My week began with an early Monday morning. Yoga was really incredible this week, there were so many people who came to my class! We had to squeeze in to fit everyone. The quote for the class was the one that I shared with you in my last post (from The Alchemist). I realized after I planned the class that it was Valentine's day, so I tweaked my lesson a little to focus on love love love (within the self). Basically, we talked about learning to open the eyes, mind, and heart in order to fully experience every moment. In this way, we can go into life with an outlook of adventure, GRATITUDE (my other big word for Valentine's Day), and love! It was a really wonderful class, the energy was inspiring and helped push me through the week (I always start dragging about a month into classes).
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| my wall decorations are expanding! photos developed in class, postcards from trips, notes-to-self and from others.. |
After yoga I hurried to photo, where the class was a little split between developing, printing, and learning how to use our cameras. I was in the last group..I wanted to be sure I was doing everything right! Serafino took a group of 4 of us outside and we focused on lighting in our pictures. He would be in the middle of a sentence and then look bewildered, order us to stop immediately, and would start taking pictures of one of us in (apparently) the "perfect light setting, we only have moments, quick, sit here, now now now!!" It was fun!
EXCITING STORY: We were standing outside on the street taking pictures when a man walked up and asked for directions. He was with 2 other guys. Meera shook her head confused (he was speaking Italian) so Serafino jumped in and pointed him in the right direction. As soon as the man was out of earshot Serafino freaked out. "DO YOU KNOW THAT MAN?? You know who he is??!?!" Obviously we were oblivious. He told us that was the Chief of Ferrari (the cars)!! Luca di Montezemolo. How cool! Our professor said he knew because of the "gun men" (bodyguards) by his side. "We should ask for ride! Next time, next time," Serafino said as he ran inside to tell everyone else. So exciting.
Monday night we went to a little Valentine's Day potluck for the apartments in the area. Some girls from API (our program) planned it, and it was so fun! I got up super early Monday morning to make some some homemade rice krispie treats with melted chocolate on top (yumyumyum). India, I missed your help with my spontaneous baking escapades! Ashley made her mom's baked mac&cheese again. Both of our contributions went so fast, which was exciting:) Good to know our apartment's where it's at!! People brough all sorts of goodies - risotto, bruschetta, pizza, pears with walnuts and some sort of meat, cake, and lots and lots of wine.
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| the weekly class pic |
Tuesday I was exhausted - I didn't stay out very late, but I was hurting from the Valentine's Day wine celebrations. I made it to my on-site a few minutes late after a crazy metro experience. I had to take the metro to Termini to switch to a different line, and I always underestimate how busy Termini is. I almost got crushed in the subway doors trying to squeeze onto it! Apparently the doors don't open if there's someone in the way. Note to self: They. Will. Crush. You. No mercy. We met at the Arch of Constantine right by the Coloseum and learned about early Christianity in Rome. We walked all around, catching up with the others in the class after the week, and learning lots and lots! We ended at the gorgeous Lateran Church and Baptistry.
I had painting in the afternoon, and my professor made it this week! He told us he was sick last week. We had a little lecture at the beginning then spent the rest of the 3 hours working on our still lives. I love oil painting. This class is great because the girl who paint nexts to me is great company and is really nice, but we're also allowed to listen to our ipods while we work so it's nice to just be in the zone jamming out. Mumford and Sons was my pick for this week. Listen to "Awake My Soul" or "After the Storm" - definitely one of my favorite bands ever. Interesting story about how I found them...but that's for another time.
I am proud of how my painting is turning out! We're focusing on light and dark, so he told us we were allowed to do a monochromatic palatte to work on the variation as opposed to the hue/intensity. I added a little brown in mine, but it's mostly black and white-ish. Flaccus said he liked that idea of monochrome with a splash of color, which was exciting because I've never considered myself very good at painting. Yay!
I discovered something incredible this week. Not only do we have the amazing and life-saving coffee vending machine (it literally makes anything you want - macchiatos, capuccinos, lattes, you name it - and they're as good if not better than cafes), but they just installed a FRESH SQUEEZED BLOOD RED ORANGE JUICE MACHINE. I thought it couldn't get better than the coffee machine, but I stand corrected. Literally the best invention ever. You watch the fresh orange roll down the little runway, get squeezed into your cup, and ta-dah! Amazingness. The cup's big, too. I could go on about this forever...
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| at the colosseum again for our on-site class! |
Wednesday I had a big presentation for my honors class. It was a rainy rainy day, but luckily I remembered to grab my umbrella on the way out, remembered a previous "note-to-self" and walked to school (the buses are terribly slow on rainy days because so many people want to ride them...it doesn't really make sense). Me and another girl in the class were presenting an article about Correggio's Camera di San Paolo, a beautiful fresco in Parma that we're visiting later in the semester with this class. It went really well! Hopefully all the work I'm putting into this class will pay off in the end. We focused on mythology in Correggio and Parmigianino's work today, which are absolutely stunning. We had to read some of Ovid's Metamorphoses for this class, which was actually really entertaining. I can't wait for our class weekend trip to Northern Italy to see everything in real life!
Fresco this afternoon was exciting because we did our first actualy painting WOO! We learned about the 2nd and 3rd layer of the mortar, then got to painting. Once again - very messy. Flaccus, my painting teacher, came in to check out our work (the painting studio's right next door) and laughed at me saying I looked like a construction worker. I looked down and realized I was completely covered in lime, marble dust, and sand. Oops! Definitely going to need to run a load of laundry tonight. After prepping the wall which takes about an hour or so, we began the painting session! I painted 3 little yellow birds with leaf designs and wood all around. At the end of class we scraped everything we'd done today off the walls (it was just practice). Our homework is to do the 2 final layers of mortar again and then do a little painting. Debbie and I are planning on coming in tomorrow to work on ours.
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| RAINBOW (it was way brighter in real life!) |
Walking home was gorgeous! I was in such an art and loving (theme of the week) mood on the way home, it must have rubbed off on Debbie because we couldn't stop talking about how beautiful the clouds looked! It had stopped raining, so some blue was peeking through. It was like I was looking up at Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel or something...you know days when the clouds have so much personality? There were all kinds of greys and whites mixed together, with blue shining through in the distance. Then the greatest thing happened. We saw a rainbow! And then another one!! Two rainbows in one walk home - a great end to a tiring week.
Tonight's plan is to get some work done and rest up for a big day tomorrow. I'm heading to Paris early Friday morning (really early - I have to leave the apartment around 5am), so tonight and tomorrow I'm going to try and get as much reading and homework done as possible. We'll see how that goes!
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