Project Runway and Secret Tunnels

Even though it’s already Monday, I will fill everyone in on the on goings of last week since I have some catching up to do…I will split these into two blogs so it is easier to read because a lot more happened this past weekend than in the last week.

Last week was fairly uneventful.  I really love going out in the evenings here because there is always something going on.  On Tuesday night we ended up meeting some friends at the Lion’s Fountain, an English pub here – SO un-Italian of us…  They were having a guitar hero contest, which I obviously would have one if I had thought to enter.  Haha…some of you know of my amazing Guitar Hero skillz.  Anyways, we only stayed a few minutes at the Lion’s Fountain, because we are attempting to immerse ourselves in the Italian culture, not the British one.  So, we ended up back at our staple, the Jazz Club.  It was blues night, so basically whoever wanted to play could get up there and bust out some blues.  There was one group of boys who looked as though they couldn’t be older than 13 playing some of the best blues I have heard in a while.  It was pretty funny.  They left a little before 10, because we figured it was a school night.

 

Graphic design on Thursday was a ton of fun.  We are designing word art to be incorporated into the menu at a local restaurant.  We are also designing the menus for a special art show called “Food ‘N Art,” which I aptly renamed FnA…  But we are having a contest and whoever’s they like best is going to get to be the actual menu.  We are basically playing Project Runway, so my teacher keeps walking around saying “Just make it work.”  Haha…Jessie. 

Friday morning we got to tour the Vissarian Corridor, which is a long hallway essentially, that connects Pitti Palace to the town hall.  Pitti Palace was originally supposed to be built for the Pitti family, (hence the name) but then they ran out of money and the palace remained half finished before the Medici family came into power and finished it.  One of the Medici’s built the corridor as a gift for his bride, and now you apparently have to pay a lot to receive a tour of it all, or you just have to know the right people! J  This corridor was a way for the Medici family to walk safely from their house to their private art museum, the Uffizi, and then to the town hall.  Essentially, they never had to come into contact with the commoners, but they were also able to keep tabs on the workers below.  It was a really cool tour, and we finally got to begin looking at all the Uffizi has to offer.  Now the corridor is filled with self portraits from 17^th century painters and some more recent artists.  There was a Chagall self portrait which was my favorite.  But I just loved that I got to do something that I wouldn’t have normally seen had I just been on vacation here.

Best Italian Pick Up Line

Walking through San Lorenzo market the other day, I heard a man say to me in broken English, "Excuse me miss, I believe you dropped something."  So, I turned around and asked him what I dropped, because I saw nothing of mine on the ground, and he replied, "My heart."  

True story...  Italian men are getting craftier.   

Karaoke Strip Tease

Last night was possibly one of the most entertaining nights that I have had since I arrived in Florence. We found out about this club called the Jazz Club that’s right downtown a few blocks from the Duomo. We thought it would be a very chill, relaxing atmosphere where we could go have some drinks and listen to jazz. And we probably would have been right if we had gone on any night other than Thursday. Thursdays at the Jazz Club, it turns out, are karaoke nights. Yes, I kid you not; I ended up in an Italian karaoke bar last night. It really wasn’t that crowded…imagine that…and there was one couple that we met there that happened to be studying abroad through Syracuse, so they spoke English too. It was weird because listening to the music in the karaoke bar has been the largest concentration of Italian music that I have heard since I got here. There’s an Italian joke here that the Italian people chose to focus on the arts and therefore they cannot sing or play music. MTV is one of the biggest things here right now…Italians love their MTV. In fact, our host family has three MTV channels. However, on MTV, they mostly play songs in English. The street vendors all have English music playing in their booths, and even my Italian teacher plays American oldies in the background of his class. Italian music just isn’t that big of a thing here. So it was quite strange to hear only Italian music in the bar last night. The only people that were singing songs when we got there were the bar tenders, the owner, the DJ, and two people, a man and a woman who were obviously regulars considering the DJ would call them up by name. So, when we walked in the door, we were a bit of fresh air, so to speak. We didn’t even have our drinks before they tried calling us up on stage. We successfully got them to stop taunting for a while by telling them that we don’t speak Italian. However, Kellen, one of our friends does speak decent Italian, so he told the DJ that if he found a song in English, Christy would sing it, because she sings incredibly. Well, Christy and I had already made an “I’ll go if you go” deal before getting there, which was mistake number one. So, the DJ puts on one of the only English songs he has, Celine Dion’s My Heart Will Go On and Christy gets pulled up on stage to do a duet with the woman who is a ‘regular’ on karaoke night. It was entertaining, and we have a ton of pictures of Christy’s duet. (Except, then Christy’s camera died, right when the night was getting started) So, Christy gets an encore and the DJ plays Summer Lovin’ and I am pulled up on stage to join, along with Julie, and our friend Chris, because we had to have a male counterpart… And when that song finishes, we still aren’t done because we just haven’t sucked enough. So, the DJ plays MORE Celine Dion, this time he plays I’m Your Lady, possibly one of the hardest songs to sing in the world, and Christy, the woman, and I do an awful rendition and finally get booed off the stage!! So, then more people sing, the night goes on, there’s a bad rendition of New York New York, and our friends from Syracuse get to sing some Beatles (why WE got stuck with Celine Dion, I will never know…) but then, the most amazing moment of the entire night happens. The short, chubby, bald, flamboyantly gay, Italian man who is obviously a regular there, gets up to do three songs in a row, each one getting more raunchy than the last, until finally he is doing a strip tease to the point of having his pants unzipped and his skin tight shirt somewhere in the audience, with his hairy chest exposed. I really thought I was going to pee in my pants I was laughing so hard. However, he was taking it so seriously, and he had every move obviously choreographed perfectly, even down to the point of sitting on top of the piano with his legs crossed… Hands down, best thing I have ever seen in Italy thus far!!!!

Photojournalism

My photojournalism teacher is trying to get me killed. Well, not really. But he is challenging me to death…I love a good challenge; however, this class is stretching me in ways I never knew possible. I am thankful for Simone (my teacher) because without him, I would never do the things I am taking part in…
On Monday, we had an assignment where we had to hike to the train station and then we had one hour to get as many portraits of people as we could. We had to go up and ask random people, in Italian, if we could take their photograph. I am too chicken to do this in America, where I speak the language! I walked around for probably fifteen minutes before I actually got the courage up to ask anyone. I started off asking people in English, because I was just positive my Italian was horrible. However, people weren’t as responsive when I asked in English and a surprising amount of people didn’t speak any English. That shouldn’t be surprising…that makes me sound ignorant. However, it was surprising to me because everyone that I have run into here speaks English, or atleast understands it well enough. Once I started attempting to ask in Italian, people were much more receptive. It was funny to see people’s reactions. Some were flattered, others said no, lots of people asked why, and one woman even said yes, as long as it doesn’t get turned into porn! It was a very interesting experience, and I was very surprised by myself and the confidence that this assignment built.
However, I still only got about 20 portraits done in an hour. Some people in my class took over 150, so you can see the comparison. I like to think I went for quality over quantity, however, I know it was just because I was too chicken to ask for any more.
My next assignment for this week is to find a small business, go inside, talk with the owner, and photograph like mad. I am excited and also nervous about this assignment because me Italian is so awful and most of these artisans around town don’t speak English. So, it will be interesting, to say the least.
The rest of my week has gone good. Classes are keeping me entertained, for the most part. And my Italian is coming along quite well, considering where I started…
On Tuesday, I had lunch with a friend whom I like to call Romulus. He goes to AC with me and is studying abroad in Rome; however his three week orientation is taking place in Firenze. It was so nice to be able to talk to someone about things back home. It was a familiar friend in an unfamiliar setting, which I loved.
So, that’s the midweek update. (It’s really Wednesday when I am writing this, but who knows when I will actually get internet again to post it…) Hope everything is well in the US! Ciao!!

Viareggio, 'The pot', and Nutella

My beach trip and this entire weekend have been perfect! Early on Friday morning, (since we have no classes on Friday) Christy, Kellen, Julia, Chris, and I headed to Pisa. This is only about an hour train ride, (with stops) and the trains for it leave every half hour. The day actually started out pretty crummy because Christy and I got to the train station three minutes too late and missed the 8:27 train. The rest of the group had already gotten on this train, however, and left us. So, that left Christy and me, the two most directionally challenged people in the world, to try and navigate ourselves through the train station in our broken Italian and somehow onto a train to Pisa. Luckily we ran into a group of English speaking guys, who turned out to be in a study abroad group from A&M and UT, who were also going to Pisa. So, we sat with them on the train, which took away most of our stress, thankfully. Pisa is a cute, small, quaint little town. There isn’t really much to see there. Once you see the leaning tower and take the tacky tourist-y picture of you holding the tower up, (or kicking it over, if you are Chris) then you’ve pretty much seen Pisa. It was very amazing to see the leaning tower in person, I’m not saying that wasn’t an incredible experience, but when Mauro told us there wasn’t much to see in Pisa, he was right. We looked into climbing into to tower (yeah…they let you do that…) but it was going to cost more to climb the tower than the entire day’s trip would have cost. So, we nixed that idea and headed back to the train station to go to Viareggio.

Viareggio is the perfect little beach town. The ocean was pretty easy to find. You just get off the train and head straight for ten minutes. We had lunch at a small little beach front café, which was surprisingly reasonably priced, considering the location. We also bought granitas from them later in the day. Granitas are so much more incredible here than in the states. They are basically fresh fruit slushies, but the flavors are indescribable. Because they are a ‘summer time’ treat, they are going to stop selling them after next week, so we have to stock up now!!

They beach was perfect! The water wasn’t as blue as I expected from the Mediterranean, but it was a beautiful sand beach, and the water was so clear, you could see the bottom even when you couldn’t touch. There was nothing in the water either, not like the Texas coast where there’s seaweed, shells, and small ocean animals everywhere. We had to really search for shells on that beach. We did all the typical tourist beach things…sunbathed, read, relaxed, buried our friends in sand, swam, gawked at all the old topless Italian women. Oh yeah…so, it’s not really a nude beach, or even a topless beach for that matter, but all the old women like to sunbathe without their tops. (Everyone here is so tan…and they apparently don’t like tan lines…) And they all seem to have a different view of modesty here as well. These old, big women don’t seem to have ever heard of a one piece or tankini swimsuit. That’s a fashion statement that hasn’t reached Italy yet. These women all liked to wear string bikinis. Or thongs. And all the men wear speedos. And the little girls don’t wear tops either. It was really the most strange seeing that. I felt too covered up wearing my sports bra. Considering I didn’t bring a swimsuit…

Anyways, that was my beach trip. It was the most relaxing day. And we chose the best day to go, considering it hailed in Florence, but was sunny and ninety in Viareggio. It has been raining all weekend here. We have been staying inside mostly, going to museums and trying to work on our homework. It’s hard to be studying in Florence because there’s so much I want to see and do and homework is not one of these things.

Last night we had our first creepy Italian guy experience. We were standing in the middle of the Palazzo Republicca, trying to talk to our friends on the phone and give them directions of how to get there by looking at the map. This guy walks up and asks us if he can help and takes Christy’s phone to try to tell Chris where to go. We finally figure out where they are and decide to meet them there, so this guy offers to walk us over there. We thought that was kind of him, at first. I have learned my lesson with these Italian men. First he tells us he’s 29, but then later takes it back and says he’s only 26. Then he starts asking creepy questions like ‘are you single?’ I, for once, decide to be straight with him and say yes. Christy lies and says no. From then on, he would only talk to me. Although he had to first ask me three times if I was a lesbian. Looking back the answer to that question should have most definitely been yes. He told me at one point that he was in love with me because I made his heart go boom. You have to love the boom boom… So, he takes us half way to the location of the place before he starts asking me ‘if I smoke the pot?’ When I said no he started asking me why not, because according to him, “everyone in the US does drugs…you know, like the cocaine pills?” Then he just starts laughing uncontrollably. So, Christy gets mad and asks, “Are you high?” And he just said, “Well, yes.” Almost like, duh, why would you ask such a question? So, we managed to shake him off finally and decided we would never ask for help from another friendly Italian man because he will probably be high.

So, that was my weekend, in a nutshell, the highlights and lowlights. Oh, and I have found a new love…nutella. Mom, why have you never told me about the wonders of nutella?!