Coffee Break

I'd like to say a few words about caffe italiano. Usually I go to the coffee bar by our appartment or school to have an espresso or cappucino. I made my first pot myself today with one of the silver 3 cup coffee makers they have here. It is about the size of a container of salt and sits on the stove top. The top and bottom unscrew and one puts the water in the bottom with the small coffee ground holder on top. Then the top pot is reattached and the whole thing is heated until the water boils up from the bottom through the grounds to the pot on top. It makes espresso which you may drink black or with sugar in a small espresso cup. If you want milk in it you must swtich to a larger cappucino cup. I like mine with milk though I can't make it foamy at home like they can at the bar. I just add it plain even though its already 14:00 here which is getting late for drinking milk in coffee. Italians do not take milk in caffe after lunch time, which here starts about 13:00. It feels good to hold this cappucino cup of hot coffee on the bench in the kitchen with the light from the window coming in my apartment. I surprised myself by wondering when this cup and saucer became my comfort objects. The 21 years I lived in the United States I have used a saucer maybe 7 times and never without wondering why people bother with it. I think it is because our cups that go with saucers in the US are too big. In my kitchen in Massachusetts our tea set is bigger than anything you would see in Italy. If you hold the saucer to carry the cup it feels like it will tip off. Every day here I carry at least 1, if not 3, cup and saucer combos. The cups are smaller, shorter and rounder. The saucer is the obviously perfect tray for the cup and spoon. The lip of the saucer curves up so my hand fits perfectly between it and the table so I can carry it with ease. It really is a remarkably well shaped object to fit the lifestyle here. A small cup of coffee is taken quickly at the bar before people are on their way somewhere else. Three sips and and you have finished an espresso. Greeting the bartender and thanking him when you are are done is as much part of the tradition as the cup or the spoon or the taste. In America portions are larger and more caffinated but the coffee tastes less like coffee. At Dunkins I can get coffee that tastes like cream, sugar, blueberry, caramel, coconut, the list goes on. Espresso is very small but very strong in taste. A coffee is supposed to last an American through a morning commute or for an hour at work. Maybe thats why its always so hot, so it takes longer to get cold. I've never gotten a coffee at a bar here that is too hot or too cold, always just right to drink quickly and move on. I do miss my to go iced coffees here but not so much now. Having coffee here is a little break time that Americans don't really believe in. It is not long enough to really multitask during and so it becomes just a quick pleasure. In italy that seems to be the requirement with food and drink, one must stop and be totally involved, everything is fresh and made to order in real cups, on real plates. None of this quick frozen burrito, bottle of soda business that happens to me too often in America. As much as I like this tradition I know it will make me a square peg in a round hole when I return to America and eventually I will adapt back, but hopefully not completely. As a person who doesn't plan a lot of non-multitasked time for herself I'd like to thank Italy for teaching me how to stop for a minute to relax. And I'd really like to thank Professor Kirk who taught me how to appreciate how to drink coffee like the Italians do.

Thank goodness for Italian

Last night Sam, Andy and I went to the movies. Andy told me they wanted to see Inglorious Basterds and there was a theater showing it in English. We walked up to the theater by Piazza del Popolo and bought our tickets. In this movie theater the seats ard assigned and very comfortable. The chairs are velvet colored and have foot rests that bring your knees up at just the right angle. (We've been talking about chairs in design class for two weeks and i'm a little bit stuck on it.) So the movie was not dubbed in italian which is what the signs mean when they say an american movie is in english. However 2/3 of the movie are spoken in french and german as a directorial choice. So very little was in english and the subtitles were all in Italian! If I thought I couldn't speak Italian, I definately can't speak German so really the Italian subtitles were what kept me understanding the movie. That and some of the best scenes were with Brad Pitt who only speaks English (well, and some Italian, lol) Anyway it was a really interesting way to experience the movie. Half the characters had language barriers in the film and there was an added dimension for us as audience memebers not being able to understand everything. I also noticed the camera shots and visuals a lot more because I was observing everything I could to figure out what was going on.
After the movie we went to the Trevi fountain and threw in coins to return to Rome. Then we went for gelato and walked the catch the night bus home. A very fun and unique experience.

dropping some things, picking other things up

I've put myself in the situation here of having to back track a little. Its been about two weeks, I think, since my last post and a lot has happened (I'm also adding lots of pictures to my facebook!). The big events have been a trip to Spoleto with Maggie, Christine and Michelle; an even bigger trip to Venice with Maggie, Christine, Michelle, Amanda, Darrian and Rachel; a night at the opera and general roman living.
While most of my pictures come from my trips outside of Rome, most of my experiences thus far have really been flavored by my life in Rome so I'd like to start by talking a little about that and then I'll tell you about the trips. My Italian is coming along slowly. I know about 100 words and most of them either have to do with food or public transportation. Most of my interaction with Italian speakers is at the grocery store or on the bus or while buying a bus ticket. Amanda and I went to buy monthly bus passes yesterday and I asked the man at the tabacchi (a store that sells bus tickets, magazines, cigarettes, lotto tickets etc.) something like "Vorrei un bigetto di autobus per un mez, perfavore," which roughly translates to "I would like a ticket for the bus for a month, please" though I think a few of those words may have been just Spanish words that I threw in there. He looked confused but then said "I understand" and I got my ticket. Success!
The day before we were out of matches for our stove (its gas and you have to light it by hand) and so I stopped at the tabbachi on the way home from class. I didn't know the word for matches so I drew a picture. When I got to the store and the cashier asked me what I would like, the answer came out in Spanish and English so I just showed him my picture of a flaming match. He said, "I like your picture" and showed me two different boxes to choose from. I am trying hard to use my Italian but you see I have been successful thus far also because of efforts by others to also speak English.
Now about our trips. Two weeks ago I organized a trip to Spoleto in Umbria. It is a medieval town which has in the last 40 or so years become a big center for the arts including theatre, music, opera and modern art. My favorite parts of the trip were seeing the outsides of the theatres (they were closed during the day), visiting the modern art museum (where I learned about a native Spoletian (?) sculptor named Leoncillo Leonardi, who worked in ceramics as one of his mediums!) and walking across the giant bridge made out of an old roman aqueduct. The bridge was epically proportioned and I savored the stone and scale and views as I have a tendency to do. The pictures from the trip of the bridge are especially cool.
Last weekend we went to Venice and it is another town that agrees with me. It is so peacefully quiet there without the cars and trucks. Rome is almost its opposite, though homey in its own way. The water smells lovely and the "bus" is a water bus which we took up and down the grand canal. Michelle, Christine, Rachel and I split off into a little group during the days and went to the Palazzo Ducale, St. Mark's square, the Peggy Guggenheim modern art museum, a yummy cafe, the Accademia, the Gran Teatro La Fenice and the Ca'Pesaro modern art museum. I just bathed in art for two days. I sketched and wandered in the museums with my friends. Rachel and I went for a self tour of La Fenice, which is a beautiful old opera house and they were doing a sound check while we were inside. I kept watching all the technichians, star struck by anyone in blacks. It was a treat. We even managed to do Venice on a budget with our flat rate public transportation tickets, camping hostel outside the city and off the beaten track choices for coffee, dinner and gelato. Dinner the first night was a recommendation from one of my travel books. We all got seafood and spagetti dishes for 12 euro or less and white wine. Wine and coffee in Italy are cheaper than soda. I am becoming spoiled. I had cuttlefish in black ink sauce, a venetian specialty. With the sauce being black, I wasn't sure what too expect but it was very good with a mild seafood taste. After dinner we went to a gelateria called Alaska which was so good we went back again the next day. They had so many flavors including, grape, ginger, watermelon, hazelnut, chocolate, green tea, kiwi, cream and the list goes on. Far better and far less expensive than the gelato in St. Mark's square.
Michelle, Christine, Rachel and I also went to a great cafe on Saturday morning. The cappucini and panini (pluralized words in italian have an i at the end) were really good. The panini had olive bread! I also admired the mirror in the restroom which was made out of white and blue glass. I asked the bartnder in my broken italian where it came from and he said it had been there for the 20 years he had owned the place. He started talking to us about visiting Venice and where we were studying. Over all we just had a very pleasant and fairly unrushed trip considering all the things we did in just two days. I could go there and think about art and drink cappuncino for weeks more!
Back in Rome I also went to the opera for class at the Parco della Opera, sala Santa Cecilia (the patron saint of music). We saw Il viaggio a Reims, written by Rossini for the corronation of Charles X and lost until the late 1970s. I read up about the show before we went which was good because there were no subtitles. It was a concert version but partially staged and with some fantastic performers. I'm really glad I've been able to go do and see the things that were my reasoning for chosing Rome for study abroad. At the same time I miss you all and the littlest things remind me of my friends and family from home. Thanks for sticking with me for this whole post, pictures are being uploaded next!

On the train, back in time

Saturday Maggie and I caught an early train from Roma to Assisi. When I say caught I mean we ran for it. We had boarded the train way down the platform and realized we did not know how to validate our tickets. A nice woman told us we must do it on the platform. Two minutes before our train is about to leave we book it to the end of the platform and back just in time. A two hour train ride takes us out through Umbria (with a brief stop at the Spoleto station! don't worry I'll be back) and to the station at Assisi where we must take a bus up the mountain to the town. This blog post really has a part two on my facebook page where you can take a look at the accompanying photo album, the story is not complete without it. What a beautiful surprise Assisi is. I can truly say Assisi is one of my favorite places on earth. The views are magnificent, the Basilica of Saint Francis is astounding and the town is a maze of streets winding up to the fortress Rocca Maggiore upon the hill. Maggie and I went without a map wandering through the streets of the city, walking up and down stairs, following arrows, not following arrows, stopping to sit or play or read or listen to music. Our first stop was the Basilica di S. Francesco. The building has an upper level, lower level and crypt where St. Francis lies buried. The upper and lower levels are covered floor to ceiling with the most marvelous frescos depicting the old and new testaments. These are thought to be the work of Giotto. Sadly no photography is allowed inside but I highly recommend a google image search if you have the time because it is truely the most briliant, vibrant and theatrical church I have ever been in. The crypt is something like what I imagine the last scene in Romeo and Juliet to look like. After the church we began to wander the town stopping at a swingset and picnic table with a great view. We stopped for lunch at a restaurant with a patio over looking the valley and vegetables growing around the tables. I had a fantastic barbeque lamb dish and Maggie raved about the pepper to sauce ratio in her liguini in salmon cream sauce. We shared the house red wine which was light and delicious. After lunch we had gelato by a fountain with lions on it in the main piazza. Best pistacio gelato period. More wandering led us to the Basilica di S. Rufino which has plexiglass over part of the chapel floor so that the crypt underneath is visible. We continued to wind our way up the mountain the the Rocca Maggiore, a fortress which for me was like being allowed to roam a many hundred year old castle. The views from the top are magical. We had to laugh because the map to the Rocca Maggiore boasted an Enchanted Garden which was, I guess, not in bloom this time of year. A leisurly stroll back down the mountain lead us once again to the swing set where we chilled out for a while and then to the Basilica of St. Francis where we loitered to watch the carpenters and electricians setting up an outdoor stage (me) and the people who brought their dogs (Maggie). By sunset we were headed back down the hill to the train station where we stopped at McDonalds for dinner (don't judge). Assisi McDonald's is much like the town, middle ages themed, look at the pictures. Also they have waffle fries which are too cool. Then we road the train back to Roma, watching The Office and listening to This American Life.
If you have made it this far through the blogpost thank you for humoring me. Perhaps a play by play was too much. However it was my first favorite day in Italy and a place I hope to return to over my life; I hope to bring some of you with me.

The city is your textbook

My social circle is expanding. Today was the first day of classes. When I made it to school in the morning there were actually people I have met to chat with so school is all beginning to feel a little more familiar. I also made some new friends in my first art history class who like talking about...art history. It makes me so happy, art was my reason for coming here and I was beginning to think I was only going to meet business and communication majors surprisingly. I actually had a conversation today where we gushed over both Monet's Garden and the Pieta. The art history class was Roman Imperial Art and Architecture. The professor is intimidating in the kind of way that makes you want to be at the top of the class. He assured us the class would be challenging and my first thought was Sweet! This is mostly because he seems to really know his stuff and we will be spending the majority of the semester out in Rome understanding the layout of the ancient city. He explained that we have no textbook because "the city is our textbook" and we are going to have to "learn to take notes while walking". He explained that we can see the art anytime we want because it is available to us 24 hours day. For those of you unfamiliar he is refering to structures like the Roman Forum and Trajan's Column. Sweet.
The second class I had was Masterpieces of Italian Opera. It was one of those experiences akin to watching the olympics. You see the athletes exceling and the excitment of the event and think: I wanna do that! I'm not past my prime to be an olympic swimmer. Wether this is realistic or not, I left that class saying I wanna be an opera singer! Do you think i've missed that boat yet? Anyway lots of opera-going in store and just listening to all different types of music the way one eats a box of Godiva Truffles, slowly while trying to guess exactly which flavor each is.
My final class was Beginning Italian. For those of you who don't know my mother has taught English as a Second Language to adults for all of my life and I have been to her class many times over the years. Today was the strangest feeling of being the foreigner, the one who is just beginigng to understand. I understood why we did all the repetitive exercises and only attemped the same 10 phrases over and over again for an hour. I still haven't mastered where are you from in Italian (Che natzionalita sei?...It came out of my mouth in all that mispelledness). I can't wait to take my classroom italian out to the streets.
Today was also the day to sign up for school trips. Thanks to Amanda I made it into the trip to Pompei in October. I'm going to spend the rest of the evening doing some reading about other side trips like Assisi, Spoleto and Florence. I'm starting small but aiming to get to Paris!

Six hours ahead...

So I do have internet in my apartment here but I just don't keep running into any of you online and I think it may be the time difference. Right now here it is 11:30ish and for yall back home it is only 5:30. With a blog I guess I can write at you even if you aren't online so thats what i'm doing cause I miss you and because Monica and Andrea asked so many times.
Roma e bella! That may be Rome is beautiful or Rome and beautiful...I am learning my Italian on the streets of Rome and not in a proper classroom yet. Classes start next week and I am so excited to learn things. I have been speaking more Spanish than I do in the US because it sounds similar and as a result my friend Amanda and I have been confused for Spaniards more than once.
My apartment is lovely and around the corner from a small cafe that we visit daily. Cappucino freddo and coronetti are one of my new favorite things. That is iced cappucino and pastries.
We have also discovered in our neighborhood a daily food market. Today we bought fresh lettuce, carrots, green beans, tomatoes, mozzarella and basil and made a lovely suce for our fresh pasta that we also got from a shop in the hood.
In DC we've been known to wander and generally we end up at spring valley or the zoo. Today in my wanderings I happened upon the Trevi fountain by accident. Way cool. Trying to figure out the best time of day to go there when there are fewer tourists. Last night we strolled through trastevere and made our way to Piazza Venezia and the Colosseum. (see facebook for photos) Even with our jetlag we are trying to get out into the city but we do come home exhausted from the heat and walking.
Buona notte till I hear from you all!