smooshy

sometimes you just have to keep yourself entertained when in rome. go to www.lindseybennett.blospot.com to see us working hard in class.

greece

greece was wonderful. a lot of things were closed friday evening so we walked around and saw some the olympian zeus temple from the outside, then played in a park. they had the best park ever with lots of wonderful play things that would never go over in america.

here we are playing




ate a delicious greek, meal of lamb and rested up for another day. saturday we walked to acropolis hill and saw the famous parthenon. it was really intersting comparing the greek temples to the roman ones i am surrounded with daily. the greeks built their structures in the round and used marble throughout, whereas romans were only concerned with the front of buildings and the surface looking nice. so in rome, i'm used to seeing the inner forms of structures of brick and gray rock. in greece we actually saw white marble so you had more of an idea what these temples really looked like.

[from acropolis]








probably walked a good 10 hours after crossing town to the archeological museum where we saw some sculptures and artifacts from the year 5000BC. unbelievable. i am amazed at how advanced the greeks were and how our minds were created by God to work. amazing.

we finished off our trip on sunday at the market. walked for hours going back over the same streets i swear! everything looked the same. tried some coconut sticks and a greek pita. we did pretty good for being surounded by greek letters and not really knowing what was going on. i like greece. it's pretty neat.

more pics from the weekend.

walk off that thanksgiving.

wow i've been super busy with the parentals. i met up with them on thursday morning, after finishing up some projects. we walked up avantine hill snuck into the knights of malta (different country) and then proceeded to be kicked out of the knights of malta. walked along the tiber crossed the river to tiber island and just walked some more until we met for class to go to the EUR. my parents came with and we got to see some great facism architecture from mussolini. we probably walked over eight hours that day. that night we celebrated thanksgiving with a little homemade pumpking pie that steph made for us, complimentary of our mom's. our meal consisted of pizza, pumpkin pie, wine and cheese.



friday morning we left for the airport and flew to greece.

check out next blog.

parental units

me and the dad in the forum.


rome is crazy. i live here.


my parents arrived in rome friday afternoon. i took them around to the spanish steps and trevi fountain. we happened upon tom cruise and katie holmes' hotel where they were getting married the next day. that was a cluster. people were crowded everywhere hoping they would come out of their hotel, holding signs saying "we love you" "you're the best couple in the world" ridiculous.

Saturday we saw trajan's market, walked through the roman forum, up through palatine hill. grabbed a little lunch and continued through the colosseum. i showed my fam our studio (stopping at grocery stores on the way to look for cans), and then we decided to check out the pantheon. it was my first time inside! i walk by it everyday but have never fought through the tourists to check it out. it's really beautiful inside. almost seems fake. We went to my apartment that night and rested, then linds came with us and we went and ate an italian dinner in the borghese area. linds and i realized we haven't ever eaten out here besides a chinese restaraunt a few times! yikes.

my apartment building! piazza ottavilla!


pantheon dome. wow.


since they weren't here to take my first day of school pics, here i am by our studio front door.


sunday we shopped the busy market and finally found the bus to take us near the vatican so we could see the pope. we made it just in time to see him come out of his window and make a spiel in italian. sooooo many people! we ate some kebabs and walked to the saint angelica castle (named after the archangel michael). walked through piazza navona and campo di fiore. we packed a lot in this weekend but it was fun. showing my family this city it makes me realize how much i take for granted and how i no long notice as much as i once did. i want to appreciate this place before i leave.

can you see the pope?


just a few people in the crowd

umbrella beatings and fruit.

as andrea and i were walking to class today, we stopped at the market so i could buy some fruit. we saw some interesting things and decided to try something new, so andrea bought a loti. it felt like a tomato on the outside, looked like a mango on the inside, tasted like a mango with cinnamon, then started to taste like a pumpkin as we got to the center and even had seeds, which looked like pumpkin seeds. it was delicious! we got six more weeks to try new stuff.

i should add that i have some great umbrella beating skills i was unaware of. i guess rome is good for something. as andrea and i were spending sunday morning shopping in a market, before church, we were followed by an italian man around our age. he did not leave us the whole time we were at the market, after asking him to leave us alone, asking others to get him away from us and after beating him with my umbrella. he went so far as to follow us out of the market, get on and off the bus we were on, until finally an american woman came and asked if we needed help. she had witnessed his following and took us over to the police where she warned him we would be reporting him. sadly i had to throw my umbrella away and share andrea's in the pooring rain.

wanderings

it's strange being abroad. i just had an experience trying to buy some tools from a hardware store. no one spoke english but me, so i reverted to drawing pictures of what i wanted. the problem was, i wasn't exactly sure what i needed because it's for a design project i'm doing. so i completely confused the man and myself and ended up purchasing a few items. i tried to ask if i would be able to return them if it didn't work out but that made no sense to him. i spent my time between classes taking a new route to the studio. i've been doing this lately in the mornings as i walk by myself. it helps me appreciate rome more and the tiny shops that will soon escape me once i'm back in america. i found myself at santa maria in trestevere today, a church i've been meaning to go to in rome. it was nice to experience this on my own, wandering at will and taking time to look at things that i want to look at. it seems odd to me the way we depict christianity sometimes; mary is always in her blue dress, Jesus on the cross, everything ornamented in gold and a lot of it just seems really sad and almost fake. as i was admiring a a portrait of mary's head contained within a box a man ran in, set his bags down and said a quick prayer and ran out. this prompted me to actually stop my wandering, take a moment and pray to God. it was nice losing myself and just realizing that faith is a choice, no one HAS to have it to survive on this earth, we can easily choose not to see God in our daily lives and live completely for ourselves. i just don't understand why we do this when it's obvious that we continually want more to please us, and once we find something pleasing we want something else, we are never satisfied. i wanted so badly to study abroad, to be in italy, and now that i'm here i'm not satisfied. i'd like to study or be somewhere else. to me, this shows how we were created. we were created to have the perfection we seek in God. this world is not all that we have, if we choose faith we will be forever in eternity with our creator and lover. we will finally be content.

modularity and water

sushi goodness!


We took our northern field trip this weekend. Left thursday morning, with the class, for an eight hour train ride to zurich. zurich ended up being exactly what we needed. we were filled with swiss design, modularity and minimalism. helvetica was everywhere and it felt good to see the san serif used properly. we had free time thursday night and so lindsy, adrianna and i ate sushi and it was delicious. zurich felt a lot like iowa because it was chilly and we had to wear coats and scarves and mittens. i liked the coldness, it actually felt like november. and it was great to see a taste of fall with changing leaves, we haven't gotten much of that in rome.

poster (plakat) museum



become one with the posters



zurich is fun




sigi odermatt and i



friday we went to a poster museum where we saw a collection of well known posters and designers in switzerland. from there we went to the gestalung kunst museum and saw an exhibition of designers competing against one another. there was some great product design and informational design as well as beautiful designed typefaces. had some free time after this and walked around for a while, then met back up with the class to meet odermatt and tisi. they are two, swiss designers; odermatt started in 1950 at age 24 and later on hired rosmarie tisi and have been designing/working together ever since. odermatt is no 80 years old and talked about his extensive poster collection because he no longer designs. tisi gave a lecture and showed slides of her work and we had an opportunity to ask them questions and go to their studio to have books signed. odermatt was hilarious, he spoke very little english and so we had a translator but regardless we still found him quarky and laughed continuously at him. linds and i were excited that we understood most of the german he spok
traditional swiss meal of weiners! and to get the full swiss experience you need synthesizer in the background played by a man with a bad mullet and his wife on the tamborine, while dancing to madonna in german.



after our 2 nights in zurich we got an eight hour train to venice and spent a night there. we saw saint marc's square and freely walked around and did our christmas shopping. we didn't ride any gondolas but had to take the vaporetto on the water to get from island to island (works like the subway). we played with the pigeons, ate marzipan, looked at venician glass, and laughed harder than i think we have this whole time.








mom and dad you should be proud, i purchased a can opener and have been drinking upside down since.

who's who?

yesterday was halloween and my roommates and i decided to dress like one another. lindsey was andrea, andrea was elisa, elisa was lindsey, i was steph and steph was me. we thought it was HILARIOUS. i was confused a few times when i saw elisa out of the corner of my eye and when she spoke i realized it was andrea. our classmates didn't seem to notice or find it as funny as we did. oh well. and as weird as this seems, we did not take any photos. so i suppose you will have to use your imagination. as for my costume i wore steph's black pin striped pants and a black top with black shoes and straightened my hair. it felt very odd to be dressed this way and it goes to show i feel much more comfortable in my random patterns and colourful outfits.

tomorrow we leave for switzerland! i am SO excited to be going to a german speaking country with order and cleanliness. after switzerland we stay in venice for a night. it will be a nice break, although school is so intense right now we will be losing a lot of time on our projects.