the summation of my week

killed paper until six in the morning


Night at the Ballet:

dinner where each one of us found a hair in our meal



grocery store madness



Missed the memo that EVERYONE wears black to the ballet



Cindereller!



And it's always a good idea to end the week dressed as a super hero.













I guess super heros can't fend against static cling.

thinkings

i feel as though i haven't sat down for a while and wrote what's really going on here, and i'm still pressed for time as i write this. my birthday was nice. had a lot of projects to work on but lindsey made me a cake with lots of delicious frosting and andrea cooked up some tomato bread soup. thanks to everyone who sent me cards it was nice to feel a touch of home. as my birthday has now passed i've been very contemplative. i've struggled with wanting things of home, with feeling content in my design and myself in general. i want to succeed here in rome, and experience what it is i'm supposed to be doing. i want to feel that there is depth in my life not just this surface that most people see. i want to be able to express myself better I WANT TO LEARN. i need to remember all of this as my days pass by. i'm enjoying myself, i have things to look forward to in the weeks to come and it makes the time go by. i'm experiencing God's presence much more evidentally in my days and i'm not sure what the reason is. it's as though sometimes my eyes can just see the world a bit clearer than usual, i get a glimpse of God's creation and how he intended it and how He made us and it makes me smile. i wish i had more time to sit and think and let my mind go.

traveling through rain in Firenze

Three of my roommates and I traveled to Florence Saturday morning. It rained the whole day so it made it hard to enjoy the sites. We first went to the Uffizi, and after waiting in line over an hour and paying an outrageous fee we finally saw the most famous museum in Italy. It was worth it, we saw Boticelli's Birth of Venus, along with his other works, Da Vinci, Caravaggio, and countless other artists. From here we went to the famous Duomo where Brunelleschi built the dome, which was the largest dome built.



We ended up meeting Andrea's old roommate from Ames and ate dinner together. On Sunday we knew we wanted to see the Davids. I wanted to see Donatellos and the rest of the group wanted to see Michelangelos and they are both in different museums. We were going to split up but ended up just doing both. I was impressed with the size of Michelangelo's David (17 feet tall), but I really enjoyed Dontallelos. His David seemed much more alive and striking. It was the first nude shown in Western culture since antiquity and it caused a lot of uproar because of its sensuality and its feminine qualities. We also saw Ghiberti and Brunelleschi's bronze doors they carved for a competition. I've always liked Brunellschi's better even though Ghiberti's won, but seeing them in person I felt Ghiberti's worked much better as a composition and was much more cohesive. Yay for seeing artwork in real life! We spent time in the market after the museums and actually walked inside of the Duomo. The outside was so ornate and decorated while the inside was very simple and plain, I liked the contrast of this. We trained it home Sunday night and now I'm celebrating my birthday on this monday by doing homework. ya ya.

grandmas

i'm told i dress like a grandma. maybe i should be one for halloween.



Besides being a grandma we went to a pretty sweet bibliotheque on wednesday. they had SO many illuminated manuscripts made from parchment paper. There was even one from the 8th century but you have to have a special license to see it, even the man who worked there could not see it, but he did show us a copy of it. i think i want to become a grandma illuminator now.




awkward hand touching between man and lindsey.



and they had a book of the confessions by saint augustine original and all!!!! yay he's amazing read his book!

so basically illuminated mauscrips are amazing, and books are amazing and libraries are amazing. and today i got to see some caravaggio paintings which are amazing as well.


and eat your fruits and vegies

just some americans having a good time having a good time having a good time.

monday soccer fun. a group of us decided it would be fun to play soccer on the field at the park by our house. there were about 13 of us who went out and played for a few hours. it was pretty funny watching the italians stop and stare at us as we attempted to play their sport. but we had one italian come and join us who was pretty amazing. once he began to play we all tried a lot harder and by the end we were all broken and sore. some other italians spoke with us when we finished and they want to start playing so i think we will do it again on friday. yay for running around and getting beat up!!



and obviously cheerleading jumps need to be involved at the end.



I should add that this is the better picture of me but not of Lindsey besssnets. check out her blog for her spectacular form. kkkkkkkkkk?

God decides vespas aren't a good idea....

thursday i walked to another country. i like saying that. well we walked to the vatican and went to saint peter's basillica. when we arrived in the piazza there were thousands of germans (i swear), all wearing the same shirts and chanting together. then they decided to all go into the basillica at once and push their way through all the people. we were stepped on, yelled at, and pushed by this group. our professor, casper, warned us to be careful because "it's never safe when you get a group of germans together who are raising their hands and cheering together."



Once in, casper was interrupted by a worker telling him he couldn't talk to us or congregate in a group, although there were TONS of other tourists groups inside. so casper silently pointed at things as we walked through and he still got yelled at more by the worker. HILARIOUS. this is when casper's frustration was escalating at the italian worker and alec silently ponders all they have to say.



we had to leave saint peters and have lecture outside but it was really pretty. i want to go back again and just walk around on my own time.

the rest of the week went by fast. thursday night was our first late night finishing a project. here's some pics of my final sketchbook we turned in. This is what i have been working on for trajan's market.





Friday night was our usual family dinner. Adrianna and her boyfriend came over and we had lasagna and played cards. Saturday we planned to ride vespas. the first place didn't have their bikes returned from the previous day, second shop were all reserved, third the last two had just been rented and fourth wouldn't rent to us because we were american!! it seemed pretty evident we wren't supposed to rent vespas. maybe God's trying to keep us safe. we'll see what happens. since we had the day free, Linds and I explored parts of Rome we'd never been to before. It made me really enjoy this place a lot more. the city center is tiring, dirty and not that great when you're in it every day, but outside of the center it's a lot more calm and beautiful. it made me happy to be enjoying this city and to see new things. yay.

Our day ended in piazza navona watching this crazy finger puppet performance of michael jackson. he even had smoke coming off his little table stage. this is the guy with the crazy fingers.

table jumping

I bought a backpack. it looks like it's good for bungee jumping.







besides bungee jumping, lindsey's birthday was yesterday. andrea made french toast in the morning and we all went out for chinese last night and ate mint brownies that I made.


The weekend was relaxing here. I spent Sunday wandering around parts of rome i'd never seen before. i had no batteries for my camera so i was forced to enjoy it with my eyes and i did. i spent the afternoon reading on a blanket in the park and watching all the families playing with one another. i like that everyone goes to the park on the weekends to relax. they really know how to take it easy here. i think we could learn from this.

Okgo

Wednesday night Andrea, Elisa and I went to an OkGo concert. The crowd was MUCH better than the Peaches concert, only minor body slamming toward the end. For their encore, OkGo came back out and did a choreographed dance. Here's a link to the dance they did for us. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbdbVhBGETQ

After the concert we wanted to take a picture with the band. We ended up sneaking through this blocked off door and going backstage, but then we couldn't find the band and we were caught. They ended up coming out later and we got some pics taken.



This was the part where the singer handed 10 euro to someone in the audience. You can see him reaching out in the background. I guess he's friendly






The end of their dance


the band sans vocals.

happy birthday grams

Happy birthday grandma! Hi visiting fam! wish I could be there. Somebody better eat a corner piece of cake with lots of frosting on it. mmmmmm. get better grandpa!

stay posted for pics of the Okgo concert from last night. (that's the band I showed you mom, where they choregraphed a dance on treadmills).

beautiful mare

this weekend was our southern field trip. all of us classmates plus our professors went to naples and pompeii friday and saturday. it was pretty intense with 80+ people. we got into sorrento and went out to a fancy dinner with our professors and classmates and it was a lot of fun, although too expensive.


the next day we took a train to naples and went to two different museums. we saw lots of good stuff: roman sculpture, egyptian artifacts, paintings, photographs, contemporary art. basically everything you would want to see. from there, we took a train to pompeii, which is a pretty cool place. we were rushed for time and so didn't get to experience as much as we wanted. the city was buried under the volcano mount vesuvius in 79AD and it was uncovered 1600 years later. a lot of bodies were preserved and you could see the forms of the bodies trying to take cover.

after this, we were free to do what we wanted for the weekend and so my four roommates, reid, scott and I went back to sorrento for two nights. the plan was to take a ferry to capri on sunday. well, when we went to go to capri we found it was more expensive than we anticipated and so we were told there was an even more beautiful beach about an hours walk away from our hostel. we opted for this choice and bought some bread and cheese for lunch, since we would be away from civilization. they weren't kidding when they said we'd be away from everything. we ended up hiking up and over a mountain all the way down to the coast to this beach. no one was quite prepared for this hiking excursion, some people had flip flops others hands were full with sacks and blankets. we made it though, and it was well worth it.

here we are approaching the mountain




here we are going down the mountain


here's the beach!


there was even a concrete diving platform we swam to and jumped off of into the mediterranean.

we swam and played all day and it was fun. while i was in the water i got a sharp pain in my back and jumped out. i didn't understand what the stinging pain was, and soon an italian couple ran over to me and rubbed some ointment on my back. i soon found out i was stung by a jelly fish after a man went into the water and caught it in a sack.

mister jelly fish!


my stings after they started to get better...


playtime


The hike home was much worse then going. now we had to climb up the rocky rocky moutain with no water left and being tired from the sun. we made it home and had to get ready in 10 minutes to catch the bus into sorrento so we could eat some dinner. the bus into town takes 1 hour so we had to hurry. Overall the weekend was great. it was draining, and can be hard traveling with so many people but it was so amazing to see how we all reacted to God's creation and the beauty we see in it. it's so much better than any roman ruin or anything man has created. yay for prettiness!!