Simple Pleasures

This week of classes flew by and as it's Thursday night, it's now the weekend. I could get used to this 4 day a week class thing....

This week was made markedly better by the discovery of a coffee machine in our apartment. First of all, my coffee intake here is completely unsatisfactory because they do not believe in drinking coffee in any form other than espresso. And, to be honest, we didn't find a "coffee machine," we found an espresso one. But, nonetheless, we can now make caffeinated beverages whenever we please which is indescribably exciting.

I had been going to my favorite coffee shop every morning for a "cafe latte da portare via"(a to go coffee, literally, "to take onto the street"). The owner is old and sweet and flirtatious and I will be sad not to visit him every morning. But now, with my own machine, I can have coffee on Sundays (wow!) and whenever I want! For much cheaper!! I've said this already, but it should convey to you all some of my excitement at this discovery!

Ok, so coffee is taken care of. Fruit was a problem, because I wasn't getting enough of it. That is, until I found the cutest old lady who has a very tiny shop where she sells her produce from her garden+ other items. Fantastic. I have no idea how she arrives at the price, she just throws things onto the scale and tells me in very very fast Italian how much it is (not much at all!) and makes me happy. She has THE most delectable blood oranges. I think I've had about 7 in the past 3 days. Delicious, and fresh bananas and lettuce and kiwis and melons and squash and radishes and foods I've never seen before and did I mention she is adorable? I'm going there several times a week to get my fruit and veggies, that's for sure :)

Running. This may or may not excite you, but it makes me so so so so so happy. I ran 6.5 miles today. Wow, I haven't done that in a month, at least. I decided that I really just didn't care anymore if people looked at me funny when I ran and went on the roads. There are only certain roads I can run on (the ones with side walks!) but it is a million times better than going to try expensive track and running in circles. Plus, today was amazing and sunny so it was just great to get out there, explore Perugia faster than walking, and move move move.

Highlight of the run: Finding this. Postcards of this are everywhere and I had no idea I was near it. Just went up these huge steps and suddenly, there it was. So cool.
I googled it after my run and found this out about it, which I thought was neat. I'll have to go back and check it out in more detail sometime!

"The church of Sant' Angelo dates to the V-VI centuries A.D. and it is one of the most ancient churches in Italy. It was probably built on the remains of a Roman temple when paganism was decaying and Christianity started to appear in the territories of the pre-existing Empire...More previously, this temple had been built on a land sacred to the Etruscans. This makes of the church, and of the place where it is set, two important evidences of the many cultural and religious changes in the Italian peninsula.

...Those who love mystery and go to Perugia cannot but visit this church...since there are very strange symbols inside. On the doorjambs and on the neck of the Virgin Mary depicted in on of the frescoes some crosses representing the mystic universe of the Templars, a medieval religious confraternity whose legendary history is full of secrets and enigmas.
Moreover, at a few metres from the entrance there is a pentagram, namely a symbol linked to the worship of Venus associated to black magic in the Middle Ages."

Enough of that, moving on to the amazingly cool Pavone Theater:
This is an old Opera house that has since been converted into a movie theater. Given the big student population in Perugia, they are nice enough to show English-language movies on Monday nights. I went and saw Beowolf this week and it was terrible. Very entertaining though because of its terribleness, but the theater itself was a gem. We got to sit in our own little opera box to watch the show and they even stop the movie half way through to change the reel. Fantastic. And you can bring whatever drinks and stuff you want in with you, now worries. Now THAT's going to a movie :)

More Florence

So obviously that wasn't everything we did in Florence. Here's more. It's really hard to get the pictures to align where I want them to. Believe me, I would love to figure that out!!!

Above: Metra, Me, and Jackie looking in awe at the ceiling of the Florentine Duomo. I think the artist really wanted people to be scared of hell. I'd have to say it was the most graffic depiction of the last Judgment I've seen yet in a church. It was so huge this was definitely the best way to look at it.

Vespas. Parked ridiculously close to one another. This is a common site, and this method of parking could also be part of the reason why Italian women are so skinny. They can't afford to get fat, or else they couldn't fit in their parking spaces!

A word about the cars: when crossing the street (especially in Perugia) you have to be confident. Commit to crossing that street! They don't stop otherwise. No, you have to walk confidently into the middle of the street as the tiny smart cars come barelling down the road toward you. So far, they have slowed down for me. Amazing. It scares me half to death every time. But this is really just how you do it! I wait much longer to find a good break in the traffic than Italians do. Again, those women amaze me! They just step out there and all traffic stops. Wow.

Back to Florence: This is Ponte Vecchio, literally, "The Old Bridge." It was gorgeous at sunset, which is how we first saw it. There are a series of 3 or 4 bridges over the Arno and there are always a lot of people just walking around enjoying the view and shopping. (I think it's a professional sport in Florence. We practiced, but couldn't begin to compete with the Italians!)



They had human statues performing outside the Uffizi! It was great. This guy was my favorite, he winked at me a lot and did silly things. He was also the only gold one, the others who were covered in white kind of creeped me out because they looked a little too much like statues.


Little did you know but Mercedes Benz also makes clothes, and keeps their cars inside a nice retail store in the middle of Florence.

Metra and I outside Dolce and Gabbana. This is the closest we'll ever get to shopping there! This street was ridiculous- Fendi, Dolce and Gabbanna, Louis Vuitton all in a row. Coach was nearby. Ha, we took pictures and kept on walking....

Florence

Florence was a lot of fun this weekend. We didn’t do a lot of the touristy museum kind of things people normally do when they go to Florence because 3 of us are going back there later in the semester for a field trip with school. We’ll be seeing the David and other important artworks then, so why see (and pay for) them twice?

We did, however, see the famous Florentine Duomo. I mean, it’s hard not to. The thing is humongous. And although

I’m not one who likes to go look at a million churches and frescos etc… this one was truly amazing. Anyone who looks at this building and isn’t impressed is crazy.

First off, it’s huge. Gigantic, enormous. HUGE. And beautifully unique. Pink and green marble make up the intricate patterns that are all over the church’s façade. Such detail, the pictures really don’t do it justice.

We climbed all 467 stairs to the top of it to get an amazing view of the city. So cool, and definitely worth every penny.

more Duomo...

We also ate a lot of gelato. We’re making a concerted effort to gain weight here and eat copious amounts of gelato and pasta. Oh, and wine and pizza. Oh, and fresh fruit and vegetables. Can’t forget about those!

When the food looks this good though, can you blame me? I had the best steak of my life in Florence, and it was also the rarest I've ever had. I thought about being adventurous and trying the tripe special they had, but for about 1/1999 of a second. Steak instead. Give me meat! (I think my iron is low with all this pasta and not a lot of protein. Going to work on that...)

Gubbio

Went to Gubbio yesterday, a little tiny adorable amazing charming hill-town about an hour away from Perugia. We were planning on going to Assisi but decided we weren’t as excited about that and I suggested Gubbio. So off we went.

This is what we saw when we got off the bus. What a good thing we went away from Perugia! Apparently it just poured there, but in Gubbio it only sprinkled off and on. Really not that bad, and it was a fun city to check out. The rain had made it really foggy in the morning, the the mountain that Gubbio rests against was made even prettier because of it.

We started by wandering up the hill to the Pizza Grande where there is a big church ? we were'nt sure what it was. It was a number of things over the years...) and an even bigger view of the city. Gorgeous to watch the sun appear from behind the fog over the country side. You could see for miles. Miles and and miles of vineyards, olive groves, and hay fields. Very Very peaceful to take it all in. We continued to wander around the city to look at the different colored buildings, and get some surprisingly different views of the country side.

Probably the coolest thing we ran into when meandering around the streets was the 15th centruy wine keg. It was huge!!! We went into some museums to look at frescos and different archeological finds from the area, but my favorite parts of the day were this wine keg and other random finds around the city. We came across this really great public garden on the side of the mountain. There was a little hobbit-looking house right at the entrance which I got a kick out of. Other than that, it was just a nice park to walk though and gave us some great views of the city. There were remnants of old city walls etc around everywhere, which was neat. The museums here unfortunately didn't allow cameras, and it was hard to understand what I was seeing because most of it was in Italian.

Part of why we decided on Gubbio, Mom, is because of that MTV guidebook you gave me for Christmas last year! There was a section in there about how Gubbio had this fountain where you could run around it 3 times and become "certifiably mad..." We were totally hooked. And yes, my roomates and I are all now certifiably mad. (As if you needed any proof.) I'm not sure of the tradition behind running around the fountain 3 times, but I think it, as do many of the traditions in Gubbio, date back to the pre-christian days of the town. The town is really famous for its May 15 festival that has, over the years, been switched from a harvest celebration in honor of the Grek goddess Ceres to the patron Saint of the town. Google it if your interested, type in "Gubbio candle racing. " Quite the story.

Sorry for the jumbled mess of pictures above, but I've been at this for 2 hours now and I'm tired. I can tell you more about the town because it really was neat but I don't have the time or the energy to write about it now.

Classes start tomorrow!

Haha... I can't believe this: I got all frustrated the other day because I posted a long entry and then checked the blog, only to see nothing. Turns out, I accidentally made 2 blogs and got confused about which one I posted on. Sooo this means that the blog you're reading now is the correct one, and the tinainperugia one is not. There's not going to be anything new on that one, even though it's a better name :)

Best news of the week: my luggage finally arrived! I got in on Wednesday evening and nothing could have made me happier. This means that I was without my luggage and living off my carry-on stuff for a grand total of 6 days. It was fine until about the 4^th day and then I started to get really sick of it. I wouldn’t recommend flying Alitalia since, it turns out, this luggage losing thing is very common. I could have cared less though that they actually lost my luggage once I got it. I changed 3 times that day just for the heck of it!!

Mom wanted to hear about my classes, apartment, etc.. so here goes. My first real week of classes starts tomorrow and I am more than ready for it. (Yes mom, they are all in English. Italian is my only class taught in Italian.) This past week was ok but it was pretty boring. It was “intensive Italian,” but was not too strenuous. Not too easy either, I don’t want it to sound like that, but definitely not “intense.” The good thing is though, my teacher speaks 90% in Italian. Francesca (my Italian teacher at home) did that every now and then, but for the most part, spoke in English. Nope, not here. No one speaks English. They know bits and pieces of the language, but if you want to communicate anything, or buy a bus ticket for example, you have to know Italian.

I can definitely tell that my language skills have improved a ton since being here. It’s only been a week but I am amazed at how much more Italian I can understand. Speaking is still not good, but listening skills have improved a lot.

I asked the ticket counter for our tickets to Gubbio (more on that later) in pretty darn good Italian the other day and have been going into different coffee shops and talking a little bit to the café owners, so I’m getting a little practice outside of class. I am going to make more of a concerted effort this week to get out and speak.

Apartment is nice, and definitely not too cold. That was one of the things I was really worried about before I left, but maybe I just got lucky because it’s not too cold. Actually got hot the other night! We have a TV and the only channel that comes across in English is MTV. The Italian stuff is funny to watch with the volume off and try to put words in the characters mouths. Listening to it is good for me I guess, but I get enough of hearing Italian on the streets. When I go home I kind of want to relax and take a break.

Grocery shopping is fun here. Cheese, for some odd reason, is the best “deal” compared to what price it is at home. It’s very low-cost here, as is bread. But the bread here isn’t very good unless you make sure to get a specific kind. And whatdoyaknow, history has the answer! Perugia is famous for its nasty salt-less bread because it got into a nice little Salt War with the Pope in 1540. Long story short, the city had been getting its salt for half price from Pisa, the Pope got tired of it, and invaded the city to make them play more for the salt. Over night, the price of salt doubled, and Perugia came under papal control for a looooong time. And, in protest of the high salt prices, apparently they decided to not make their bread with salt. I think this is a nice story and probably has some truth to it, but definitely some fabrication as well. I liked the explanation though.

The roommates and I have been having a lot of fun cooking together at night. We usually do lunch on our own though, which either means fixing something at home or getting 1 euro pizza at a local pizzeria. Soooo good! The pizza is totally different here. You can absolutely, no problem, eat a whole pizza by yourself. The crust is much thinner and the sauce and ingredients just taste ridiculously good.

Italians have a very weird way of eating pizza. They eat it on the go at lunch, standing up, and fold it. Always. Folding pizza is a must. This standing thing was strange to me too at first, but it makes sense because by standing, you avoid incurring the cover charge fee at a restaurant. I do the same thing at bars (what we think of as café’s) when I order coffee. You just order, and drink the coffee right there at the bar, without sitting down. Everyone does this. It saves you about a euro each time. To be honest though, this practice drives me crazy. Part of what I like about coffee drinking is sitting DOWN with it and enjoying the process of drinking it. And slowly. They don’t do that here. But then again, most Italians get espresso, so that’s quick anyway.

Que Bello, Perugia!

My first couple days in Perugia have been busy and amazing. I was pretty jet-lagged when I got here, having slept only 3 hours the night before en route to Rome, and losing my bags along the way didn't help anything. Well, I didn't lose my bags. The damn airline did. And I still don't have them, as of Monday afternoon (Jan 7). It hasn't been so bad thus far not having my luggage, but it is starting to get annoying at this point. I hope the bags get here by Friday!

On a happier note, Perugia is gorgeous. It's such an interesting mixture of antiquity and modernity. I read this in a pamphlet somewhere, and it is so true- Italians agree with Shakespeare and believe that "life is a stage." They take their clothing and how they appear to others very seriously. I knew they were fashionable people before I came, but geeze. They are also willing to pay a lot of money to look nice. Me, not so much.

Oh, and they know how to eat, and well. Everything here is fresh and oftentimes organic. It really does taste different and better. I can already tell I'm going to hate coming back to eat American food. This stuff is way too good! The best place we've eaten so far is at a little grocer called Parma. This place is known for its paninis, or sandwiches. They're really patient there and are willing to work with Umbra students who don't know much Italian (which is a very good thing!) Fresh smoked salmon, homemade ciabatta bread, pesto sauce, and asagio cheese made my first Parma experience quite memorable. Seriously the best sandwich I've ever had.

I'm going to post some pictures of the town so you can all see what I see when I walk around and get to and from class. My apartment is in a great location and is about a 5 -10 minute walk to all of the 3 school buildings. I got lucky, most people have a 15-20 min. walk to school and downtown. Plus, it's pretty fancy. We have a little terrace that overlooks a courtyard and nice, big rooms. The kitchen is tiny though! About the size of the bathroom downstairs in the basement at home. We'll get cozy cooking!!

I'm going to post this now to see if I know what I'm doing before going any further. The pictures don't seem to be going in the places I tell them to.

I can't figure out how to post pictures the way I want to. I'm doing the best I can! At right: View of the lower half of Perugia from one of the Piazzas. There are little piazzas everywhere. This one just so happens to overlook the edge of the old part of Perugia, which is where I live and where the classrooms are. It is also very very very very very very hilly. Those are my roommates standing on the road just outside our apartment. That is a baby hill. I'm serious. I know why Italians don't gain weight even after eating pasta and bread all day long- they have some really huge hills to climb!








This a view from our terrace, and the last two pictures are of the main Piazza, Piazza Novembre. It is actually prettier than the picture makes it look, and there are always a lot of people walking around in it. I saw a live Nativity scene performed here the other day! Camels, donkeys, the whole thing! The building behind the fountain is a humongous gothic duomo. Really pretty inside.










I'm seeing so many new things each day. I walk by the same stores and buildings a million times to get to different places, and each time I'm noticing something new. It's great, I really love it here.