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.

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.