Playing Catch Up

So I realized that I need to talk about so many things that have happened. This is a list of the hightlights of my Italian/Euro aventures.

1) Subiaco and Fumone
2) The Antiwar protest
3) Midterms
4) Perugia and Assisi
5) Going to Switzerland

So I guess I better get started becaus that is one long list that I am going to have to finish.

1) Subiaco and Fumone

A couple of weeks ago I went with my school to Fumone and Subiaco. Subiaco was amazing! It name Subiaco comes from the "under the lake" in Italian. There we visited the monastery of St. Benedict. It was crazy! There was actually snow when we got there! It had snowed the night before and we were up in the mountains so it was just gorgeous! I have so many pictrues whcih I cannot update right know because I am not writing this post from my own computer. When we got there is was that perfect time when the snow is just starting to melt so you can hear the sounds of trickling water. It was so beautiful.

We entered to upper church of the monastery and it was covered with frescoes of the life of St. Benedict. There were also cosmotesque marble designs on the altar which was cool because we had studied about that in my medieval class. Also the candle stick resembled the candle stick in Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome. It was also done by the same artisan family! (hehe wow... WAY nerdy moment!)

The lower church led to the actual cave that St. Benedict stayed in for many yeas when he moved away from teh city to leave behind his "life of sin." (That is just really intense. I don't even like camping. hehe I would never ever live in a CAVE!) The monastery was really awesome because it is built into the cliff so part of the wall is the actual cave. The cloister there was really cool too. I learned something new. The cloister actually symbolizes the garden of Eden. Also the columns in a cloister represent different things. One column stand for humanity and two columns stand for divinity. When the two are intertwined together it is symbolizes the mixture of the two things. This is also supposed to represent Christ because he came to us in human form even though he is God. Okay... so now that i have totally bored everyone to death... I shall move on to other things...

Down the hill from the monastery is another monastery called Santa Scolastica. This one was pretty cool. The most interesting part of thsi church was teh mixture of the many different types of architecure.In one room there were three different types: Medieval, Romanesque, and Gothic. It was crazy!

After that went to Fumone. This place was seriously a a studio set. I really do not think it was actually a town. It was so cute and medieval that I did not know what to do with myself. the population had to be only like 1000 something. It was so small. We ate lunch in a medieval tavern. The lunch was included in the trip and itw as THE BIGGEST MEAL EVER: It was amzing. the food just kept on coming. I got major food coma nd Nabihah got heartburn because she had never eaten that much before in her life. hehe. Lunch was really fun because we just sat around and laughed and ate. At the end they brought us cookies called "ciambellas" and a shot of espresso.

After the meal we had about 30 min to explore. That was really cool and i went picture crazy as usual. Seriously though... I cannot see how someone would not go crazy. Everything in the little town was so amazing. That place is the type of town that I think of when I think of small Italian Il Postino-esque towns. There were small alley ways with stairs and small Italian women dressed in all black walking down the road holding a bucket of water.

One thing that I have fallen in love here are the doors. I know that sounds weird but door like these simply do not exist in California. They are just so old and weathered to the point where you really feel as if you have gone back in time. Every door looks like it has a story that it could tell. okay... maybe the sounds weird, but it is totally true.

Ater the break we went to a castle. This was the weirdest part of the day...of course that meant that it was Nabihah's favorite. (She is sitting right next to me hehe.) First off... Our tour guide was a bit off. We would enter a room and say, "In this room, you can find many old documents that are realy not important. I don't know what they are here." She was not sure who built the castle, but there are remants of ancient Roman busts which means that it was probably built or inhabited around that time. The castle was also said thebe haunted. (This is where is gets scary.) The place is haunted by a woman because she son was killed by his 7 sisters. The sisters slowly poisoned the little boy until he died becaus ethey wanted the estate to go to them. There are many portraits of the woman and she is aways depicted as wearing black and having a sad expression on her face. Weirder still... In the same room as the documents that don't mean anything there is a wax figure of the boy. He is shown sleeping and wearing the actual clothes that he had when he was 2. So now it gets creepy... his bones are still inside of the wax figure!!!! In the same "castle of fun" there was a well that the lord of the house would use to throw women down who were not virgins. Also there was a kitchen that had a slanted floor so that when they killed an animal the blood could drain to the other side of the room. It was a pretty interesting day.

So after the tour of the weird castle we got back on the bus and headed for home. The ride back was pretty eventful because it was full of fun stories and jokes. It was a really nice daytrip.

So wow... that was only one event and I have four more to go... uhmmm I think I am going to wait and do one of these later on. Ciao for now!

Racist Rita

Rita is my cute Italian Language professor who (like many Italians) is not sensitive to ethnic diversity. Since most people in Rome are Italian, any Asian who looks "Asian" (meaning the main categories of "Asian" such as Chinese and Japanese and not Indian, like myself hehe) is automatically either lumped into the category of Giaponese or Cinese. They do not think that someone can be from Korea or Cambodia. It is as if they do not know that these other countries exist. I have talked to a lot of my Chinese friends here who are tired of being pointed at and called Giaponese. It seems as is Italians really have no how to handle diversity here. One girl who is "Asian" looking in the program was asked by a taxi driver "How can you be American when you are like this (He pulls the sides of his eyes back to create slanted eyes.)?" The girl was shocked and told her friend that she has not run into such ignorance since first grade.

I know that they do not mean to be offensive, but it is very odd coming from California. I understand this concept a society not being PC (According to US standards of PC-ness) because even in the Philippines people say "Negro" for a person of African descent/origin. They are simply not used to it. But after saying this I ask myself, "Wait! Rome is one of the hottest tourist spots in the world and it has been for years (centuries even)! It has been the site for pilgrimages and has housed many people from all over the world. Don't you think they would be more sensitive to other cultures?" I guess since most of these people are tourists and many other cultures do not take up permanent residence in Rome, that is why attitudes toward different cultures have not evolved into a PC society.

Back to Rita... Rita loves to draw pictures on the board. These pictures are usually cute drawings that correspond with a verb or noun we are learning. The other day she drew a picture of what she would do to someone who makes a grammatical mistake on the test. She drew a picture of a person being bonked on the head by a baseball bat which another drawing was holding. (She is obviously the one holding the baseball bat and we, the students, are the ones being bonked on the head.) This picture was funny and the whole class laughed. We moved on to going through our exercises and the Yui, a girl in my class who is Japanese, made a mistake in the grammar that she used to answer the question. Rita grimaced and modified the "bonked" individual to one that had slanted eyes and a ponytail. Charlene, my friend who is Chinese, said "Oh! She went there!" The class laughed at the drawings modification, but I think it might have been out of shock and nervousness because we are not used to seeing a PROFESSOR do something like that IN CLASS! Then Chris came in late to class. Chris is also "Asian" looking. She then modified the drawing a second time. She erased the ponytail and added a hood and glasses, but left the slanted eyes.

Don't think that after reading this that I am offended at all at any of the situations. I'm actually not and I laugh whenever I encounter anything that most would think as being "racist." I realize that here they do not have the PC sensitivity engrained into their way of life as we do in the US. It is just a bit shocking. I forget that I am totally perceived as "different" here and I'm actually perceived as different from the stereotype that they have of Californians. It is just one of the cultural differences that we have to deal with in Rome. So in conclusion I believe that Romans are not racist, they just do not know any better.

My Classes

I know i have not made an update in a really long time. It appears that the internet is a bit better today so I think a post with just text will be okay. I will add picture later...promise.
I need to tell everyone about my classes and how much I love them. I am taking three art history classes: Rome and the Medieval world, Renaissance art in Rome, and Baroque art.

Medieval
My teacher is straight out of Harry Potter. Actually i can say that about a lot of art history teachers i have had. They are all very... i don't know how to describe it. They are just from a differentw orld... the wizard world I think. She wears very thick glasses so that when she is looking at you her eyes do not appear to ACTUALLY be looking at you. Her hair is very frizzy and if she were wearing a dark purple cloak and pointed hat she could be friends with Albus. hehe

I was most excited about taking this class because I had taken a class entitled Medieval Monasteries (which Tessa called Medieval Times) the quarter before coming. The class is okay... I thought it would have been better. Her lectures are not amazing, but the site visits are GREAT!!! I love it. We visit so many amazing churches: St. Paul outside the Wall, St. John the Lateran, the Sancta Sanctorium, Santa Maria Nova, Santa Maria Maggiore, and many others that I cannot really remember. It is just wonderful to have class inside the most beautiful churches that I have EVER seen! The cloisters are also just gorgeous with the most ornate columns that have mosaics.

I have a midterm in this class tomorrow... sigh. That is why I am distracting myself by writing in my blog. hehe I'm such a good student. I really need to study, but I still have two more classes to talk about, so on to the next one.

Renaissance
My teacher for this class is the cutest little leprechaun I have ever seen. He too could be straight out of HP. He is just a bit taller than I am. I have this urge to bring a green hat to class and ask him to wear it and do a little jig! He is my favorite art history professor that i have ever had. Everything he says is profound. i have never meet a person who is so passionate about his field. EVERYONE in the class wants to just take him home because he is so amazing. He really inspires the students to learn because he is so excited about what he is teaching. I fortunately have him for Barouqe as well. His class is difficult because there is a lot of work and reading, but he makes what we are learning so seem so significant for our well being that I am just so driven to learn everything I can about Renaissance and Baroque art!
In this class we visit the coolest churches and the readings on Michelangelo are so interesting. The site visits are cool too because we visit places that I walked past everyday for school. Going on site visits really makes me feel part of Rome because I know the history behind it. I just had the midterm in this class and I think I did pretty well because I studied so much for it. It is so fun because he just makes me want to learn. Gosh... I sound like such a nerd!

Baroque
I did not think I would like this class because I do not have a true love for baroque art, but this one is actually my favorite. Seriously, going on site visits with this class is amazing because Rome is a baroque city. Most of the things in Rome had been redone in the baroque era so a lot of what stands today is baroque. We have visited many famous churches and sites such as the Campidoglio, Il Gesu, Santa Maria Sopra Minerva etc. We have also seen a lot of Caravaggio paintings. The most recent site visit was to the Villa Borghese museum where we focused on Bernini's sculptures. This site viste was seriously moving. I know i sound strange right now, but really... Words cannot describe these sculptures. My favorites were "Pluto and Persephone" and "Apollo and Daphne." It was a total spiritual moment when my professor read Ovid's Metamorphoses about the story of Apollo and Daphne as we were looking at the sculpture. Wow... I sound like a snob (like i could be friends with Fraiser).

I seriously love my classes and I am totally in love with this city. I am seeing things in person that I have only seen on late night documentaries on KCET and in slides in my art history classes. My classes really make me realize that people back then had so much more depth as a society. Everyone would have known the story of Apollo and Daphne and would have read Ovid, Pliny the Elder, and Vergil. They would have also been able to recognize the neoplatonic symbolism in the Chigi chapel in Santa Maria del Popolo.

I think I am learning more here that I have ever learned in my whole entire academic career because the history that I am learning is so relevant here. I am able to walk down the street and recognize places/sites/ elements that I am studying. Every time I see a chruch that I have entered, my mind thinks about all of the historical facts I know about that place. studying art history here is awonderful way to totally feel connected to Rome.

Okay.... so now I must study.