It’s time of transition here in Italy.
The weather has changed almost instantly from pretty warm to pretty cold… and rainy. At least that’s what this week was mostly like. We saw an almost immediate switch from shops selling sandals and sundresses to selling sweaters and boots.
We knew the weather would be milder here than at home but these two tough Iowans still find it a little chilly. Hopefully we packed enough warm things.
We have had several weekends in a row to relax, get the hang of things, and explore the city, but we’re definitely looking forward to visitors and travel.
In a couple of weekends my aunt and uncle John & Kathy will be vacationing in Tuscany and plan to visit us for a day.
Then the next weekend our moms arrive to visit for our fall break.
We’ve recently encountered several opportunities that we’ve decided to take advantage of and should update you on.
We got discounted museum passes through our school; these pretty much pay for themselves after visiting just 2 of the many many museums available to visit.
We’re pretty excited to try those out next weekend.
School is also super good atoffering free or nearly free weekly activities as well as trips. So we also plan to take two day-trips in the near future.
One is to Lucca and Pisa and the next day we’ll visit Parma and Modena to learn about Parmesan cheese and balsamic vinegar making processes and usage.
We’ll be accompanied by our SPU friends for both of these trips.
Yea!
We also signed up for a weekend trip to Rome before we arrived in Italy. And Cody was awesome and secured discounted train tickets to visit Venice for two days with our moms.
So excited!
Those are the big ones for now but if we can find good deals we
might consider going to Cinque Terra and/or Milan.
But those are big maybes.
We’ve had a wonderful time just enjoying our city, especially this weekend. In fact, we found a newspaper called the Florentine, printed specifically to help abroad students navigate and be generally well-informed about events and opportunities around the city. This was a great help because we learned of some festivals and things going on this weekend! Brie and Megan were actually gone on a trip to Sicily this weekend which meant we got to keep Carmel company for some of the time and together we had fun checking out the International fair right outside one of our school buildings and a ceramics fair. So cool! At the international fair we even found pofertjes!
Haha But like every other European treat, for some unknown reason, there was the option to have some with Nutella.
(Nutella is a hazelnut-chocolate spread fyi) We did not partake of these however, since we can find them in the states. It was just so funny to see something so Dutch in Italy. Then I had to spend some time explaining stroop waffles to Cody and concluded he must not be Dutch enough cuz he didn’t know what those were.
Jk. ;) We did however order this super tasty sausage-dog to share and stalked up on some gummy candy for the movie we're going to this week!
We found out that the movie Inception is going to be playing in English in one of the theaters fora good price this Tuesday. So we're going with Brie, Megan and Carmel.
The ceramics fair was soooo much fun. So many different techniques and styles of work. I had fun finishing a role of film for my photography class as we walked around. Cody had a quite profound comment about the tea bowl. The aesthetic of the tea bowl is in part, defined by how it fits in the hands. So Cody says, “Holding a tea bowl is like cuddling with the tea itself.” What a fantastic experience. :D
Other than that we haven’t been up to too much lately. We continue to have fun trying out recipes and experimenting with our resources: we (tried) made apple crisp in the microwave! It works for the most part, just doesn’t get crispy. …
We wanted to share with you some evidence of what we’ve been working on in class. So here’s some proof of Cody’s genius in watercolor. His prof said he painted a “delicate lemon” so here it is.
He also did some great work with one of my favorite flowers! The other picture is of myfashion drawings.
I think he’s really talented and I’m quite proud of him!
I also think he’s got a new hobby.
J Don’t freak out! Why are there no clothes on these drawings for a clothing design class, you ask? Well, we had to study form and proportion before we could get to that. For this reason I’m pretty ok with the fact that I dropped my intermediate drawing class; we pretty much draw for5 hours in this class as it is. However, fashion proportions do a serious injustice to the realistic woman’s form, (which only adds to the turmoil which is the constantwar fighting for integrity in my reasoning as a Christian, aspiring artist and lover of fashion.) I’m a nerd. I’ll think about that more later…
Right now we’re also trying to take some time to evaluate whether or not we’re missing something.
We’d hate to go home and realize we missed the chance to see or do something significant while we were living here. Please let us know if you think of anything we simply MUST go do or see! Seriously! Even if it seems like the most obvious suggestion, we want to know! The small problem is that we’ve also become tired of tourism and all that caters to it simply because it blinds us in part to what we’ve come to see.
Though we also want to see the sights and crave some things from home, it’s hard to see how Italians live and live like them when “tourist traps” are everywhere.
Living here is a vastly different experience from vacation and while we are learning to appreciate the culture of a different country, we’re also learning to appreciate aspects of the US and how we grew up.
Culture Clues
* It’s really difficult to figure out how much things will cost when they’re sold by the Kilo. You never quite know how much a small portion of something is going to weigh and therefore cost.
* Euros have way too much currency in coins. They have coins for 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, and 50 cents, then 1 euro and 2 euro coins as well. TOO MANY! We don’t like this. It seems like less of a big deal to spend money when you’re just spending coins. A 2 euro coin is already more than 2 dollars. The exchange rate is 1 euro = roughly 1.3 American dollars. Expensive.
Another lovely picture of the Arno. Check our link for a few more pics!
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