My photo class is going to be rad. My teacher is fabulous. He took us on a walk around the city on the first day to show us where the photo stores were, but showed us his favorite places to eat and gave us tips about the city along the way. He also told us that we must bring him the receipt when we try the lampredotto sandwich. Lampredotto is the meat that comes from the fourth stomach of a cow. Yikes. Apparently it is delicious.
Iconography is exactly what I thought it would be and I think that will be my favorite class by far. I had my second session of class today and we learned all about the different ways of recognizing figures and characters in art. We learned how to recognize what genre a painting is (allegorical, religious, mythological, historical, a portrait, etc), what different attributes might symbolize different figures (man holding keys is always St. Peter), the symbolism of animals in art (peacock = eternal), how to distinguish between the Four Evangelists, and how most virtues are represented. This class is brilliant, I can't get enough of it.
The Great Masters course is a general art history course on Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael. A lot of my friends are in that class so it is pretty enjoyable. Not to mention the fact that it is art history and I am not joking when I say I can't get enough of it. I was so excited today when we sat in class for about 2 hours while our teacher lectured, and then we went outside and walked about 2 blocks and stood in front of this <-- the sculpture she was just talking about, Verrocchio's Christ and St. Thomas. Living in Florence is unbelievable. I walk past this thing every day on my way to one gelateria or another and I didn't even know what it was until now.
Food & Wine I haven't made a final judgment of yet, and I'm going to attempt to learn as much Italian as I can in my beginning Italian class. School rocks.
My friends rock too. Our most recent activity is taking some bottles of wine out to the steps of the Duomo and drinking it there until our cravings for gelato overtake us. We've also cooked our first meal together which was sort of a challenge considering none of us actually have a stocked kitchen. I have loved so far the people that I have met and the group that I regularly spend time with.
Like I said in my last post, this weekend I am headed to Cinque Terre with the program and then a bunch of us have decided to stay an extra couple nights. We finally found a hotel that will fit us all. It's more like a villa, actually, so it should be really fun this weekend to get back to the beach and do some hiking and outdoor stuff outside of the city. Next weekend we're trying to go to Monaco and the weekend after that we're taking a guided trip down to the Amalfi Coast. The weekend after that is a class trip with the Food & Wine class but I'm not sure where to. So lots of traveling coming up and I'm excited about that.
I went to the Mercato Centrale (Central Market) yesterday. It's a fresh food market right in the middle of the city. It's open every day until 2 and it's safe to say I'll be going there probably every week until I leave. This place makes me wonder why they even have supermarkets in this city (don't be misled, it is not your typical Vons). Fresh market food is CHEAP. Fresh market food is gooood. For example, I learned today that bread in Florence is not made with salt, so it goes bad reallyyy quickly. So the bread that I bought at the supermarket the other day before discovering Mercato Centrale was stale from the second I picked it up. It's difficult to eat and I'm pretty sure the crust cut the inside of my mouth. It's like eating bread that you left out for 6 months, without the mold. The bread I got at Mercato Centrale is soft, squishy, moist, and buttery. And the block of parmesan cheese I split with Hannah was gone in one sitting between her and I, so I learned to get the huge block instead of the small one. The only thing I overpaid for was 2 ears of corn for 2 euro which is outrageously expensive but corn on the cob sounded good.
Hannah and I like to find random snacks to eat at home. You can't just like eat a bag of chips here, and none of us really have that much food, so we've just been making snacks up with the minimal food we do have. Today we had my stale bread with oil and vinegar. Pretty normal. The first few days we spread a buttload of nutella on these cracker things, but cracker isn't the right word. The best way I can describe them is small bread slice shaped flavorless crouton-y things. Excellent with nutella, but now we're out of nutella and it's expensive. So yesterday we shredded our parmesan cheese and ate it with her Ritz-like crackers because we said Cheez-Its sounded good. I also ate a bowl of rice. Yep. Snacking has been a pretty regularly entertaining part of my day. Any spirit-led donations for nutella are much appreciated.
One side note about our apartment. We have 2 toilets in our bathroom. One normal toilet, and one bidet. If you don't know what a bidet is, basically it is a toilet that cleans your butt. And contrary to popular belief, it does not shoot water straight up. It's just a faucet that shoots out instead of down. Anyway, it has become our feet washing station because I shower in the morning and I don't want that crap all up in my bed. Our feet get disgusting walking around this city and our apartment. I'll attach a picture just to prove my point, and this was about mid-day on a rainy day, so most of the crap got rinsed off. I'll have to take another when it gets really bad and only simply because I walk everywhere in this town. So I clean my feet in the bidet. Basically I clean my feet every night in the toilet.
Class tomorrow at 9:00 am and then weekend starts at 10:15! I'm trying to get myself into the school mode without letting myself get as far as to always be wishing for the weekend, because then I feel like the semester will be over and I won't have appreciated a single day spent here because I was always looking forward to the weekends, which always fly by anyway. OF COURSE I am still looking forward to all the traveling, I just am trying to appreciate every single day here.
Had the best gelato tonight. Latte & Mente (Milk & Mint) flavor from a place called Grom. Yummm.
Things I miss from home: LINE DANCING and Leo's doughnuts. Having clear skin instead of mosquito bites. Dr. Pepper. My baby blankets. Normal deoderant.
I'm on a hunt in Italy for: a frozen Magnum bar (holla to my family).
if you find a magnum bar....send me one. k. thanks. :)
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