Long time no blog

First, updates. We lost the internet connection in my apartment, so I can only get on the internet Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Or, at an internet cafe on my ipod. I am slightly sick. Probably from my long day on Saturday (more to come). This weekend is the long weekend. So far, it is just going to be myself and Moira. We want to either go to Palermo, Sicily or Madrid, Spain.. exciting! We will decide today. Tonight we're going to Italian yoga at 10. It is going to be a blast, because we won't understand what they're saying. I'm going to look up how to say left and right before I go haha. I am updating since last Wednesday, so it will be a long one.

I just went to the grocery store and finally got brave enough to order some cheese from behind the counter. I was a bit nervous, because I do not understand the kilogram weight scale. One of my friends told me how she ordered a half kilo of cheese, which is about one pound. But, the man behind the counter understood and just asked if he should cut where the knife was. I got gorgonzola and some sort of soft white cheese.. I tried it and it seems like it will melt well. Tonight I'll be making some grilled cheese all'Orvietana with it. Yum!

Last Wednesday.. we went to Tivoli. First, we went to Hadrian's Villa. He was an emperor in the first century AD. Apparently, he was gay and this was one villa that he escaped with his lover to. He worshipped his lover like a God and even had sanctuaries for him. The coolest part was probably the Maritime Theater. It was a little area with a moat around it. So beautiful! On the island, there were baths and everything they would need to spend a weekend on it. Everything was mostly in ruins, but my classics teacher was leading the tour so he told us all the stories. It was lots of fun! After, we went to downtown Tivoli. It was not the nicest place in the world. For lunch, I had mushroom pizza. It was SO delicious! Very buttery. It was the closes thing to street food that I have found, even though it was in a building. We also got gelato here (of course). Next was Villa d'Este. It is a gorgeous Renaissance-era mansion. But the main attraction here is the fountains. There is a huge garden with magnificent fountains and pools. Unfortunately, when it was time to go check out the fountains, it started POURING! I was soaking wet (which made for a very cold and miserable bus ride home). However, the fountains that I did get to see were very cool. And the sky was gorgeous!

Thursday... last weekend was the Corpus Domini festival. It honors a man that lost his faith, but found it again when he broke his communion wafer and the blood of Christ dripped onto the tablecloth. They have processions through the street and different celebrations all weekend, including medieval costumes etc. On this night, they had 'shopping under the stars' where the stores stay open until 1am. We were shopping around, when we got to a stage area. It seemed like something was about to start. It was a Michael Jackson dance tribute show. It was so much fun to watch. My favorite were the six year olds who danced to ABC... there were five of them wearing white suits and afro wigs. I forgot my camera. Our friends showed us a new gelato place by the Duomo- best place yet! I like capriccio which is hazelnut flavor with nutella stirred in.

Friday... fieldtrip to Tarquinia. Tarquinia is a city where they have Etruscan tombs. First, we went to a park where they have the actual tombs. You walk down into these creepy tunnels. They smell exactly like the drying room at ceramics. At the bottom, there is a window into the tomb, to keep the climate controlled. It was exciting to see the same tomb paintings that are in my textbook! They seemed much smaller than in the book. Next, we chose whether we wanted to go straight to the beach or to a museum then the beach. I chose the museum. Claudio showed us around and there were grave goods from the tombs we had just seen. Pottery, jewelry, statues, etc. Also many Etruscan sarcophagi (which means flesh eater), they are coffins with an statue of the person buried within reclining on top. We then went down to the beach and ate at 'Happy Days.' It looked better than 'Snoopy's Island.' They offered us ristorante or pizzeria. The ristorante did not have a menu, so we chose pizzeria. After my margherita pizza, I had a cafe freddo which was basically a coffee milkshake in an espresso cup. It was delicious! They had the most amazing beach chairs- they had screens that pull down over your face to shade it from the sun. We wanted to see midieval dancing when we got back, but could not find it. Darn.

Saturday... Florence! We took the train up to Firenze for the day. I went with a girl that I know from Blue Chip and her friend (the other 4 people were no-shows). We had a great day. First thing we did was look for a cafeteria (for coffee) I ordered an espresso and a ciambelle (donut). When the guy was handing me my pastry, he handed it to me under the glass, where I couldn't reach it. I still tried to grab it and was just scratching at the glass. He was looking at me like 'hello, stupid tourist, please take your donut' and when he realized what was going on, we both roared laughing haha. So funny. First, we went to the Duomo. The church part was not open yet, but we went to climb Brunelleschi's dome (436 steps). It was unbelievable, like the Sistine Chapel but painted on the dome at St Pietro. We climbed to the first level to see the interior painting. Then we climbed more steps to go on top of the dome for a panoramic view of the city. Gorgeous! The steps were crazy though.. some of them were small spiral staircases, some were almost vertical. I was ducking my head the whole time. We then shopped around. I'll show you what I got when I get back. We walked around to see the sights for the rest of the day. On the way back to the train station, we realized that we were cutting it close. We started running through the streets. The other girls were surprised at my saavy at crossing streets... said I was pulling James Bond maneuvers ha. One of the girls got tangled in her purse and heard someone say "she looks like she's going to puke," because she was so confused. I am uncontrollably laughing just thinking about it. No one in the computer lab seems to mind. Anyway, we made it on the train with a few minutes to spare, luckily we had already validated our tickets. Took a bus back to the top part of Orvieto.

When I got there (around 10:30), my roommates were all waiting for me. I had told them that I'd be back around 830ish, that was my best guess. We had talked about going out together to see the night life. I figured they would have left without me. No, they were waiting. They even called Alba to get the phone number of one of the girls I was with oops. So, I hurried up to get ready and we went for it. I had the best time trying out my Italian on people at the bar. One guy said "You teach me English, I teach you Italian." Perfect! It was fun, because everyone was on about the same level in the other person's language. I met the owner of the bar, who was very nice and said that I could work there. Good to know that if I happen miss my flight back, I have a job here.

Sunday.. since I had been awake from 630am to 230ish am the night before, I allowed myself to sleep in til 1130. Finally. We looked around for midieval archery, but never found it. We did find cheese making though. They were pretty much done making a fresh batch of ricotta cheese, the mideval way. Interesting.

Today.. finished up my analysis of my book for class.

Thanks for reading!