Things You Don't See Every Day

Well, there are certainly many things here in Italy that you really don't see everyday.  Some really great things in fact.  For example, you walk to a window in a museum, and there's beautiful little view of Rome out the window.  Or you're walking in the country, and there's the cutest little pig roaming around with shaggy dogs and purring kitties.  And the pig just oinks and oinks, hoping you have food.  Or when the Italians offer you a wonderful breakfast full of sugar, which resembles an Elephant Ear from a carnival.  But no, they just ask you to please have some more "pizza".  

I keep finding these great little things here in Italy that just don't seem to be real.  I look up at the sky and see these beautiful clear brilliant blue skies and just laugh.  I always thought those Italian Renaissance painters over-exaggerated those brilliant blues.  But in fact, they are real. 

Well, we have been on a lot of adventures lately.  We've been on a nature walk in Abruzzo.  We've roamed the beautiful little town of Orvieto.  And we've tasted wine and olive oil and stuffed ourselves with a huge multi-course meal in Umbria.  And of course, we've been visiting all the best museums here in Rome:  the Capitoline and the Borghese Gallery.  We saw some gorgeous Caravaggios and Titians, Raphael, Bernini sculptures, etc.  The art amazes me.  We also visited a wonderful Bellini show.  

With all these exciting things comes even more - we're going to Florence and Sienna this Thursday! 

Of course, with all this traveling around, we're bound to get bored.  So what do we art students do?  That's right.  We make value scales.  What can I say, Rome brings out the best in us. :)

Umbria~!!

Are you guys sick of all the Umbria blogs yet? Well too bad, it was such a good time for all of us.

-There were cats and dogs EVERYWHERE and even a pig, just roming around freely. Here is my sister holding one of the cats. XD

Umbria and Zoo!

Hey guys,

I figured I'd upload a few more pictures before heading out to Florence and Germany (I'm super excited about this, because I'll be able to see my friend from Venice and then head up to Munich/Dachau for further research). I'm concerned about going by myself, but I figure if I keep a cool head and keep my eyes peeled I should be fine. Seeing the borghese gallery was really amazing too, I did about.. 7 sketches of the sculpture and painting work there too. Also, the one picture of Anita, Rachel, Renee is really funny because we were coming back from somewhere and the entire square of San pietro was practically covered in cars. I was like 'What the heck, since when did this become a parking lot?' and apparently everyone else had the same idea as well.

Got more ideas for my Illustration project, I'll hopefully get to taking some photographs of my actual work soon. I'll write more when I come back from Florence/Munich. Ciao,

-J

Umbria Trip!

So Friday all of the roomies; except Amanda, all got up early to head to LDM. There we had to wait an hour before we could leave, and we were already there early which kinda sucks. Turned out that all public transportation had gone on strike! Thankfully, we had gotten on the bus before the strike started. We had a nice tour bus waiting to take us to Umbria!

Once we arrived in the Umbria region, we went to an Olive Oil house, we were able to watch a machine make the wonderful stuff and best of all, we were able to get free samples of the freshly pressed olive oil on some nice toasted bread! Very delicious! Everyone pitched in some money andwe bought a group thing of fresh olive oil and then everyone went and bought some of there own! They actually sale the olive oil to the USA but we got it for a price that was WAY cheaper than you would think.

After that adventure, we went to this lovely little house in the Assisi. It was wonderful, the first thing we noticed when we came out of the bus was that there were animals there! These cute little doggies came running up to us and it was amazing! Going down the slope to the enterance of the place there were more animals! A cute lil piggy and several more dogs and cats as well! It was truly heaven for us animal lovers. The fun didn't stop there though, when we sat down for our lunch, we were given so much food! and all it was amazing!

Roamin Holiday~~~~

*disclaimer to my parents who i know are reading this: don't flip out! or send me emails concerning my wanderings throughout Rome after reading this post in its entirety!!*

so....everyone went on the Umbria trip today...except me! so, i was going to take my chance, and make this a productive day, and sit in Campo d' Fiore with my D50 during the market hours and "people watch". however, it decided that it wanted to rain today. i was also going to go to the Pantheon, or the Spanish Steps, and find an artsore. however, due to the rain, no go. also, i wanted to nip into some shops to find some cheap, collage material. instead, i start a little adventure from the LdM, and head in the general direction of Rione Monte (the Three Hills) and somehow get lost from the street where i wanted to be. but i could still see the Wedding Cake (the Capitoline Hill), so i figured that i wasn't too out of range from my familiarities. so i keep on walking, and end up at a church that we visited on like our 2nd day here in Rome. so, i'm like..."oh goodie! i sort of think i know where i'm at!" so i keep walking in the direction that i was heading, go through a nice little park, then i just end up totally lost! so i just start walking, and it starts raining (it hadn't rained up to this point yet, when i mentioned earlier in the post about the rain, it had just been forecasted at that point), and raining pretty hard too. so i get out my map, and i just totally can't figure out where the hell i'm at, so, once again, i just start walking! after walking through some interesting parts, where grafiti had decorated some of the buildings (don't worry, i didn't go through any shady, or creepy spots or alleyways!) i was starting to get worried that i was really lost, and plus, i didn't have a watch on, and my pants and shoes were just drenched from all the rain and puddles, thankfully, i at least did have an umbrella with me! but all of the sudden, i pop out into this one section, and i'm at the Lateran! and, if it weren't for the fact that Kim, our Italian language teacher had just brought us to that area the other day for class, i wouldn't have had the faintest idea of where i was at! but, i'm sure that from there i probably could've gotten home! so i quickly and cautiously hopped on the underground to go to San Pietro (oh yea, the "metro lines" aka public transportation here supposedly on strike today, but luckily for me, the underground was still running!) and got back safely home! i was sooo happy to see the top of San Pietro! and when i got back, it was only noon! so i had been walking for only about 3 hrs or so! overall, i had a very nice walk!

but, let's backtrack a little now. last week, the LdM took those of us who signed up on a "into the wild" trip,where we went to this wildlife reserve and practically hiked halfway up a mountain! but, here are some pictures! they probably would've been up sometime last week, however, i accidentally left my small camera on the bus on the way back! and i (very, very, very fortuneately) just got it back today!!!!

At the beginning of the trip, Rachael had found this orange on the bus! we don't know where it came from, but it was just randomly there! so she picked it up, and carried it with her the whole time. she just looks very triumphant and proud of herself for finding this thing!

Aww...Rachael just loves that orange!!!

letting off some steam!

Okay some things that are still frustraiting about Italy.
Why are they sooo so picky about change, and why is it so hard for them to break bigger bills??
Also same about the toilets, there is always an evil stare given when you ask if you can use their toilet. UGH

okay enough venting, I'll post some actual pictures next time.

~Rachel

Update

Hey guys,

I haven't updated in a while due to us running around a lot and me not having ample enough time on the computer to think about blogging. Anyway, everyone is pretty much doing the 'in the wild' thing and are likely to update about that soon. Since I'm sitting here at home however, I think I'll update something before they do, haha. We've seen a multitude of different squares we haven't been too thanks to our student 'adventuring' advisor, Davide- and on tuesday we went and saw Orvieto. It was a nice little medieval town and apparently had the very 'gothic' styled church that inspired Michaelangelo for his paintings. I'm sure I didn't see in the same light as he did, but I got some inspiration while sitting infront of it and painting.

I've been doing well cooking for myself, I love going tot he fresh markets and getting things not only extremly fresh, but also very cheap. The top image is of me making up some breaded salmon and veggies on a whim, it came out pretty good. I think I also experienced the best canoli's of my life yesterday at a place called ciuri ciuri (They also had amazing gelato as well). Aside from food and traveling around here, I hope to get to a travel agent so I can organize my trip to Germany (I'll probably be going alone, but I have to do it or Mr.Tardino will shun me until the end of time >_<). That's pretty much it for now.

Ciao~

-J

Ostia Antica Inspiration~!

When we had journeyed up to Ostia Antica a couple weeks ago, I had ventured off on my own fairly early in the excursion. As I was wandering around, and trying to find everyone else, I stumbled upon this half-broken pillar-block of some sort, and noticed that it had carvings close to the base of it. I got closer to observe the carvings, and circled around it, only to find that on one side of it it had these gorgeously carved horses pulling a chariot. It was really suprising to find this thing, because it was pretty much in the middle of a whole bunch of rubble, and there were hardly any carvings elswhere in the whole area. So I sat down in the dirt, and started to draw these horses. They were just amazingly graceful and powerful carvings. It truly hit me!

As I was trying to come up with subject matter for my miniature project, my mind drifted back to these horses, and I took out my sketch and started drawing the horse in the front. As of late, I've been heavily inspired by heavy design elements, and, I've always had a liking to creepy/morbid things. So, combine with what i saw at Ostia Antica, heavy design, and morbid stuff, and you have this!

Goodbye Stephano!~

This is a really quick blog, but I would like to give a quick shout-out to Stephano. It was his last day in Rome yesterday. We had a really nice Italian-style dinner that lasted a loooong time (which is normal for Italians) but I didn't mind savoring my food. The food was absolutely divine!!!

The food not only tasted good, it looked good as well. I wish I brought my camera! I did however screw up really badly by spilling red wine all over the lovely white tablecloths. I don't think the waiters cared too much, either that or they just didn't notice (but it was kinda hard to miss) Ugh why am I soo dumb?

Anyway, goodbye Stephano~!! You shall be missed!~

St. Peter's dome/ Vatican

Okay so you probably heard a little about the trip to the top of St.Peter's Dome from Katie's blog, but I'm going to rant a bit about it anyway... heheh (This happened on the 30th by the way)

Anyway the view was quite nice, and worth the horrendous/ never ending stairway trip up. The only thing I was disappointed in was the fact that when we got to the point where we could look down into the church, there was a big grid-like fence in our way from fully viewing the beauty of the church below.

Needless to say I did enjoy seeing the fantastic mosaics up close. If I'm not mistaken, I think all of the "paintings" in St.Peter's are all mosaics. It was very hard to tell sometimes they were just so detailed.

And when we finally got to the top everything looked so awesome. And it was a beautiful day~! We could even pick out where our apartments where. Stephano is surprisingly afraid of heights though, it took him a while to get use to the height and come over to the edge.

Can you believe that this place is only a two minute walk to where we are staying? I can come here whenever I want- Ahh so cool~ XD