be back on track tomorrow. Today I went to class. Early. There was rumor of a transportation strike so instead of going to class at 10, we went to class at 8:30 so that we would be at class when the metro shut down. It totally didn't shut down. But, we were out of class early, which was nice. I got to take a field trip to the nice, non ghetto GS and restocked the house on the paper products that I used all of while sick. Oh! The girls are split now. Paul was afraid of everyone getting sick with the minor epidemic that Haley and I started already, so Lindsey, Christina and Stacey are now in the apartment below us and Danielle, Haley and I are upstairs. More complicated to keep things straight, but... oh well. That's all for now, I'll try and stay caught up from now on. It's crazy easy to fall behind with the recapping of the days. :)