We recently watched "Life is Beautiful" (which was filmed in Arezzo by the way) in my IPLF class, so we now go around greeting each other with a boisterous "Good morning, princess!" in our most obnoxious Italian accents. It's lovely.
Wow, a lot of time has gone by since my last post. In fact, to emphasize my point, you should listen to "As Time Goes By" from "Casablanca" by clicking on the link. It seems so long ago that I was making a list...checking it twice... and still forgetting to pack shampoo. Oh well. The week leading up to Spring Break went by smoothly all the same.
Saturday Elisandra and I took a day trip to Assisi. The city is so beautiful, set on a hill with a huge duomo and castle at the top. My favorite pictures were taken at sunset, when the rays set the church aglow in a simmering golden blaze. Here is an example:
It was a lovely peaceful day, and we explored the entire city, walking up and down, up and down, up and down the hills and stairs. We even met some of the local animals, and I made friends with a stray cat. I named him Oliver.
One of the highlights of the next week was the Tandem Project, which allowed OUA students to connect with Italian UNISI students in Arezzo and discuss pop culture while practicing our (lack of) language skills. For once, the Italian students outnumbered the American students, so each of us were paired with four or five Italian students. My group was really fun, although I felt completely inadequate in my ability to communicate in Italian, since I've been studying it for 2 years and they have all been studying English for at least 8. Nevertheless, we stumbled through the standard topics (food, music, extracurriculars) and found out that almost all of us love Harry Potter.
We made plans to meet later in the week to have more conversations. On that Thursday they took me to their favorite gelato place, called Sunflower. We talked about sports and movies, and one of the girls said that there is a well-known comic in Italy whose main character resembles Audrey Hepburn. It was a very productive meeting, to say the least.
We didn't end up getting to see the monks chant Vespers on Wednesday, but it was for the best since we were all so tired from Art History earlier in the morning. Instead I got the chance to sit and talk with Nancy Stephenson, who is pretty amazing. She shared a lot of stories, and I learned that Dr. Stephenson plays Dungeons & Dragons, among other things.
Thursday was a little crazy because I was trying to finish everything before leaving early Friday morning. After my last midterm, I came back to the apartment and met Lindsay's mom, who had just arrived for a visit. We had a dinner party to welcome her to Italy, and I gave up trying to get a good night's sleep before a long day of traveling, so I convinced Mac to come to karaoke night with us. We danced to our heart's content, and then this Cinderella turned into a pumpkin for a few hours before waking up again at 5:30 to catch a train to Pisa.
Mac says she regrets staying out so late, but I know she secretly loved it. I saw her bippity-bopping to the music. She had a ball.
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