Day 4 – Friday, September 1, 2006

September already. Last night was a lot better sleeping, thanks in part to the Guinness, and also good planning on my part by getting to bed before John did. I woke up at about 8, had a shower and headed over to Hermes, a little pastry shop around and up the corner from us. Some people were there from the center, so I kinda said hello and went inside to get something. An Orangina and a sugared thing later, I made my way back to the center to go to the thing at 9.

The thing at 9 turned out to be a historic tour of Castiglion Fiorentino with Paulo, the head honcho and leader of the whole Italian study abroad thing. He is a brilliant architect, or at least studier of architects, and has such an eye for obscure details and historical facts that almost every sentence out of his mouth makes you feel the need to know more, including every possible answer for what the designers were thinking and doing. It was quite fascinating. We ended up going to the very highest spot in the town, on top of a great big tower. The steps were really steep and the last few required a flexible back, but the payoff was great. The views are quite amazing and it shows the town from a completely different perspective. I enjoyed it immensely…

Except for the fact that I didn’t really have anybody to share my excitement with. I chatted with Matt a bit, but I’m beginning to learn that Matt’s vocabulary was developed by the cavemen. “Ugh” and “hunn” are commonly used, with the occasional “Yeah” thrown in for good measure and proof of brain power. Wandering around listening to Paulo, I could only wonder what it would be like to have one of my closest friends here to share all this with. In a way, that is what everyone else here is doing, which is great… for them. Conversations from last night were not mentioned at all, which is understandable I guess, considering the intoxication level of some of them (ha, lightweights). But it would have been nice to have a “Hello Dan!” from Rachel, or a “Good morning!” from Amber. Instead I have to get my conversations from 70-year-old Italians who have no idea what I’m saying anyway. I came back from breakfast this morning and some of the CalPoly people were here, and they looked like nice normal people, so I said hello and all that. Maybe I’ll just buddy up with one of them or something. Here’s hoping I don’t have to endure 3 months of this. I’ll be hugging everyone when I get home. They mean more to me that I realized.

Lunch: Italian Bean Soup. Pear, cheese and salad. Pork somethingoranother.

After lunch came the train schedule meeting, which was boring but necessary. We all learned about the awesome stuff to do on trains and how to get from A to B without losing all your personal belongings. We left to go to Arezzo, a town about 10 minutes away by train, at about 4.

Arezzo is a large city with about 100,000 citizens, all of which drive like they were born in Lake Jackson. It isn’t as quaint as Castiglion Fiorentino but it does have a certain charm about it. There are a few major roads to travel through, and we went up most of them. Never down however. Every street in that place seemed to go up, so right now my feet are killing me. Monica, our guide and resident Italian professor, showed us the major points of the city, including two churches and the Medici family compound. It was very interesting to see all of the different architecture squashed into one town, and how it all somehow works together. Paulo said this morning that architecture is frozen music, and it describes it perfectly. Instead of the mass-produced, perfectly planned communities of America, Italy was built on necessity and inspiration. They need a house here, so here it goes. A church facing north? Right here. Even though it is all ancient and done long before the word Architect even came around, it still has such modern traits that it is quite inspirational. Some of the churches we saw were fantastic and it makes me want to visit the gothic cathedrals of France even more.

At about 5, a lot of the group split off to leave because they are heading somewhere else this weekend. The rest of us stayed around and continued the tour. Only me, Matt, and Mark were left, so we were vastly outnumbered by the ladies of the group, which wasn’t terrible I guess. I led the way to get some “Aqua no gas” followed by a small gathering, so that was fun. We all kinda split up after that, going ways separate. Most of the girls went looking around expensive clothes shops, while me, Matt, and Mark just wandered around with no real goal in sight. The town is truly chaotic, mostly in part to the upcoming jousting competition, which isn’t really as cool as it sounds.

The town is split into four different sections, and these four sections each have particular colors, coats of arms, and saints. These are the four competitors in the jousting session. Friday night, they have the trial joustings, which supposedly are said to show who will win the actual joust. Saturday night is wild wild parties in each of the four sections, to show support for their jouster and get as drunk as possible. Then Sunday night is the actual joust, an event that sells out months in advance. The Aggies have football, the Arezzos have jousting. Anyway, these guys in full medieval getup have this massive parade and everyone from Arezzo comes to watch. We can’t go see it not only because we can’t get tickets, but because it’s rather dangerous. The fans really get into it and often there are fights between the feuding sections. The actual joust is kinda boring though. Instead of charging towards another person at full speed with a big long stick, the competitors take turns galloping at a big metal man holding a bag of metal balls in one hand and a metal shield in the other. The rider hits the shield, which has a scorecard of sorts on it, with his lance, which has a big stamp on the end of it, and then the metal guy swings around and the metal balls try to hit the rider as he goes past. There’s a big point system and all that, but it’s no where near as cool as seeing two guys going at it.

An odd thing happened on the way home. I was walking around and Britney, a very “in the group” girl, walked by me and bumped her hand into mine. I naturally said “Excuse me” and she turned and kinda shrug-smiled at me, then gave me the eyes, and walked on again. The eyes weren’t the “I don’t like you so don’t talk to me” eyes, but something quite the opposite. I smiled back and kinda left it in the back of my head. Then later on, we were standing around waiting for someone, and I looked at her and she absolutely beamed back at me. I smiled back and gave her the “I’m not quite sure what you’re doing” look, to which she replied with the “Neither am I” look. And that was that.

Dinner: Green tortellini, Delicious chicken, tomato roasted peas, and fruit.

After dinner we were all completely wiped out from the day. All but 4 of us were asleep. So those four (Mark, Christina, a girl, and me) all went out to the Garden Underground and had a beer, which was nice but expensive. We sat around and it was really nice actually, just talking and relaxing. That’s what I expected from bars over here, not the we-must-get-drunk attitude of the states. It was fun. After the drinks, we went up the hill to De Roggio, a really good pizza place and we had a cheese pizza, mainly because that’s all we could figure out. We came home and split up and as soon as my head hit the pillow I was asleep. It was glorious.

I’m finally online with my laptop now, so I’m going to be adding pictures into these blogs, which will be cool. Maybe today’s blog will have some in…