Pictures from the Past Few Weeks

Torino!

the traditional fish head representative of the head of the year. please note the pomegranite seeds to the left, representative of the 613 mitzvot in the torah. more importantly, please note the eye on this fish. EW.

the rebbe at the rosh hashanah feast. passing out wine.

To be a sponge

This past week was pretty low key. We have intensive Italian from 9-11:30 every morning. We registered for the rest of our classes which will start a week from Monday. I am taking four classes in addition to Italian which will transfer to 4.5 UPS credits. I'm taking two art history classes, history of italian theater, and a digital photography class. Should be pretty awesome but five classes in one semester will probably be a lot of work...or at least a lot of seat time in the classroom. I'm really excited because I think I found a position helping a 14 year old girl practice her English and her mom is going to try and set me up with her son, who is university, to do a language exchange. Language exchanges are designed to help Italian students practice their English and to help us practice our Italian. You basically just get together with a student and practice. I'm signed up for another language exchange through IES so hopefully my Italian will improve. We had a second test in Italian class this past Friday and hopefully it went better than the first one, which my entire class struggled on.

This weekend we stayed in Milan but went on two day trips. On Saturday Julie and I went to Torino. Italy had a Seattle colored sky with scattered showers and the gray monotones was actually a soothing, calming comfort. Julie and I really enjoyed the weather, although my pictures are super low contrast now. Torino was really wonderful. The had lines and lines of tables set up to sell books, all kind of books, down the major shopping district. It was incredible and really made me wish I spoke Italian since very few of the books were written in English. However its probably better that I couldn't read them...I might have spent too much money. I managed to order a sandwich and explain no meat and no fish to the barista at a cafe. This was super exciting. We wondered around the city, hitting every piazza with an overwhelming building and gorgous sculptures and courtyards. At the second cafe we went to for a pick-me-up, Julie managed to turn off the power from the bathroom. Go girl go. SO FUNNY.

It was such a chill day, the weather was so calming, we had nothing planned, we just wandered. I love day trips because we just take the train to some semi-random city near Milano and hop off the train, see where it takes us, and hop back on. I love exploring, I love not knowing whats around the next corner. I don't know if its the thrill of not knowing, if theres a natural endorphin rush from every beautiful building around every corner or what it is. But I've clearly got the travel bug.

Then we get back to Milano in time to go out at night. Last night we went out to a club that had just opened called Alcatraz. When we first walked in I thought I wouldnt be able to stay long. Some awful cover band was playing "Hit me baby one more time" and there were defintely some metal heads in the crowd. Next they played the we will we will rock you song. I thought I was gonna die. I decided the only thing worse than being in the crowd was being one of the middle-aged guys with too long hair in the band. FINALLY, when they were done, the DJ started and these huge black curtains were pulled back from another side of the club and some circus acts started up. So random but so cool! One girl on stage was doing scarves, where there are long scarves hanging down and she climbs up and twirls and twists in them. There were jugglers and unicyclers and a unicycler who jumped rope while on his cycle. Pretty cool.

Today Julie and I went to Cremona where the famous Stradivarious violins are. It was sunny today and when we got to Cremona, it seemed pretty sleepy. I guess the biggest issue with day trips is that we tend to arrive in the city just as the siestas are starting up. I was starving and undercaffenainated so we found somewhere to get salads, sandwiches, and coffee. Cremona is pretty small but cute. They were having a salami festival with little, yellow banners advertising it everywhere. Obviously I did not partake in this festival. We then went to see the violin exhibit. It was four euros to go see a room of famous violins from the 1600's and 1700's. And we got to see some made by Stradivari. They were gorgous. After that we walked back and took the train to Milano, exhausted from two days of nonstop walking.

This upcoming week is my last week of intensive Italian and I have class from 9-12 Monday through Thursday because on Friday IES is leading a trip to the Aosta valley. I am so glad I am here. I feel so lucky. Sometimes I am hit with such disbelief that I am actually here, that outside my window is beauty, beauty everywhere. I think traveling abroad was the best decision for me right now. I am learning so much, I can feel myself changing and growing. I love exploring, I love seeing new places, I love meeting new people, I love learning about another way to live. Although some of the adjustments can be difficult at times, I am convinced that travelling is going to be big part of my life from now on. I can't even remember the last time I was this okay with waking up in the morning. My general disposition is now usually fairly neutral instead of being constantly angry or sad. I am so glad I decided to study abroad. It is by far one of the best decisions I have made in my life.

Pictures from Firenze

Julie's birthday dinner! Left to right, Kathleen, Alba, Julie, and yours truly.

View of Florence from one of the bridges.

Beautiful, breathtaking marble statues in the piazza near the Uffizi.

The duomo in Florence. OH MY GOD.

MANY MANY pictures are on facebook, of course.

Firenze

Last weekend Julie, Alba, Kathleen and I took a three hour train to florence. We arrived around 6 on Friday evening. We checked into our hostel and set out for an inexpensive bit to eat. Florence is amazing. AMAZING. The architecture is like a walking tour of slides from my art history class freshman year. The Duomo is a totally different style than the one here in Milan and absolutely gorgous. I think I may even prefer it to the one in Milan. There is a huge piazza with huge marble statues acting out scenes from mythology. This piazza was so astounding, I felt so little and insignifcant, I was so in awe of the techniques, the clarity of the muscles, facial expressions, all of it. I think I just walked around it a hundred times with my mouth gaping open. The bridges are beautiful, the buildings are beautiful, every building is a piece of history, most are examples of architectural mastery. I think I've decided that after I graduate in December 2011, I want to return to Florence and be a tour guide. This way I will be very well educated on all the stories and histories of the buildings, statues, etc.

The first night we found inexpensive paninis, pizza, and gelato and explored a great deal on foot. Later we found a little Mexican spot and got some nachos and sangria. Yum. They had like...12 huge tubs of nutella in their window, too. Finding Mexican food was a surprise. Needless to say, we ate a good deal that night. It was ok because the next day we walked A LOT. We went to bed early on Friday and got up and going a little before 10 AM (mom and dad you should be impressed). First we went to check out what the deal was with admission to the museums. Alba and Kathleen were less interested in the museums and more interested in the markets but Julie was down to go with me. However, the line was really, really long and admission was 10 euro. It would have cost 14 euro to make a reservation for the next morning (which would have allowed us to skip the line) and we decided that it was a little steep for us. Which means when Mom comes in December I will go back and visit them with her and her mental art history encyclopedia. Instead we went to the markets which posess an overpowering leather smell. I bought quite a few items, as I am known to do. However my bargaining skills have definately improved. I bargained a pair of earrings from 8 euro down to 3 euro. I bargained a dress down from 20 euro to 12 euro. I found a university of firenze sweatshirt for 13 euro, a t-shirt for dad, and some thin bracelets made of leather scraps (one of which says firenze!). Julie bought herself a leather jacket as a birthday present to herself (since her birthday was the next day) and we made friends with the guy she ended up buying the jacket from.

As if all this walking wasn't enough, around 3 in the afternoon we returned to our hostel to check out because they were too full to keep us for 2 nights. So then we trekked across the city, to a location that was even off the map, with all our stuff to our second hostel. I thought my feet would be broken, shattered by my constant pound pound pound into the cement, not so happy in my 7 euro thin sandals. Finally, after much dehydration and exhaustion, we made it. But this was not the end of our journey. Upon arriving, the receptionist told us that they had doublebooked themselves and we could actually not stay there. They told us they thought about calling to let us know but decided to just tell us when we arrived. I was so mad. I wish they would have called us!!! She told us that they had booked us a room at a nearby hotel and would pay the difference. So we still just paid 19 euros for our night. The receptionist was so nice and drove us halfway to the new hotel. Finally, finally we got there around 5 in the evening. We all took showers and found somewhere to go for Julie's birthday dinner. We found a cute restraunt where I got a delicious spinach salad and gnocchi with gorgonzola cheese cream sauce. YUM.

After dinner, we walked around for a bit and Julie and I met up with the guy she had bought the leather jacket from. Alba and Kathleen ended up going back to the hotel earlier because they felt like they were starting to get sick. No good. The guy from the store was originally from Tunisia and came to Italy to study exercise science. He took us up high on this huge hill where we could see the Duomo, other churches, castles, and all sorts of beauty. Because he was Muslim, he did not smoke or drink and had just finished ramadan. We ended up talking a lot about religion, especially since I just celebrated Rosh Hashanah, and a little bit about politics. Around midnight he had to go back to his second job as a hotel receptionist. Julie and I stayed out for a bit longer.

The next day we were so exhausted that we ended up heading back to Milan a little earlier than expected and we all pretty much passed out on the 3-hour train ride back. There was a short period of panic when we worried that our train would be cancelled. There was a strike going on and a bunch of trains were cancelled. We made it though.

I fell in love with Florence, I felt so connected to this city, the cobblestone streets, the bridges and gondolas, all the history, all the amazing minds that studied, worked, and created in the same city I was lucky to walk through, explore, and absorb. I can't wait for Mom to come so I can go back. I really hope I can move to Florence next year and work as a tour guide. I hope I hope I hope.

I think I've been bitten by the travel bug.

Erev Rosh Hashanah a.k.a. why I love Jews

This past week has been pretty low-key. I have class every morning from 9-11:30 with a fifteen minute coffee break during which we moosey on over to the coffee bar across the street for our .70 euro caffe. Italian class is going all right. We're moving at a relatively slow pace, which is good for someone like me who is terrible with languages, and are having our first quiz tomorrow. Today I finally feel like I'm starting to understand the teacher much better in class and no longer think twice about pronouncing "ch" like "k" and "ci" or "ce" like the english "ch." VERY CONFUSING at first.

Last night two other girls on the program and I went out to erev rosh hashanah services. It was really tricky finding a place because all the phone numbers I tried were either disconnected or had a message in Italian that I could not understand. Finally a number went through and a man answered with "Hello?" I got so excited that he was speaking english! He was the rabbi and when I asked him what time services were that night, he interrupted to ask me where I was staying and where I was eating. I told him in an apartment and I didn't know where I was eating, probably with my friends. "Alone?" he asked, "No, you come after services with me to my house. Many students will come." We didn't know what kind of service it would be, orthodox or conservative or reform. And we are all reform. We dressed as modest as our wardrobes had and hoped for the best. When we got there we had trouble finding the synagouge because it was in the basement of part of a residential complex. The doors weren't open when we got there and a nice lady sitting outside led us all around, with Maggie's little bit of Italian, to try and find the way to get in. She ended up walking us down a few blocks to a different synagouge where there were some American orthodox Jews who gave us the up and down and told us that the shul we were trying to get to would open soon. So then the nice lady walked us all the way back from where we started. I just kept thinking that I couldn't imagine anyone this nice to escort us to another synagouge and back in the U.S.

When the synagouge finally opened, we were led inside by a Hasidic man who spoke english. The english was the only thing that helped us feel not so out of place with our non-hasidic dress code. We slipped back into the boarded up woman's section and all my feminsit notions from middle school came rushing back in full force. The service was really hard to follow because it was all in hebrew and italian. My ear is so out of practice for understanding hebrew and it wasn't until later at the dinner that I was able to start understanding it better. The woman's section of the synagouge, including a little room where the kids jumped and talked, definately felt a bit like a social hour and less about prayer. Maggie, Briel, and I definately had trouble following the service. A lot of trouble. It was also a very, very short service...maybe 45 minutes? Definately not longer. However there were a lot of students there, not all hasidic or even orthodox. There were quite a few Israelis. So we started to feel a little bit more okay about how we were dressed.

After the service the rabbi led a large group of us back to his house for dinner. We were the only Americans. It was mostly Israelis although they weren't all traveling together. On the walk over we started talking to Israeli guys who were during a eurotrip. The had spent the past week in Rome, Florence, and Venice. It was their first day in Milan. We sat across from them at the meal. The dinner was in the living room/study and there were probably 30 or 40 people who had come over for dinner. It was packed. There were people of varying degrees of religious, reform to hasidic. There were people of all ages. The rabbi's little kids were there, one so young he probably wasn't even a year old. The woman on my right was probably in her sixties and was from Ethiopia. She and her husband live in Israel and come to Milan for one month every year for his business. She told me they also spend a lot of time in China. It was very interesting to chat with her about what is left of the Italian Jewish community, ethnic backgrounds, etc. We talked to the two Israeli guys sitting across from us as many women set dishes on the tables. The food was so beautiful and delicious but we weren't allowed to touch it for at least an hour. We just sat there starving, waiting anxiously for the blessings. We did the ceremonial hand washing, ate round challahs, apples, and honey. They even had fish heads on the table (that still had their eyes and teeth!!!!) to represent the head of the year. Very dramatic. When we finally did get to eat, the food was so delicious. Hummus, baba ganouj, potato egg salad, green salad, pomegrante seeds, rice, potatoes (and fish and chicken for the non vegetarians). The food kept coming and coming and coming. It was definately the most I had eaten at one time since I left my mother's kitchen. During the meal, a thunderstorm broke out. The lightening looked more like a lightening show than weather and it hailed. The Israelis ran to the window to catch some hail in their hands since Israel is a desert and, you know, no hail.

After the meal the rabbi started passing shots of vodka and amaretto. I love Jews. It was so funny. After he had a few, he got up to talk about the story of Chanah and Panina and Chanah praying for her son and I was so excited because I understood a lot of what he was saying!!! Then he started talking about some other things, about what was not his question but God's question or something, and I didn't understand as much. But I was really proud of understanding what I could. And it probably helped that I was already familiar with the haftorah in which I share the name with the main character.

We left around 11:30 because the metro system stops running at midnight and it had stopped raining (although the puddles were deep and dramatic). It was such a fabulous night. The rabbi invited us to services again today and to his house for dinner again tonight. There is a fashion thing tonight to preview fashion week which is at the end of this month and Milan, well you can imagine, big big deal. And I think I am going out to apertivo before hand, as well. Today I bought a pair of sandals for 7 euro that are very, very cute at a shop inside the metro station. I hope the weather stays good for sandals for awhile longer.

This weekend I am going to Florence, SO EXCITED. I cannot wait. But now it is time to use the notecards I FINALLY found (after much grief and searching) and study for the quiz tomorrow. So rather take a siesta...

Ciao!

Birthdays, Pavia, Museums

This weekend was really fabulous. Friday night we kind of got a late start. Two of my roommates and I went out first to hear some live jazz music at the Arco della Pace which is at the edge of this huge park where there is a massive and intricately carved arch that was built when Napoleon had power of Milan. It was so great, this little stage of the jazz band in front of the huge arch. So beautiful, great juxtaposition. From there we met up with two other girls from our program to get dinner. We went to a very nice restraunt where my roommate and I split a pizza. I don't think I can eat out at a place like that for another month, though. They charge for water here. Even worse, they charge per tablecloth. So basically you pay money just to sit down. Bahhhh I need to be economical! The street we went on had a bunch of bars and clubs and things and people were spilling out onto the street. So busy. After dinner my two roommates and I went to try and find this club where one of my roommates had left her shoes a previous night. We asked a group of Italians for directions and it turned out one of the guys was celebrating his 23rd birthday. We were actually at the same spot the jazz concert had been at, on the steps in front of the huge beautiful sculpted arch. So they invited us to hang out with them and we spent a few hours talking to this group of young Italian people. One of them was originally from Canada, one of the was half french and half japanease. I ended up just speaking in my super broken Spanish a lot. It was really great to meet some Italians our own age. Around 2:30 or so in the morning, when the group was dying down and had shrunk a considerable amount we came home.

Saturday a whole group of us took the train to Pavia. I posted pictures in my previous post. Pavia is a smaller city about a half hour train ride from Milan. It only cost 6,10 euro for the round trip. It is so beautiful. The streets are much smaller and it is full of little shops and places to get coffee/panini's/apertivo. I fell in love, I want to live in Pavia. It is the cutest city. I got sandals (finally) for ten euro at a little shop. There was a street market and I got this really pretty blue scarf for seven euro. We got panini's for 3 euro. The street market was really cool. Some stands had racks of clothes, some had tables of jewlery, some sold bags, and some just had random knickknacks like plastic toys and clothespins. After the street market we ran into a Renaissance reinactment fair where people were all dressed in elaborate costumes and they fired a cannon. It was cool to see a Renaissance reinactment in Italy where, you know, the Renaissance actually happened. After that we took the train home and made dinner.

Today we all slept in really late. Finally, my roommate and I went to an art museum nextdoor to the duomo at a museum called Palazzo Reale. We saw an exhibit by an Italian woman who painted in the 1930's and 1940's. After that we walked around the area around the duomo some more and came home. Tonight is my friend's birthday so I think we area going out to celebrate after I get pizza with my roommates and my RA. Italian class tomorrow morning! But it was a beautiful weekend.

Pictures from Pavia