Dan Returns to Europe

Home I is

2006-12-10T19:24:00.000+01:00

Hello my lovingly loyal listeners of lore!

I'm home. American soil dirties my shoes once more. IHOP fills my belly and tejano music finds its way into my ears. My steering wheel has never felt better and even the mall is slightly exciting.

And for some reason I can't get happy about anything. Be it jetlag or complete lack of energy, I just feel like a bag of sand, completely unemotional about everything. I should be sad to have left my home of 3 months, but I'm not really. I should be gloriously happy to be home and see everyone, but my enthusiasm seems to wither before even taking root. I'm confused half the time and exhausted the other half.

I miss my friends in Italy. I miss my friends in College Station. I miss the hills of Tuscany. I don't really miss the scenery in Texas that much...

I think it's just the readjustment phase I suppose. Not really much I can do about it. I think that maybe I should keep in touch with all the people I've come to love so much from Italy. That way we can all go through it together instead of by ourselves.

I don't know how much more blogging there's gonna be on here. I guess I can just continue it... I'll think of something.

Another Update

2006-12-01T10:56:00.000+01:00

Sorry for the delay gang, life is a little hectic as of late.

Classes are just about done, we had our final presentation in studio yesterday, which didn't go really that great. It wasn't a single person's fault, it just happened that way. We were all exhausted and sick of the project, and of each other, and just wanted to be done. My movie went over alright, but it could have been much better. I think the major problem with our group was the size. 13 people is a lot to get organized.

Other than that, life is good. I'm off to see Muse in concert tonight in Rome, although I've just been informed that there could be a transportation strike, which will make everything interesting. Then tomorrow evening we have an exhibit thing showcasing all of our work over the semester. My stonecarving thing is sure to be the big winner... I think.

It's been foggy for the past week or so. And by "foggy" I mean that you can see about 100 feet in front of you and nothing else. And it lasts all day too, not just mornings. I completely love it, but everyone else was a little spooked I think. It is a bit eerie walking around in it. Things just emerge and dissapear without warning. Makes for some interesting pictures though.

My friends are all ready to go home, but I don't really know if I want to leave them yet. I know that I'll see all of them next semester, but it won't be the same as over here. In College Station, we're students in the same class. In Italy, we're a family. And we'll never have that again. Sure we'll have our Italy reunions and whatnot, but there is never going to be a time where we wake up together, eat together, and work together again. It's going to be weird.

Thankfully my studio next semester should be great. There are a few people that I've just got to know recently that are going to be in there with me, so it'll be awesome to continue that next year.

I leave next Wednesday, in the middle of the night, and I have no idea when I get home. I know we worked it out to be about 24 hours of travel. Awesome. Oh well, it'll just add another page to the experience.

Sorry I kinda dropped off writing in here after Fall Break. A lot of things were happening and I started writing them all down in my journal, a much more personal, and private, version of this. Most of it should stay in there, but I might type it out one day. Anyway, I'll see a lot of you soon, and get home to this freezing weather I keep hearing about.

DAN

The steady lull of life

2006-11-09T23:26:00.000+01:00

There comes a point when everything you do or say or feel just seems like a rather unamusing joke. Like the world around you is part of an elaborate game set up to target you and you alone with a plot so convoluted and annoying, making your every move and thought a complete waste of time. You feel used, you feel hurt, but you don't know who to be mad at or where to point fingers or even how to make it better. You just take it and deal. Take it and deal.

As I looked into the Perfect Blue again today, I knew that I felt something I shouldn't, or more accurately couldn't, feel. Perfect Blue on Cold, the combination of which keeps me awake at night, wakes me up in the morning, and invades my every minute. If I don't see the Perfect Blue, I think about it. If I do see the Perfect Blue, it's all that I can see, or think, or do, or feel. It is the world, it is the only world I want.

After reading the past two paragraphs, I realize that I may sound slightly insane. Well, maybe not the slightly part. It's just that a lot of things happen here, a lot of things that are outside my range of control and I just have to deal with them. Because we all live in this micro-society, this family of friends if you will, things happen frightningly fast and results are even faster. Say something here and they already know about it there. Laugh at someone before they laugh at you. It's getting harder now because we're all tired of each other, of seeing each other, of hearing the same thing again and again. And making it worse are feelings that get hurt, rumors that get passed, and the annoying fact that some people do not act their age.

Our group has been torn because of this. We now rest half and half, firmly split from each other, except for those of us that choose to be the runners, hoping for peace but getting nowhere. It's kinda hard, and kinda annoying because we all know the problem but are afraid to say it because we still have to live here for another 3 weeks with these people, these friends of ours. This life we lead will end in 3 weeks.

I think I love the Perfect Blue. I love what I see in them; Hope.

I miss home, but I don't. I want to leave, but I want to stay. I never want to see some of these people again, but I want to be with them all day long. I want to revert, but I want her.

The joys of life, I guess these are. As far as normal things, our studio is ramping up for the final thing, which I asked about today. "Is our project dealing with the towns or the actual factory?" "Well Dan, that's a good question" And that's all I got. Oh well. Maybe I can make another movie or something and blow everyone out of the water.

Oh yeah, I have another problem now too, although I'm not completely sure that this one is a problem. By another, I mean that there is another person that just somehow became apparent to me. She's been there all semester, I just didn't realize. I like her though. Maybe she'll help me get my mind off the Perfect Blue. I'm so focused on her that I'm not seeing things around me. I need to stop. It won't work.

Happy confusing blog everyone. Sorry for the vagueness and utter lack of coherency and possible spelling errors. I just needed to vent a little bit.

-DAN

Hello from ITALY

2006-10-30T11:57:00.000+01:00

HOME!!!!!!!!!!

I don't really have too much time to talk right now, but I just wanted to let everyone know that I'm home safely and happily. It was a fun break, not as fun as it could have been, but fun none the less. Now we get back to work and all that jazz.

I'll be sure to write more and post all my journal entry things from the trip. But right now, I need to eat some delicious pasta.

DAN

Hello from BARCELONA

2006-10-26T19:13:00.000+02:00

Hey hey everyone. It's Dan, just in case you were wondering.

I'm in Barcelona now, a city so corrupt and disease ridden that I can't wait to leave. We have 2 more full days here, which is 2 full days too many. So far I've been offered pot, cocaine, and any number of different drugs that I can't even remember the names for. This city is horrible. Unlike London and Paris, which were both beautiful and wonderful cities, Barcelona seems to be centered on it's "fun" activities, which aren't fun at all. Our hostel is pretty disgusting and the people in it aren't much better.

On a brighter note, the shining point of this city is Gaudi and his buildings, best of which is Sagrada Familia, an extraordinary church that sucked the air from my lungs. I have hundreds of pictures from in there, so watch my Facebook for updates when I get back to Italy. We saw all 3 of his major buildings here in Barcelona, so that at least made up for some of the crap we're in. On a slightly sour note again, seems that old Calatrava has only done 1 tower in Barcelona. All the rest of his work is basically in small towns around the city, far enough away to be a pain to get to in the time we have here.

So to review, don't ever come to Barcelona. And don't ever ever ever do any type of drug. Seeing the people here has tripled my stance on that subject. And don't ever travel with people named Chris. They are automatically idiots and very annoying. I wish I would have gone with the girls somewhere. They are awesome and I miss each one dearly. I even miss silly little Brandon. I wish I was back in Italy. Through it all though, I have Mark, who is proving to be a really great friend. A good laugh with a friend is all it takes to make me feel better.

I can't wait to see everyone again soon.

DAN

Hello from PARIS

2006-10-23T09:45:00.000+02:00

Hey hey party peeps.

We're in Paris right now, doing what all the Paris people do; be smelly and eat silly meals. Our hostel is not quite up to par. In fact, our hostel is quite possibly the crappiest place I've been to in a long time. The rooms are tiny, the showers are dirty, the bathrooms are shared between 15 people, the breakfast was cold and moldy, our roommate snores like an elephant, and worst of all, everyone speaks French.

We saw the Eiffel tower last night, all lit up and sparkly, so that made us feel a bit better about the whole situation, but lets just say that these buildings we're going to see better be pretty damn amazing to make up for this place.

I think today we're going to go and see Notre Dame and the Louvre and anything else we can get in there. Hopefully not hours and hours of walking because I'm tired out and I just want to relax for a day. Oh thats another thing... Even if you feel horrible and just want to stay in the room all day, you can't. They kick you out at 11 and you can't go back in until 5. Quite silly. No wonder the English don't like the French. I'm proudly wearing my ENGLAND shirt today, so hopefully I can get in a fight with some French sissies and make me feel better.

Ok, well, I've been writing down all of my adventures in my journal, I just haven't got around to putting it on here yet. I'll be sure to get them up soon. I've got lots of smashing pictures too, so you'll just have to wait for a bit. Ok, adios!

Hello from LONDON

2006-10-21T23:46:00.000+02:00

Hello everyone from jolly old England!

Things are going quite smashing so far. It's only day 2 of the Fall Break, and all is well in the world of Dan. I don't really have much time to write everything down, because I'm in a hostel, with only a limited number of time to be on here.

So far I've been to: Pretty much every major site in London.
So far I've eaten: Prawn butties, bangers and mash (sausage and mashed potatoes), apple crumble, sausage roll, and a steak and kidney pie.

I miss everyone terribly, but I'll try and cope. Wish me luck everyone! Paris tomorrow!

DAN

Before Venice

2006-10-15T11:54:00.000+02:00

Hello everyone.

This isn't much of a post, it's just to keep everyone up to date with everything for the next two weeks or so.

We are leaving to go to Venice this coming Monday, and I'll be there thru Thursday. After that, I jump on an airplane and fly to that fantastic city on that fantastic island; London, England. Of all the places we're going for the fall break, I'm quite possibly most excited for London, just to be back there, back home.

Soon the sweet taste of Prawn butties will be in my belly again. Or Fish and Chips. Or Bangers and Mash. Or Steak and Kidney pie. Or Sausage Rolls. Or maybe just a good old bag of Monster Munch. I can't wait. And finally, finally, finally, I'll be able to understand what everyone around me is talking about.

After London, we head down to Paris for 3 days I think, where we'll cram in as much Gothic architecture as humanly possible. Then after that, we go to Barcelona, where there is a metric ton(ne) of contemporary stuff to see. I'm really looking forward to both of them, but London still excites me the most. But who knows... I've never been to Paris or Barcelona, so they could be just as cool.

Alright, well that's what I'll be up to for the next 2 weeks. I'm pretty sure I'll be taking my computer with me so I should be able to check email and facebook some pictures along the way. So with that, I'll bid you all a good night.

DAN

Cortona

2006-10-08T16:55:00.000+02:00

Teresa’s birthday was yesterday, Saturday October 7th, so we all decided that it would be fun to celebrate with her. It was her 21st so naturally something had to happen, according to American college rules everywhere.

On Friday, our normal group of scallywags (Haley, Melissa, Christina, Brandi, Amber, and me) were planning to walk down to the co-op to get some party supplies for a surprise thing at midnight for her. Everything went great until we ran into Teresa right before leaving. We tried to leave her behind, which is kinda mean, but she eventually ended up coming with us all the way to the co-op. Apparently Amber has been there before, but judging from our very scenic route, I’ve come to question that. Once we got there, I was charged with the task of keeping Teresa out of the way. So I got her to walk down an aisle with me and “suddenly remembered that I need something on this aisle” and searched rapidly for something I might possibly need. Trouble was it was the hair dye and diaper aisle, so pretty much everything was girly or covered in cartoon elephants. Stalling for as long as possible, I saw some bars of soap and pretended to look for exactly the right kind. Teresa helped out and I found a bar of soap that I completely don’t need, but I bought enough time for everyone else. And she didn’t notice a thing.

That night we somehow got Teresa out of her room and set up in there, with balloons and cake and a banner that could have said “Happy Birthday” or possibly “Happy New Year”. She finally came in and we “sang” happy birthday to her in our sick and cloggy voices, scaring the poor girl half to death. We sat around and talked and laughed and finally went to bed at around 2.

The next day we all met up to get tickets for the bus ride to Cortona, Teresa’s town of choice for the big day. Cortona is a very beautiful little town on the top of a rather large mountain, and is the place where they filmed Under The Tuscan Sun, starting Diane Lane and some other people. I’ve never seen it.

Anywho, we got tickets and got on the bus with our “bus buddies” because we had to share a ticket each. It worked pretty well actually. We got there in about 30 minutes and headed off to find the restaurant of our reservation, Fufluns, which means “Expensive food restaurant in Cortona” in Italian. I think. Our final group consisted of Haley, Melissa, Christina, Brandi, Teresa, Amber, Mark, Matt, Brandon, (big) John, and me, so we had quite a crowd. The food was good, as was the wine, and we were all quite content after the meal. We all stepped outside into the sprinkling rain, set upon shopping for things we probably don’t need. Our group somehow split into two, as it usually does, and that was the first part of what went wrong for my little group.

Somehow we split, leaving Mark, Amber, Christina, Teresa, Matt, and me together, and the rest of them went somewhere else. The rain started to come down after a while, and the wind picked up, making it really quite cold. I was wearing jeans and a long-sleeve shirt and I was feeling a bit chilly, but the girls were wearing skirts and not much else, so they were really starting to shiver. So we stayed in as many shops as we could and then finally headed back to the bus stop, where I assumed everyone else would meet us. Matt claimed in his infinite knowledge that he knew when the bus was going to get there, but as usual, he was wrong, and when asked about said wrongness met we were with silence. However, we didn’t know he was wrong until after the bus failed to show, so we had to stand out in the cold windy rain for about 45 minutes, waiting for a none existent bus. The girls, Mark, and me huddled around a big tree, somewhat sheltered from the rain. The girls were absolutely freezing, so we shoved them in the middle and tried our best to keep them warm. 6 rolled around, and I told Matt that he could wait here if he wanted to, but I was taking the girls back into town to a coffee shop to get them warm. I figured out the bus schedule, while Matt complained about everything and anything, from “it’s not that cold” to “we better not miss dinner”. Amber was about to strangle him, so I shunted everyone down the road to the nearest coffee shop and plopped some hot chocolate in front of them, which was answered by big grins.

I left them in the coffee shop with Mark, who I know would look after the girls, and Matt, who was more interested in dinner or something, and I headed out into the rain to try and find the rest of our group, because they knew that we were supposed to meet up at the bus stop. I walked up and down the main corso about 10 times looking for any of them, but eventually gave in when my left ear fell off from the frostbite. Hopefully Brandon figured out the schedule too, and we would just meet them at 7 for the next bus. I went back to the coffee shop and warmed up in the glow of hot chocolate and the warmth of friends.

7 rolled around and we all made our way back to the bus stop, where we found the others boarding the bus. Apparently they had been sitting on the second floor of some fancy coffee shop for the past 3 hours, warmer than bugs in a rug. I sat next to a chilly Amber and spent the next 30 minutes in and out of sleep.

Dinner was a fancy occasion, mainly because it was Teresa’s birthday and we got ice cream sandwiches for dessert. Mmmmmm…

After dinner, we all turned in for a while, recovering from the day. After a much needed rest, all of us went out to the slamma-jamma new pub in town, The Velvet Underground. It is really pretty cool over there. There are tons of people that go, and its fun to just sit around and talk with everyone while having a drink to relax. Last night was pretty fun. And that was Teresa’s birthday.

These things sure are a lot easier to write when you write them before you forget all the silly little details. Like Haley pouring water at dinner, or Amber nearly punching Matt. Good stuff. Remember way back when I said that I knew things would be better?

Well, they are.

Assisi

2006-10-08T10:25:00.001+02:00

Ok, due to my complete lack of timing and political coordination, I’m going to skip past the few adventures that I haven’t got to yet because if I don’t then I’m going to get bogged down and never write everything down, which would be a tragedy in itself. So I’m going to start fresh today, with our trip to the pleasant little town of Assisi.

I didn’t really know much about Assisi up until I read the chapters that I was told to read, a week late no less. Apparently it is a very religious little town, holding the very center of the Franciscan order, started by St. Francis himself. Old Francis was apparently a party dude up until he decided to change his ways and follow the Lord. He went and asked the Popey for permission, and the Popey saw it as a chance to reunite the people and the church, which was struggling thanks to it’s dominating presence in society. Basically, the church was the society. This was back in the Ages of Middle. Anyway, Francis did all this stuff and it was actually very interesting.

So we got to Assisi by bus, which is pretty great because we all fall fast asleep for the duration and feel energized when we get to the place. Anyway, we arrived not 100 feet from St. Francis Cathedral, which is pretty impressive. Impressive for the fact that it is essentially a church on top of another church, but also impressive for how mean and strict all the monks and authorities were. No pictures, no talking, no admiration of the building, no entertainment whatsoever. It was pretty crazy actually. They are sitting in one of the more important churches in the country, full of very powerful and amazing frescos and sculptures, and they only way you can remember it is if you buy an overpriced postcard. There is something sneakingly evil about that.

Anyway, we followed Paolo, our ridiculously brilliant tour guide and teacher, around for a good while, up hills and through the town, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Assisi is a lot like a bigger Castiglion Fiorentino. It’s quite hilly and everything seems to have been built according to what was already there, not by some master plan at all. There must have been some fancy thing on though because there were merchants all over the place, selling everything from neon green socks to frying pans to puppies.

The tour ended up at the restaurant that we were to eat at. Thankfully our meal was free this trip, so we were all pretty happy. I sat with the usual suspects, in between Melissa and Haley, so I was happy. Now, to fully appreciate the situation I’m going to have to explain the day previous, so bear with me for a minute.

Yesterday, our second project was due in studio. We had to do an artistic representation of our first project, the 6 meter cube thing. Anyway, we all came up with things to describe how we felt going through the project and how to represent it somehow. And that was where everything started going bad. We all had to talk to Peter Lang about our projects, at first as an initial concept and then on going throughout our development. Knowing Lang and his idiotic take on perfection and art in general, I decided to kinda experiment with this idea. I told him my initial plan for the project, which I thought was decent and would work well for me, and I was extremely confident about it when telling him, which I’ve found is the only way to deal with Lang. Every question he had I would answer, even if I just made something up. He approved my idea on the sole basis that he thought that I knew what I was doing. And I didn’t talk to him once more until the project was due. Everyone else met with him 4 or 5 more times, each with similar results. Lang has this uncanny ability to change his mind each time he talks to you, so you never have a clear idea about what he wants or what you should do to make him understand you. Every person I talked to about it was supremely mad and wanted to either punch him in the face (which I recommended) or give up and do what he wanted. Unfortunately a lot of the people in studio took the second road and took so many “suggestions” from Lang that the project was no longer there’s. A few people didn’t, mainly Haley who my respect for grows daily, and I think their projects were the strongest. After one of her sessions with Lang, she came over to us nearly in tears, and told us that she had basically told Lang to stick his ideas and leave her alone. How is a project hers if she has no input into it? She fits into the story too.

Anyway, sorry, I’m sidetracking. So these projects were due yesterday and nobody was really excited about them. We really weren’t excited about the fact that we were going to have an “important” Greek artist come to the review either. This lady, if you can call her that, has destroyed everything I thought about the Greeks. I thought they were all athletic and artistic, but no. She was large, mean, and completely lacking any sort of artistic talent whatsoever. The first few projects went through without many problems, everyone was nice and pleasant. But then all of a sudden the Greek lady started getting really critical and mean about “our” projects. She called some of them childish and stupid, and even went as far as to say that they had no meaning. This is where Melissa and the story comes in. We got to Melissa’s project, which was a taste-testing thing to display how everyone has different descriptions for similar things, and the lady was one of the tasters. She went through the project, not saying a positive word the entire time, and by the end of it she basically called it a gameshow that had been done before. Melissa started crying and then this crap of a woman feigns sympathy for her. I stayed with Melissa the whole time and I was ready for punching the Greek lady in the face. She finally left to see other projects, but not before promising to work with Melissa on her project the next day in Assisi.

Fast forward a bit to my project, which Lang introduced as “an independent work” so he apparently got the idea. I made a movie from clips on the DVDs that I brought with me. It was rather funny in parts, but also really intense and serious. I thought it came out really well. Anyway, it finished and the lights came on and I got a round of applause, the only one of the day, and nobody said anything. Haley, my little co-criminal, said “Bravo” and I said thanks. Paolo, who was in there too, said that it was really well done with the sequencing and the editing, which was great to hear from him. Any compliment from him means a ton. But not a word from the Greek or from Lang. There were some subtle undertones to my movie too, mostly directed at Lang, and I think he might have picked up on them. Anyway, I explained my ideas for a while and everyone was happy. I think it turned out really good.

So Greek lady made a horrid impression on pretty much everyone there. And you can imagine our expressions when we saw her walk through the door of the restaurant. Melissa’s eyes watered over and I nearly choked on some pasta, which is hard to do. I did not want to talk to Lang at all today, and even less was my desire to communicate with that other thing. (I know this sounds horrible, but she really was one of the worst humans I’ve ever met, so full of herself that she believes her work with Gypsy farms is phenomenal and groundbreaking. Whatever.) Anyway, I quickly started hatching a plan to escape before Lang captured us for the afternoon, surely to show us graffiti on a dumpster or maybe a single Coke can in a field of dead grass or something along those lines. To my surprise, Haley was really on board with all of this, apparently feeding off the extreme dislike of Lang too. The only problem was Melissa, who we were basically doing all this for anyway. We didn’t want Melissa to have to go through another afternoon of crap with this woman, so we wanted to get her out into the town and get her mind off the whole thing. Trouble was, the Greek lady had already come over and talked to Melissa, saying that they would work after lunch.

Anyway, our plan was set into motion as Lang headed out the door to the upper balcony. Haley, Melissa, and I shot out downstairs, right underneath the balcony with Lang and the devil lady. It was pretty great actually. The feeling of rebelling and actually standing up for what we believed in, not this tripe that he was trying to feed us, was fantastic. And having my friends there with me, feeling the same thing I was feeling was almost overwhelming. Short lived was our three though, as Melissa cracked under the pressure, that pressure to follow what we’ve been told to follow for so long, and she said that she couldn’t just leave. Haley and I tried to convince her, but I don’t think she was ready for it just then. So she went back. And Haley and I left together, off to wander the city with no real goals or direction, just the odd bond of two people understanding that what we just did was bigger than both of us. Rebelling against “authority” is never something one would recommend, but sometimes you have to stand up for yourself and your ideas, just as Haley and I did.

So I spent the afternoon with Haley, a girl I know more about now than I did 24 hours ago, and a girl I have so much more respect for now. We met up with other groups of people, but it would always be us two together going places and deciding what we wanted to do, and I couldn’t have been happier. We even went into Santa Chiara together, a big church outside our meeting place, and went down into the crypt together, more amazed by the ceilings than anything else. We came up laughing and realized that maybe that wasn’t the best thing to do coming out of a crypt. Just another story to tell, that’s all.

And that was Assisi, and my day. Tonight will hold a movie, Monty Python, and probably out to the pub to hang out for a while. And I can’t wait.

Day 3 of Rome

2006-10-02T14:15:00.000+02:00

The third day of Rome was arguably the worst. Not the worst in the sense that I absolutely hated it, just the worst of our 3 days there. This was all mainly due to our wonderful teacher and all-around idiot, Peter Lang.

We started off the day with a little blunder, which was innocent enough at the time, but turned out to be a lot worse than we imagined. Everyone met in the lobby of the hotel at 9:30 so we could leave and get down to the Piazza Popolo again to meet with Peter Lang and follow him around all day. Everyone made it down there fine, except for Melissa, who didn’t show up. And then all of a sudden, everyone decided to leave. I was completely tired and not thinking very straight, or this would never have happened, but I just followed everyone else and went to the Metro. I should have stayed and waited for her, I know, but like I said, I wasn’t thinking clearly. And it wasn’t just me either, everybody left.

So we got to the Piazza and met with Peter Lang, thankfully we waited on some steps and didn’t go anywhere for a little bit. About 10 minutes later, Melissa shows up and is supremely pissed at everyone, for which she had a right to be. Our group apologized and tried to make her feel better, but it didn’t work very well and we were cold-shouldered all day long. Thankfully it passed the next day, but it wasn’t a good start to the day.

Anyway, we followed old Petey around Rome for the day, which pretty much sucked. First off we walked through a garden, which was pretty enough, but not exactly architectural. Then we got into a Villa full of Etruscan artifacts and six billion pieces of pottery, which was slightly interesting but given our 30 minute timeframe was completely rushed. Skipping lunch, which does nothing but annoy college students, we went on to Renzo Piano’s Auditoriums, easily the best thing we saw that day.

The Auditoriums, which are mainly concert halls, are huge structures almost looking like turtle shells covered with lead. They are big, round, grey, and completely modern. The insides were quite fantastic and impressive as to how they were constructed. Apparently they cost eleventy billion dollars to construct or something like that.

Anyway, after the auditoriums, we convinced Peter Lang that if we didn’t eat something there was going to be mutiny, so he was kind enough to give us 30 minutes off. We all ran off and got some grub and then prepared ourselves for the crappy rest of the day ahead of us. Peter Lang wanted to take us to one of his projects, something with a group called Stalker, which makes perfect sense if you know Peter Lang. He said that it was only a short 30 minute walk down the river front, so we set off. 2 hours later we made it to the area of his project, tired out and supremely angry.

And then Peter Lang takes us down this really rundown area in the middle of nowhere, into a campsite of sorts, surrounded on all sides by walls of graffiti and communist logos. People resembling Osama bin Laden came out to see what we were doing, although we were so paranoid that we thought they were just going to shoot us and then have a party. Peter Lang spoke to the ringleader dude and told him that he was part of the group that made the garden in the middle of the site, and that these were students of architecture, and that we shouldn’t be executed. The guy looked at the garden, which looked like the lousiest garden known to man, and looked back us and laughed, said something to his counterpart and waved his hand, giving us permission to live for another 5 minutes or something. Peter Lang looked back at us and proceeded to talk about all the stuff they had done to this space, which basically consisted of making this horrible garden and pretending to have worked elsewhere.

After we left that wonderful place, we went to a slaughterhouse and looked at an art exhibit all about death and clothes. Peter Lang really knows how to pick them.

Anyway, after all the walking and completely pointless locations, a number of us were not in the finest of moods. Our group went back and showered and then went to the Hard Rock Café, which was absolutely glorious. After walking all day and being ridiculously mad at Lang, a bacon cheeseburger seems like heaven on earth. It’s not that I’m tired of Italy, not at all, but it was nice to have a slice of home for a change.

At the Café, we happened to run into Amber and Alison, and we all decided to walk around and take pictures of the attractions at night. We went to Trevi Fountain, the National building, Trajan’s Column and Forum, and finally the Colosseum. It was a pretty great night actually.

Day 2 of Rome

2006-09-30T15:04:00.000+02:00

Day 2:

The second day of Rome wasn’t too terrible really. We woke up early and all met in the lobby to swap stories of the night prior’s escapades as well as head over to the St. Peter’s area to have our “Audience With The Pope” as announced on our official card thingys. Everyone was quite excited, and I was too, despite my lack of Catholic-ness.

We got to St. Peter’s, which was quite a sight to behold with its massive “courtyard” of columns and impressive cathedral. We were there kinda early, so we all headed into the actual seating area and found chairs for us all amongst the hundreds of thousands there. It was pretty exciting as everyone began filling in, getting ready to see a little man dressed in white, talking in lots of languages. Finally he showed up, riding in the back of some fancy Pope-mobile and cruising through the crowds of people, waving to old ladies and trying to hold onto his little hat. It was almost like a game of Where’s Waldo because there were so many people that the only way to spot him was to look for the white spot moving faster than everyone else.

Eventually he got to the front and started welcoming everyone. Because we actually had an official invitation and everything, he said our school by name, Santa Chiara students, and we all half-whooped. Then he talked in Italian for about 30 minutes, which went from interesting to not-so-interesting to bloomin hot. Like the brilliant Aggies we are, we sat in the shade of the mega obelisk in the center of the courtyard. But an hour later, the shadow had moved over to the section that filled up really really fast, for reasons now known. Those sneaky old people… Anyway, the Pope concluded his Italian bit, then said some English bits, then some Spanish, and then I think some German. I’m getting good at identifying the languages at least.

Anyway, he finished and we all clapped and then left to get some grub. We met back up with Paolo later on and actually went inside St. Peter’s, which was fantastic. It’s more of a Renaissance church, but it was still amazing, full of magnificent statues and frescos. Michelangelo’s Pieta is in there, but was a lot smaller than I figured it would be. I took a boondock of pictures, so I’ll show them to everyone later.

We left St. Peter’s after a while, and then we were free until that night, where we had to meet up with the famous Peter Lang to go to some Architecture opening show thing in the middle of nowhere. We all headed to Piazza Popolo, which was pretty cool, and met Petey who took us up, down, backwards, and six directions short of confusing to the middle of nowhere with the art/architecture opening. It turned out to be a bunch of architects museum spaces that they’d designed. It was pretty cool because they showed a lot of the actual models used by the architects, along with the drawings they produce. We were all absolutely beat after the long day though, so a lot of us snuck out for some food, which turned out to be quite the adventure too.

Rachel joined our group that night for some reason, and I’m quite glad she did. We ate at this really fancy place, but it was reasonably priced, so we were all happy. Actually, I think we were just glad to be off our feet for an hour or so. We ate and talked and laughed and had a good time. Then came the fun part.

At 9 pm in Rome, the A line of the Metro closes. Turns out that we were at an A line stop, for Piazza Popolo, and we didn’t finish eating until about 10. So, being the brilliant individuals that we are, we went to the bus stop and figured out how to get back to Termini, the main hub of the Metro where we could find the B line back to the hotel. We all piled onto a bus and headed off to the Termini, or at least we hoped we’d get to the Termini at some point. About 20 minutes in to the ride, we figured something might be not quite right. After drawing imaginary straws, it was decided that Rachel was going to ask someone where we were. She asked and turns out the stop prior was the Termini. So we all jumped off at the next exit and walked for 20 minutes back to the Termini stop.

When we got there, we all didn’t really know where we were. We’ve been to the Termini before and we know what it looks like, but this place didn’t look anything like it. And then the lightning bolt struck and I knew what we’d done wrong. This was the Bus Termini, not the Metro Termini.

Thankfully, there were tons of buses around so we just got the attention of one of the drivers and he kindly pointed us in the direction of the bus we needed. We jumped on that one, which had to drop us off somewhere else in the city, so we could catch a different bus all the way back to where the hotel was. The bus number was 62 and it turned out to be the most fantastic bus to catch anyway. We saw nearly all the major monuments lit up at night, along with tons that we hadn’t seen before, like Trajan’s Column and such. It was quite a ride. Needless to say, we were all happy when the hotel came into view. And I couldn’t have been happier to see my flat-on-the-floor bed.

Thus concluded day 2 of Rome.

Rome and Capri – 9-18 thru 9-24

2006-09-28T19:01:00.000+02:00

Hello my rabid readers, and welcome back to yet another installment of my never-ending blog series. I’ve been gone for a week, taking in the splendor of Rome and the beauty of Capri, so I’ve got megatons to write about. I’m thinking about splitting the blogs up into chunks or days, just so it isn’t 14 pages long.

Day One – Tuesday, September 18

We were instructed by our strangely energetic teacher to meet down at the train station at the ripe hour of 7:30 am, in order to catch our 8 am train to Roma Termini. I inhaled the spongy 2 inch breakfast they provided for us and drained my box of peach juice (wasn’t that bad actually) as fast as possible, mainly because I had the heaviest bag imaginable with me. I’m not completely sure why it was so heavy, or why mine above everyone elses was the hardest to carry, but it was and it wasn’t much fun. I had everything in a tennis bag because they told us that dragging a rolling bag would be horrible. Well, nobody told me that lugging a tennis bag around on your shoulder would be ten times worse. Oh well, I have a nice big scar thing on my shoulder now, which I’ve been telling the girls is from a brutal bar fight defending the honor of a helpless puppy.

Anyway, we made the train and two hours later arrived in what would become the greatest city I’ve been to in a long time, rivaling London in nearly every way. We were following Sharon, the over caffeinated teacher, through the train station and down to the metro station underground, a system nearly identical to the London Underground. Everyone was slightly taken aback when the doors to the metro opened and hundreds of people simultaneously pushed in and out. I jumped on, not really knowing where we were going, but knowing that we had to get on. Most of “my group” followed me and somehow everyone found their way on. Sharon said our stop was Bologna, about 3 stops from Termini, so the girls sat down if they could and us manly men watched the bags. They warned us about pickpockets and gypsies, but I never encountered one on the Metro.

We made it to Bologna with no trouble and sprinted to keep up with that hyper teacher, who thought it was absolutely necessary to get to this hotel in the shortest time possible. 5 minutes down the road and a vicious burning in my shoulder later, we arrived at the hotel. Funny thing is that our rooms weren’t ready yet, so we had to pile our bags in a “secure location” which turned out to be behind a bar in the lobby. We were all rather tired and worn out at that point, so we didn’t care too much. Sharon told us to meet up at the Colosseo stop in about 3 hours, to take a tour of the Colosseum and the Forum. Our mega group of people split up into a lot of smaller groups, to find food and do whatever until we had to get over there. My group got a bit chopped up too, but it wasn’t so bad. We had Chris, Mark, Matt, Haley, Christina, and Brandy, which was a nice mix of people. Chris likes to think that he’s the leader of everything, but I think that the Metro initiative surprised him a bit, so he kept asking me what we should do. I have no problem leading people around, I actually kinda like it. So we went and got some panini things from a shop around the corner from the hotel and then made the best decision of the trip. We figured we could get a jump on the planned tour and go to the Colosseum early. I knew I could get us through the Metro, and everyone agreed. So off we went.

On the Metro the air of excitement grew as the stops flew by, getting closer and closer to the stop we all wanted to see more than any other. It was quite possibly also due to the fact that we watched Gladiator 3 times before coming to Rome, so we all had wild dreams of Russell Crowe chopping people’s heads off and stuff. Anyway, we finally made it to the Colosseo stop, and we all nearly sprinted up the stairs. I was next to Haley and as we made our way through the lobby section, I looked at her and she looked at me and we both kinda squealed with excitement. We walked out into the open where the Colosseum grew before us, a majestic behemoth of ancient brilliance. Our collective jaws dropped and the air was sucked from our lungs. If ever there was a perfect time to pickpocket 6 Americans, it was then.

But nobody did and our composures returned, and we made our way across the busy Italian street to see this spectacle of Roman engineering and entertainment. The area was flooded with tourists, who kind of detracted from the wonder of the space, but we didn’t care. We were at the freakin Colosseum! Bars closed off the lower layer of arches, making it impossible to go in without paying first. Around the exterior, tons of merchants tried to get our money in various ways, with everything from mini Colosseums to shirts with SPQR on them. Some brilliant folk were dressed up in Roman garb and would take pictures with people, for the ripe price of 5 Euro, which me and Mark split so we could take a few pics of us battling to the death. Quite awesome. We didn’t pay to go inside at that point because we thought we’d be doing that later on with the tour, which we didn’t.

After taking countless pictures of us in front of things, such as Constantine’s Arch, Titus’s arch, and many many ruins in the Roman Forum, we headed back to the tour, which was just about to start. Some old dude with a crappy microphone was our “guide” but basically all he did was stand in one spot for around 10 minutes and tell us useless information about buildings we already know about. The Colosseum is an oval? Gasp! Constantine was an emperor? Double gasp! Basically he was reading out of a text book and it was mighty boring. I was super glad that we got to spend time there before the tour because if we hadn’t I’d be bummed out.

The “tour” took us all the way through the Forum, into the National building (which I still don’t know that name of), and ended up over at the Pantheon and the Spanish Steps. The Pantheon was my second favorite part of the day, right after the Colosseum. The Pantheon, the round one for those of you un-in-the-know, is supposed to be the perfect building, made of a complete sphere (proportionally) inside. When you enter into the exact point where the sphere hits the floor, directly in the center of the building, you get this ridiculously cool feeling of completeness and almost ascension, as if you’re flying up into the hole in the dome. It was quite awesome. The only lousy part was again the number of tourists.

After that we were free to do as we pleased, which is usually involves food. Groups split off as usual, with some going to the Hard Rock Café up in the expensive part of town, and some others going shopping. Our group was slightly exhausted and smelly, so we navigated back to the hotel to shower and nap. We met back up and somehow made it to a bar-thing near the Colosseum stop, which was expensive and not really that great. After eating and paying out a small fortune, we headed back to the hotel, where we said our goodnights and headed back to our respective rooms.

In the room, which I shared with Matt and Mark, we searched the TV for something to keep us entertained for the hour or so before we fell asleep. You have to understand that we haven’t watched TV of any sort for quite a long time now, so we were desperate. Italian news was pretty much impossible, as was Italian MTV. But when the Miss Italy competition came on, we figured we could stand the language barrier for a little bit, just for the sake of entertainment. Mark thoroughly enjoyed himself and I thought it was rather amusing. At one point, as I was lying on my bed, I reached behind me to grab my Sprite and my entire bed collapsed. Mark nearly wet himself, and from that night on I slept on the bed on the floor. Great.

Sorry it’s taking so long to do all these. I’ve got a few days off coming up, so I’ll try and write some more then.

Rome pictures!

2006-09-27T13:58:00.000+02:00

Hello all! Sorry for the long wait again. I'm pretty sure it'll be a regular thing though, so you better get used to it. I'm blogging the trip right now, so that'll be up in a day or so. Here's some pics to keep you happy.

9-16-06 and 9-17-06

2006-09-18T09:34:00.000+02:00

This weekend was nice and quiet, something we don’t get very often around here. Next week we head off to Rome for almost a full week, so everyone decided to stay home and conserve energy, and more importantly, money.

It’s been raining for a few days now, nothing heavy or hurricane-force, just a nice constant drizzle, much like the glory days of England. It’s cooled off a lot too, so much so that I actually had to pull on another sheet last night. So it’s a lot nicer around here, not having to shower off the sweat every 3 hours.

On Saturday, the regular gang of guys (Me, Matt, Mark, and Brandon) all headed out to Florence for the day. It costs about 10 Euro for a roundtrip ticket, so it’s not that bad. And it only takes an hour to get there, so we hopped on a train and cruised down there. I slept most of the way, still catching up from my overnight ordeals of the previous week. We got there just after lunch and wandered down to the heart of the city, around the Duomo. It was raining, or trying to, so I bought a 3 euro umbrella from a shady stall on the side of the road. The first opening worked fine and it actually kept me dry for about 5 minutes. Then I closed it to go into a store, where I bought a nice shirt by the way, and thought nothing about it because you shouldn’t have to worry about umbrellas, especially in the heart of a beautiful city. Anyway, after making my informed purchase, all 15 euro of it, we walked outside into the rain again. I opened my umbrella and half of it collapsed on my head. As my good friends rolled in laughter, I tried to figure out what the heck was going on, only to discover that 3 of the bars under the fabric were completely bent and one had snapped. Great. We’d already walked a long way into the city, and the chances that the shady guy that sold it to me would let me exchange it were less than good. So I bent the bars so they would at least protect a small amount of me, and tried to drown out the howls from my friends and avoid the amused stares of Italians passing by.

The day was not completely lost though. I thought it was just as funny as everyone else, so after a while we started betting as to what would break next. I won when the handle fell off.

We made it to the Duomo and by that point it had stopped raining for the most part and we went into a pizzeria directly in front of the cathedral. So I ate a slice of pizza while looking at one of the most majestic buildings in Italy. It was quite cool. Everyone was quite taken aback.

After that, we wandered around some of the stores close to the cathedral, not really having an agenda, just going in stores that looked interesting and expensive. They don’t charge you for having a look around, so we looked at all these fancy Italian fashion stores and leather places. And that’s where I found it.

The second leather place we went in was around the corner from the cathedral, on a smaller street. Bargello’s Leather Factory was the name. We went in because Matt wanted to get a leather jacket. I did too, but I wasn’t really looking for one at that point. Anyway, we got inside and these two Italian guys hustled us down to the guys section and started letting us try on all these fantastic jackets. For some reason, they wanted me to try on tons of them, just to see and feel all the different types of leather that I didn’t even know existed. Buffalo? Lamb? Crikey!

So after about 12 different jackets, I found one that was absolutely just what I wanted. It was a nice and simple fitted jacket in a dark brown, with two pockets and a small collar. Perfect. I really wasn’t intending on buying a jacket that day, but I couldn’t really resist. We’d been joking around with the owners, who spoke perfect English, laughing about girls and all the things different in our cultures, and when I said that I was thinking about buying the jacket, he said he would give me a 40% discount. So that kinda sealed the deal. And for some reason I get a 20% tax refund at the end of the trip too. So a 540 euro jacket ended up costing me about 240 euro. Which is still expensive, but how can I resist buying an Italian jacket in Florence, right around the corner from the Duomo? I couldn’t. It’s fantastic, and I’ll love it for ages.

Matt ended up getting a jacket too, but his is almost American, in that goofy bomber jacket style. I didn’t really like it, but he did, so that’s good. Brandon was very very tempted to get one, but ended up not, and neither did Mark. So the entire rest of the day, we reminded them of our amazing purchases by letting them feel the fantastic fabric or smell the rich leather. I’m really happy with it, as it was one of the things that I really wanted while I’m over here.

The rest of the day was kinda overshadowed by my purchase, and we headed back home to Castiglion Fiorentino, where the rain fell harder than before and my umbrella completely sucked. I think only my nose didn’t get wet on the way home.

That night was an unofficial movie night at the center, because the rain kept everyone inside. We somehow split into two groups, mainly the Circle and the not Circle people. I didn’t really want to go and watch a movie with the Circle people, even though they aren’t half as bad as I first thought, so I went with about 7 girls and Brandon and watched the longest and most girly movie ever: The Sound of Music.

Don’t get me wrong. I love musicals. Moulin Rouge is one of my favorite movies. But that thing just kept going and going. You know they actually kept the intermission in the DVD version of Sound of Music? That’s ridiculous! Anyway, as usual during slightly hilarious situations that I get caught in, my mouth seems to go off without my brain checking first. They’re usually funny, or at least I think they’re funny, but when you’re in a room of 7 girls who love this movie to death, it might not have been the best idea. However, they seemed to thoroughly enjoy it and by the end of it we were all rolling in laughter at the well lit close-ups and the terrifying Nazis. So we all had a really good time after all.

After that, the Circle people started watching Seven downstairs, so I went and watched a bit of that. It’s a thriller kindof, but I’ve already seen it about 5 times, so it wasn’t as interesting. I went to bed and dreamt of nuns singing and hills that were alive.

Today was just as rainy as yesterday, which is fine by me. We had a goofy little lesson thing in studio, which I used to full advantage by sketching in my sketchbook and trying to figure out what to do for the next individual project. After that, me and Josh went up to Hermes to get a pizza. When we arrived, we were greeted by those 7 girls that I watched the movie with yesterday, so I sat with them and gave them most of my pizza. I’m such a pansy.

Josh went back after a while, and I went out with the girls to get Gelato, which is about time number 6 for those of you counting (LAURA). It was fun. Then we all came home and I worked some more on figuring out my project.

We’re supposed to represent our experience or something involving the project we just finished, the cube one. So I’m thinking of maybe splicing together scenes from movies I have into one rather humorous rendition of what we went through on the project. It should be kinda easy, just because it’s so open ended and completely individual. I’m thinking of turning in an empty can of Sprite filled with napkins. That should sum up my experience nicely.

Tonight we had a dinner of pasta and chicken, which was ok, but not up to the usual high quality of the meals around here. I sat next to Haley, who was the most excited of the 7 girls in the theater last night, and talked about nuns and other related topics. It was quite fun. Then a bunch of us went and watched a much more manly movie, Gladiator, and then gave up for the night. And that was about it.

I’m pretty sure this will be my last blog for at least a week, thanks in part to the fact that I won’t be around a computer anywhere. We’re off to Rome for a week, so you’ll just have to hope that I haven’t been stabbed by Russell Crowe or anything along those lines. Goodnight my friends, and remember: “Sometimes the frost… makes the blade stick. HYAH!”

DAN

Friday, September 15, 2006

2006-09-15T21:24:00.001+02:00

Hello everyone again. I’m trying to catch up with these things, seeing as how it’s taking me almost a week to get these done now. We just finished our first studio project, for which I pulled two all-nighters, so I have a little time to catch everyone up with stuff now. Did you like the loop of pictures better or do you want me to link in all the pictures like before? Tell me and I’ll do whatever.

This week has been pretty crazy, with school really starting to get going and everyone getting into this crazy routine they have us on. Biggest thing going on this week was the project though, which was a trial and a half, but thankfully it all paid off.

We’d basically been told to find an interesting space in Castiglion Fiorentino and insert an imaginary 6 x 6 x 6 meter cube into it. Then we’d have to model whatever was inside that cube. And my glorious group (Melissa, Teresa, Jenna, Josh, and me) for some reason picked the space with the most ridiculous angles of them all. And of course, when we get back to the actual model making, who has to figure out all them impossible angles? Yes, me. Our group was slightly lazy, especially the girls, and we didn’t really start the final until Wednesday night. The problem with large groups is that someone always has to be telling everyone what to do so that everyone has some kind of participation in the project. Josh and I started tackling the model, and the girls sat around drawing pretty pictures on their desks. And because it was such an intricate model, it was near impossible to tell them to just cut out a piece this big and this wide because it was way more of an improvised build, making it as needed, not assembled in pieces.

I tried to get them involved but most of the time they didn’t really want to. Jenna feigned sickness. Melissa talked more to other groups than her own. Teresa was quite helpful though, because she did a lot of the measurements of the site, so at least she could contribute a bit. The model took absolutely forever to go together, easily being one of the slowest builds I’ve done, just because of all the crazy angles and the guess-and-check nature of the process. Walls went up in hours, not minutes. Simple turns turned into design-changing maneuvers. It was rough. Thankfully Josh got the easier half of the model finished while I tackled the chimney thing, not only off-center, but angled upwards and cut through by the cube wall. Yes, it was great. Two whole days went by with about 5 hours sleep between them. But we finished in time and Paolo likened our work to that of Classical architects, with a great design and wonderful spaces. Booyah. A great review makes everything that you went through worth it. The group that finished first and actually slept all night got torn apart, so that was kinda rewarding too, but in a bad way.

Wednesday of this week we went to Siena, a large town about an hour and a half away from Castiglion Fiorentino. It wasn’t really as great as I thought it would be, mainly because our guide wasn’t that great. We looked at buildings but rarely went in them, which is frustrating for us architects. Anyway, we had a quick lunch and then were “treated” to a tour of the contemporary art museum, where we watched videos of people scraping records along walls and studied the moral implications of a massive wad of foam on a table. And for some reason, we now have a project based on that. Great.

But that’s all I got from Siena really. Not that amazing or impressive. The best bit of the day was when the clouds finally burst and sweet Italian rain drizzled down over everything. The temperature dropped about 10 degrees and it felt absolutely wonderful.

So that’s about it I think. This weekend I might go up to Florence again, just to have a wander around, but nothing too involved because we have the big Rome trip next week. That should be really really awesome. I’m looking forward to it. Anyway, I’ll add a loop to the bottom of here from Sienna and other pics everyone might have missed. Enjoy!

Day 11 – 13: Cinque Terra and Pisa

2006-09-15T20:49:00.000+02:00

Again, sorry for the delay in blogging. It’s getting busier by the day around here and I’m finding it harder and harder to actually sit down and write these things.

This past weekend, Friday the 8th through Sunday the 10th, our little group of 8 people (Me, Mark, Matt, Brandon, Melissa, Christina, Teresa, and Brandy) went to Cinque Terra, a coastal area which means Five Towns. We booked our hostel online a week before, so we were good to go.

It took around 3 or 4 hours to actually get to the place, partly because we had to change trains so much, and partly because I was the only one that would actually take charge and go anywhere. Brandon, our TA and former student, kept getting us completely lost and confused, so I took over his job. You would think that somebody who has already done all this before would have some clue at to what he was doing, but no. I remembered doing all this stuff in England, so it was a piece of cake. Getting 4 girls to be somewhere at a certain time though, was a much harder task.

We arrived in Riomaggiore, one of the five towns, around lunch on Friday and we made our way to the hostel, which was up a big hill, of course. The girls had their own room and the guys had theirs, except ours was more expensive because there was an extra bed, but more on that exciting story later.

After dropping all our junk in the rooms, we headed down to the beach and messed around down there for a while. It was getting quite cloudy, so it wasn’t as warm as normal, and the water was absolutely freezing, so I didn’t stay in too long. And I didn’t want to blind everyone on the beach with my awesome British tan. The beach was pretty rocky, so I explored around there, which was lots of fun. I climbed some rocks and nearly broke every bone from the hip down. Sweeet.

Once the girls finally gave up trying to tan in the cloudy weather, we headed back to the hostel so we could get changed and go out to eat our one fancy meal of the weekend. And what a meal it was. We had to wait for about 20 minutes to get a table for 8, but it was well worth it. Brandon picked a white wine, which was really good, and we all ordered our respective meals from a menu stocked with seafood and pasta, all of which sounded good, but some were really expensive. I settled on a “sampler” meal which had prawn, shrimp, sea bass, and swordfish and it was the most delicious thing I’ve ever had. I didn’t want to stop eating, but I didn’t want to finish because there wouldn’t be any more to eat. Quite the dilemma. Anyway, we ended up spending lots of money on the meal, but everyone was happy by the end of it. We went to a “bar” up the hill a bit and had a drink, just to finish off the evening.

We headed back and that’s when the fun started. The girls got to their room, and all the guys headed up to our room, only to find it open and occupied by a very Welsh girl. Apparently that’s what the 5th bed was for. So the owner thought it would be brilliant to stick one poor little girl in with 4 smelly guys for a night. Thankfully we are all nice guys and treated her like the lady she was, but just imagine if she was in there with 4 idiots. Not a nice night I would imagine.

Anyway, we left early the next morning, just the guys, and hiked over to Manarola, the town over from Riomaggiore. It was supposed to be a 30 minute walk, but took us 45 thanks to the throngs of old people clogging up the road and generally annoying everyone under the age of 30. Little ladies were clinging to the railing as if that wooden stick was the savior of all things. Old men would take 10 minutes to line up one picture in a camera older than dirt. Tour groups were the worst though. You could always spot them because at the front, there would be a foreign-looking person in the front, very often in “chic” modern European dress (or at least they think it’s modern) holding up a very brightly colored umbrella or stick of some color. If you ran into those it only meant trouble.

We reached Manarola finally and walked around its one main street for about 30 minutes, dilapidating its fun things to do quite quickly. We were all getting a bit hungry, so we headed back along the trail to the hostel and the girls. Apparently they’d been up since before we left, but I’m still a bit dubious about that one. Anyway, we headed out and got a quick lunch, then headed to the train station and got a train over to Montarosso, the big city of the 5, or at least the most popular. We got there and sat on a 3 foot strip of rocky sand by the beach for a few hours, going in the water and generally trying to hide the fact that every single person on the beach was tanner than we were. Oh well, I have more important things to do with my life than burn and get cancer, thank you very much.

After the beach we split up into guy and girl groups, with the girls going shopping and the guys going on a ridiculous hike that nearly killed me. How does an hour and a half of uphill climbing on a rocky path while carrying a 20 pound backpack sound? Glorious!

It was great to get to the top though; it made me feel like I’d accomplished something heroic and snapped my pictures to prove it. There actually was a fancy little church at the very top of the mountain, but it was more about the experience than the finish line. I enjoyed it.

Met up with the girls later, and went to eat a quick and cheap meal, which was good. Then we went home again and found that our Welsh roommate had been replaced by an enormously scary Canadian fella that looked like he could rip a tree in half with his right hand. His clothes got stuck in the washing machine in the room, so he promptly pulled out a very large set of very large knives and promptly tried to open it himself. Mark slept downstairs on the girls’ couch.

The next day we left and got on the train home, with a slight detour in Pisa, which was slightly overrated. Yes, it’s leaning. But that’s about it. Canadian fella told me that it was about a 10 minute walk from the station in Pisa, but it was closer to 40. We somehow ran into some fellow Aggies on the train, so they came with us to see the tower too. Brandon was in front, leading us to the tower, but from past experience it has come to my attention that Brandon couldn’t navigate himself out of a paper bag. So I was shouting directions to him from back in the crowd until I could get up there myself, where I took over and led everyone to the leaning marvel.

That was just about our weekend. It was great fun, but I’m looking forward to doing some more architectural trips, maybe going by myself one weekend somewhere.

Cinque Terra pictures

2006-09-12T13:39:00.000+02:00

Hello everybody!

I've uploaded lots of pictures, so I'm just going to link you to the album, instead of me having to paste in tons of code into here. It'll be fun, I promise.

Here ya go:

And there you have it.
Ciao!
DAN

Pictures 2

2006-09-05T22:07:00.000+02:00

Hello again everyone!

Here are just a few more pictures from my travels. I'm going to Florence tomorrow, so I'll probably have a lot more to put on then.

1 - Arezzo - during the jousting parade.
2 - Arezzo - The Golden Lance!!!
3 - Arezzo - The city band, announcing the districts
4 - Arezzo - The Green Machines with crossbows
5 - Arezzo - The Green Machines and the Blue Meanies
6 - Arezzo - The Red Maniacs and the Magenta Pansies
7 - Arezzo - The view of the crowds before the parade.

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Day 7 - Monday, September 04, 2006

2006-09-05T10:44:00.000+02:00

Hello to the world outside of my little bubble. My very little bubble, I might add, but more on that later.

Today was the first official day of class, which was met with mixed reviews from the students around here. The first classes were for the un-college of architecture people and started at the ripe hour of 9am, way too early for us Archies. My first class was actually cancelled, because it was just a lecture class or something, and we haven't started on anything yet, so a lecture on nothing wouldn't be very exciting. So I "slept" in till 10. I say "slept" because last night was pretty horrible. I was tired out when I went to bed at about 12, but once I hit the pillow I wasn't tired at all. I sat there thinking about people and my life in general, all the while being serenaded with the sweet music of John’s ridiculously noisy snoring. On more than one occasion, I coughed quite loud and woke him just enough to stop the snoring for 5 minutes. I eventually dosed off and dreamed the dreams of a confused boy trying to be a man.

I got up and showered, then met Mark to go and get some breakfast over at Hermes, a nice place around and up the corner from here. Then we came back and had lunch, which was pasta, fish, and FISH FINGERS, and then some fruit. I’m getting a bit tired of the pasta, but I’m not complaining too loud. It all tastes great, but it would be nice to have a bit of variety.

Classes started in the afternoon and my first was History where an Italian man came in and explained about all the territories and different areas of Italy. It was quite interesting, learning about the World Cup parties and all that kind of stuff.

After that class, we had a 30 minute break, so I went back to the room and watched The Office with the guys in here. Then studio came with good old Peter Lang. After 2 hours of oddball questions and annoying side tracking, he finally put is into groups to figure out our first project. I got put with Melissa and Teresa, who at least I vaguely know, and Josh and Jenna, who I don’t have a clue about. My ideal group would have included Haley and Rachel, but when’s the last time anything worked out in my favor?

Our assignment was to find a 6 meter by 6 meter cube in the town and sketch it. It isn’t a real cube, rather one we set up in our heads around a space. Our group chose a rather cool one around the back of the pizzeria we ate in the other day. So tomorrow I need to go and sketch it at some point.

We got back to the center just in time for the Italian open class, which doesn’t count for credit, but it’s still interesting and handy. Only about half the people showed up this time, so it was a lot more relaxed and fun. The lady got us saying all this stuff to each other and when it got to me, she made me say my name and of course in Italian it is pronounced Danielle. Everyone found this wildly amusing, so I was called upon as much as possible during the class. It was good though because it was nice to have people laughing around me and stuff.

Dinner arrived after Italian, and I sat with Jo, who I sat next to on the airplane. We chatted a bit and it was relaxing. I had a glass of wine, which wasn’t that great. Maybe I’m just not a wine person. After dinner, our little group went and booked our hostel things for the coming weekend, which should be pretty fun up in Cinque Terra. I thought Haley was going to be coming with us, but she’s going with a different group apparently.

Then came the concert, which is the reason I’m not in the best of moods tonight. Vanessa, one of the RCs up here, is in a band and they played for us tonight out in the courtyard, surrounded by candles and backlit by the houses of the valley behind. She played a lot of stuff similar to Death Cab for Cutie, which is one of my favorite bands, so I really enjoyed it. The thing that got to me though was that as I sat there on the stone steps, listening to this voice crooning for the touch of love, I didn’t have a soul within 2000 miles to share it with. Everyone around me seemed to be leaning on someone or laughing with their good friends of many years. So what could I do but remember everyone that I wanted to come with me on this trip.

For some reason, I like Haley. I’ve spoken to her maybe a total of 5 times, all of which were about nothing at all, but all of which have left an impression on me. She isn’t the most outspoken of girls, but when there is an opportunity for humor, she jumps on it. And she isn’t part of the deadly Circle I talked about prior. She moves from group to group and always seems to have the twinkle of a joke in her eye, ready for the first sign of an opening.

So I sat on those steps and looked at the back of her head, some 30 feet in front of me, sitting in a plastic chair listening to music beneath the stars of Tuscany. And of course I didn’t do anything because I don’t know how to, and for the stupidest of reasons I’m scared of what other people will think, a recurring theme in the life of Dan.

But progress has been made I suppose. I made people laugh in the Italian class, which is the first step I guess.

Maybe one day it’ll all make sense.

Day 6 – Sunday, September 03, 2006

2006-09-03T23:48:00.001+02:00

Today was a pretty fun day, ranging from antique browsing to joust watching to train-running-after. We (Mark, Matt, Melissa, Christina, Haley, Teresa, Alison, and Brandon) all went over to Arezzo again to spend the day out there. We all met up at about 11 and headed down to the train station, a mere 20 minute walk downhill.

We got our tickets quite easily and then waited around for the train, which came pretty quick, thanks to our expert timing. Arezzo was having a huge two-day festival of antiques or something this weekend, in conjunction with the jousting thing I think. We were all starving when we got there though, so we found the nearest pizzeria and did surprisingly well with the menu and drink orders. I think it’s slowly beginning to sink in that Spanish is very closely related to Italian. The people would be talking and nobody would understand anything, but I’d get a few words of it and manage to figure out what they want.

After lunch, we started walking around the streets, just browsing the assorted junk of the antique stores. And it wasn’t just an antique store really. The entire inner city was closed to traffic and the roads were lined with tables, all filled with everything from rope to sinks to guns to stone lips. Unfortunately, it was all kinda junky and wasn’t really anything that you couldn’t find in an American antique store. But it was interesting to see it all. We were walking around and we saw a store with soccer shirts outside, and me and Mark have been wanting an Italian World Cup one. We went into a big sports store on Friday, but the guy said that they sold out within 2 days of putting them on the shelf, so we were surprised to see them in this tiny little store. Mark, Haley, Melissa, and I piled in there and made the international sign of confusion: “Uhhhhh”. I said “Italia World Cup” and pointed to the Italy shirts on the walls, and the old man jumped up in excitement, or just at the prospect of gaining the Euro of 4 stupid Americans. He started pulling out lots of different shirts, all which looked really cool, and was shooting off Italian faster than any of us could gather. I figured some of it out, thanks to hand gestures and good guessing, and we finally got shirts big enough and of the right color. I didn’t get one because they were cheap rip-offs and I want a nice one of Cavalari or something, the good defense guy from the World Cup. So I guess I’ll just try and find one somewhere else.

After that, we somehow lost Brandon and another girl that came with us. We looked for 10 minutes, but there were so many people there, and both of them are so short that it wasn’t really worth it. Matt dragged us up to the top of the hill, with the big cathedral from the other day, and we waited around to watch the jousting ceremonies or something. It wasn’t the actual jousting, but it was them presenting themselves. It was actually really interesting. They were all dressed in full medieval attire and carrying swords and lances and crossbows and weapons of minor destruction. And the “main” guys, from the city, were beating their drums and playing trumpets and stuff, so it was quite cool. I have a lot of pictures, so I’ll try and get them up soon.

We wandered around the city for a while longer and eventually ended up in a bar drinking Coke to keep us going. I think we ended up being there for about 7 hours or something. We caught the train home, still minus Brandon and the other girl, and hiked it up the hill back home, all 45 minutes of it. By that point, we were all completely tired out and decided to just go to bed.

Dinner was Spaghetti and Chicken and French fries (of all things), but was really good.

I was worried that I couldn’t break into this super group of people over here, and that I’d have to hang out with Snoring John all the time. But now that I’ve made friends with a few of them, Mark mainly, it has become glaringly clear that this super group is actually made up of people that can’t stand each other, but are so afraid of not fitting in that they put that aside to call these people their “friends.” Mark is a genuinely cool guy, so we’re pretty good friends already. The few girls that we hang out with are nice, but I don’t know them as well, so it’s still a little odd. Haley is really nice, and seems to be the funniest of them, which is the quickest way to make friends with me. But the odd thing is that whenever we start figuring out what we want to do on the coming weekend, groups form instantly and barely talk to each other. Our little group of 8 people, which sometimes goes up and down in number, doesn’t really like one of the other groups, and they don’t like another group, and that group won’t like this group. But then they’ll all go back to dinner and act like it’s the best family in the world, which is stupid. I miss the easy friends that I have at home. Chrystal, Shannon, Steven, Laura, Hillary, Jared, James, Ryan, you guys are the sanest people I know, no matter what everyone else tells you.

But things are getting better over here for the Dan. It’s hard to stay down when there is so much beauty around. Things are already much better than 3 days ago, so that only proves that God upstairs really is listening. I think this is more than just a semester away. I think it’s more about figuring out me.

Pictures!

2006-09-02T21:01:00.000+02:00

Hello all! This isn't going to be a big huge super-involved post, due mainly to the fact that I've been uploading pictures for the past hour and I'm kinda sick of sitting here. So this is gonna be just a collection of pictures from the past few days. They're kinda small cuz they would take forever to load if not, but click on them and they'll be slightly bigger. Enjoy to the max!

These are from the town I live in, Castiglion Fiorentino. The first is a view from the window in my room. The next is just of a part of the town. Third is the dining room of the center. Fourth is the courtyard area of the center. Fifth is one of the many belltowers of the town. And last is the tallest point of CF.

The first one in the next set is from the top of the highest point in Castiglion Fiorentino. The next is from the inside of one of the churchs in CF. Then the last 3 are from various parts of Arezzo.

Ok, that's it for now. I don't know if this is the best way of posting these, so it will probably change sooner or later. Anyway, have fun.

Day 4 – Friday, September 1, 2006

2006-09-02T11:12:00.000+02:00

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…

Day 3 – Thursday, August 31

2006-09-01T12:24:00.000+02:00

Today started with a roar. A loud roar, when Matt woke up and yelled something at the top of his lungs for no apparent reason. We didn’t really know what to say to him, so we just went back to sleep. Ahhh… the awkwardness of new friendships forged not by the burning desire to know one another, but the lack of space at Santa Chiara. Truly a sight to behold.
You’ll have to excuse my sarcastic banter today. I want things to be better and I keep telling myself they will be at some point, but I want it to happen now, not a month from now.
You see, to understand my entirely awkward situation, you have to know who I generally hang out with. I enjoy the company of real people who care more about the people around them than they do themselves. The majority of the people here, in fact all of them save the non-architecture majors, are already the best of friends from semesters past. They all sit together during lectures and often ate together back at the Station of College. And over here, naturally, they are the same way. This clique of people is damn near impenetrable. I’ve introduced myself tons of times, I’ve tried my stupid humor, I’ve laughed at their ridiculously unfunny jokes, all in an attempt to gain myself one foothold of respect and, much more importantly, friendship around here.
But everyone is friends with everyone else already. They don’t need me to come with them or do anything with really. I’m just the guy that came to Italy and doesn’t really know anybody, which is precisely what I didn’t want happening.
The one exception is Rachel, and I see her as my little step into this fortress of friends. Although I still hardly know her, but desperately want to, she talks with me and actually gives me the time of day. The trouble is that she, as you may have guessed, is a girl, which means she lives way away from me and has 20 other girls to talk to, again eliminating the need for me. Her best friend Mattie, also of the fairer sex, stays with her constantly, which is cool because, even though I know nothing more than the name of this girl, she seems to be really nice and actually not as much a part of the Fellowship. So maybe if I can get to both of them, and maybe if they both enjoy hanging out with me, I can crack the group down and get in there.
As far as the country I’m in, we didn’t really do tons of stuff today. We got up early, thanks to the snoring and roaring, and I went for a walk, something my legs are regretting. Honestly, some of the hills around here are almost 45 degree inclines, which is ridiculous for a street where people walk. 12 to 1 ratio my butt.
Anyway, the walk was really nice and it was interesting to see the area in a different light, as well as finding places on my own. The town is truly beautiful but it is going to take quite a while to understand the layout. I got lost today for about an hour and a half. But it was kinda fun.
We then had a “class” where we learned about the center and stuff like that, and then off to “studio” where I met up with the famous Peter Lang and fell back into that old routine. That class should be the “moneymaker” so to speak, as studios throw people together and make them work, no matter what social standing. Another reason I think I’m “shunned” is due to the age difference between us. I’m 22 whereas the majority of people here are just turning 20. That’s not much, but it’s enough to throw things off a bit. Why am I still here? Am I stupid and failed so many classes that I’m 2 years behind? Rather than ask questions, people make judgments, another harsh reality of the schooling community.
Lunch followed and no progress was made, except a conversation with John all about the pros and cons of online poker playing, which is his chosen profession.
The afternoon brought droughts of loneliness and sleepiness, combining to form blog-writing moods. There was another class, just about Italian culture and stuff, that was quite interesting, and I sat with Rachel then, which made the day seem a lot better. The day wandered off into dinner, which was delicious again, but I sat next to Mark, a guy “in the circle”, and he sat with a bunch of his “in the circle” friends, so I just kinda sat there and pretended to know about all the inside jokes that they were talking about. Ha! Green potatoes! Hilarious!
We watched a very dull and uninspired movie shortly after dinner, all about the jousting to take place in Arezzo over the weekend. I wasn’t too interested and neither was the entire class, as nearly everyone was awakened by the turning on of the lights.
And then came the night, a fearful time for mice and unsure 22-year-olds. A party was going on over at The Garden Underground, a bar just around the corner from the center we’re staying at. I wasn’t sure if I was going to go, but everyone else was, so I did. I got there and kinda hung around with Matt, just because I know him and he knows me. We ended up getting pineapples filled with something or another, but they were pretty good. As I was drinking it, a lot of the girls from the center came up and were asking how it was and just joking around and stuff, which is great because I want to get to know everyone. I guess alcohol makes you cooler or something. Anyway, I spent the night talking with Jenny and Kendra about everything and anything, and we’re supposed to go eat breakfast in the morning, which should be fun.
So today had it’s ups and downs. It’s only the second day, and I keep telling myself that, but it’s hard sometimes. I wish that at least one of my close friends would have come. That would have made this so much easier. I think I’ll ask Rachel if she wants to be in a group with me for studio tomorrow. She’s nice.

Day 1 and 2 – Tuesday, August 29 and Wednesday, August 30

2006-09-01T12:23:00.000+02:00

Flight leaves at 4:10, or at least boards then, so me and the parents head up to the airport, carrying 2 bags and my backpack, all 15 pounds of it, thanks to this beast of a laptop. Once there, we lined up and did all the obligatory mess to get through the ticket lines. On an odd side note to my AirFrance experience, I should have known something was a little off when the ticket lady, a nice Mexican, started talking to me in an odd French-English mix, all the while throwing in Spanish phrases. Off to a good start.
Anyway, I say my goodbyes to my parents, who were sad and happy to see me go, I headed up the long long escalator to a very boring and overtly dull waiting area, where I sat for 2 hours waiting to board flight 8315 (too close for comfort to all you LOST fans). I was sitting by myself for a while, because I only know one girl, Rachel, and I hadn’t seen her yet. The Wall kept me interested for a while, and then completely unannounced, Rachel came around to say hello and just talk and stuff, which was nice because up until then, I’d been nervous about not knowing anyone and stuff. But good old Rachel saves the day.
The flight wasn’t nearly as good as a 9 hour flight should have been. Point number 2 in the AirFrance debate: The entire staff is male. That’s right, male. I was seated next to a very French lady and a girl going with us on the trip, Jo. She was very nice and we talked a lot about the trip and what we wanted to do and such.
Mission: Impossible 3, Over the Hedge, and a few obscure French titles later, we are still on the plane. Jean Jacque Toulouse Muhammad was in front of me and had his seat all the way backwards, making my room considerably less big than it wasn’t already. 9 hours later, we finally landed in Paris, about 15 minutes late, which wasn’t too bad, but we had to catch a flight on the complete opposite side of the airport in 45 minutes instead of 60 now. So we all zoomed around, moving through customs and all that stuff with the greatest of ease. We nearly got shot with “AK-49s” according to one girl, and one of the other girls was almost dragged off for having hand cream with her. Awesome.
The Paris airport was really cool, at least the waiting bit for the plane was. Very organic and structural, which was interesting. I sat around and talked with a few people, just saying hello and stuff, still unsure of my place in this younger crowd.
The second flight was better than the first, only because it was shorter and I didn’t have to sit by anyone. I somehow landed the emergency exit row, so there was only a seat on one side of me, and an enormous amount of responsibility on the other. The flight was about 2 hours long, an hour of which I was asleep. We landed and waited forever to get our bags, which came tumbling out the machine with Herculean force, often flying over the conveyor belt and smacking old ladies in the shins, much to the delight of the younger audience. I grabbed mine and made a beeline for the exit, which was only right around the corner. I got through and waited around for everyone else, hoping we wouldn’t have the “one more person” routine to go through. But we didn’t. Rachel came out carrying two huge bags, both without wheels, and I felt kinda crappy for not waiting around to help her out. But she was on the other side of a growing mound of luggage, so I couldn’t really do much about it.
And then came the bus. The driver put all our bags in the storage things, and in the extra storage things, and in the back seats, and then finally pulled out onto the super longer-than-expected ride. I sat down first and then the bus filled up, and a girl I still don’t know sat next to me. I was asleep about 30 seconds after she was. The parts that I did see of the countryside ranged from awesome (ancient buildings rising out of rocky cliffs) to slightly awesome (landscapes and distant hills) to not really awesome (junk houses falling apart). I guess even in Italy, they have their ghettos.
Finally, finally, finally, we got to the city. Castiglion Fiorentino. Never has such a place had such an immediate impression on a ridiculously tired 22-year-old kid. Everything about the place was fascinating, and exactly how you would think an old, quaint Italian town to be. The streets are insanely confusing, yet instantly likable and begging to be explored. The houses and buildings are piled on top of each other, making stores and residences one. The older churches and things are well-kept and loved. And the views… Wow. The views are phenomenal. From our room, we can see all the way down the valley, over to the neighboring town some 3 miles away. Cool breezes flow down the streets, making the 75 degree day feel like 65. And people walk around minding their own business. Or not.
We all walked down to the center, Santa Chiara, where we’ll be spending the next 3 months. The luggage was unloaded and then piled into the center, where people dragged it to their respective rooms, which aren’t that respectable really. I was one of the last to get the room, which was easily the best decision I haven’t made all day because we were graced with the best room, number 33. Not necessarily the biggest, or the squarest, or even the coldest, our room has the best view in the center. The valley and surrounding area are all right out our window, and because we are higher up than the city, we get to see all the people going about doing whatever it is that Italian people do. It’s great.
My roommates are Matt, a 22-year-old History major, some dude, and John, a huge guy. Maybe it’s the room and its great acoustics, or maybe it’s just our lack of sleep, but John is the loudest snorer any of us has ever heard. He could wake up a coma patient with that din. But I was so tired that I fell asleep after a while anyway.
Oh… Hang on a minute, reverse for a little bit. Before I went to sleep, I was trying to get the internet working on my computer, which is my one link to the outside world thanks to the crappy Cingular company. I walked around to the front of the center, and was messing around with it there. I can get connection, just not to the internet. Anyway, I was giving up and heading back to my room when a girl came up and asked if I wanted to go for a walk. Completely random, I had no idea who she was. So I said yeah, because she seemed nice and pleasant enough. I was completely wiped out, but who can turn down a lady? So I went and put my computer back in the room and went on a walk with Amber, a junior Psychology student from A&M. She wanted to get Euro or something, so we walked around for a good hour or so, checking the different ATMs and avoiding dangerous looking Italians. It was quite fun actually. We got back to the center and parted ways at about 10, so I went and had a shower and tried to block out the drones of John.
Pretty good couple of days really.