That means hi everyone lol :) I'm probably going to only blog once a week, just when something exciting happens, haha. Life has started to fall into a semi-normal schedule, although I don't consider living in Italy "normal". I go to classes 3 times a week, and then the other days I'm doing homework (yes despite all my travel pictures I do have homework) or just walking around the city. Lately it has been cold and rainy a bit, but today it is gorgeous!
A little about my classes, in case you didn't know, I'm only taking 4 and we only have each class 1 time a week for 2hrs and 30 minutes. So it's very different from American schools, going to the same classes multiple times a week. I also have no class on Wednesday or Friday, so those make excellent exploring or homework days. But mainly homework ;) ceramics is fun, I just finished my first piece. It's a big water bottle made out of "gaelestro" (not sure the spelling). Now I have to find another object to make into clay. Painting is fun, but I'm having trouble rendering what I want with water colors. You have to let each layer dry before proceeding, which is hard because I'm used to dry media that you can just go go go on and not stop till you're done. So that will take some getting used to. Renaissance architecture is super fun, we spend half the class in lecture inside a classroom, then the other half inside the building that we just discussed. I'm a nerd so I'm certainly enjoying that class. This city is so interesting, I can't get enough. And lastly is handbag construction, which is also fun. I'm thankful for my background in fashion and art, because this class is both parts which makes it easier for me. We learned how to stitch seams in leather last class and Thursday we will begin making our first bag. So that's pretty cool :) I like my classes! But I also really enjoy traveling on the weekends.
Traveling is a very big part of study abroad, which I'm just starting to understand. You kind of need to get out of the city you are in to experience more of what the world has to offer. So with that mindset, yesterday I booked a weekend trip to the French Riviera! Kind of like my most recent day trip to Assisi (I'll get to that in a second), I booked it not knowing anybody going. It worked out in my favor last week, and I'm praying that it works out for me again that either I'll know someone or make friends. But if not, I'll still be in the French Riviera! If nothing else I'll know the language lol. I'm super excited about it. I think I have a place to go every single weekend, which is wonderful! I didn't think I would get to go to so many places! Some are for school and then others are just trips that we booked either through our program or through a student travel agency. I'm very happy to get to experience all this! I feel like this semester is going to start going by really fast...
Okay now to what my main post was supposed to be about, I went to Assisi this past Saturday! It was beautiful. So as I said, I went to the bus stop at 7:30am expecting to not know anybody, but it turns out I knew 2 girls that are friends with my roommate, and a 3rd girl is in my architecture class. Total number of people on the tour was 7 so I knew a large portion of our tour, haha. We took a "private bus" there, and by private bus I mean a large version of a minivan, and me being the 7th person I had to sit sandwiched between two italian men: our bus driver and our translator/ guide who is also a professor at our school. So that was a fun bus ride, trying to decipher their conversations. It was fast, but I know for a solid hour they talked about food.
Assisi is located on the side of a mountain, but some of it is down in the valley also. The part we saw was up on the mountain. Assisi is in the region of Umbria, like Florence is in the region of Toscana or Tuscany. Each region is known for different foods and things. It is an ADORABLE little town with tiny shops and cobblestone streets. It's so old, a lot of buildings date back to medieval times. You can still see ruins of old medieval stone structures/ archways in the buildings, they've just updated the inside but kept the outside historic. There's places where you can still see Roman walls built by, yes you guessed it, the Romans. I just thought that was the coolest thing ever. I bought a tiny print in a printing studio, and her prints were gorgeous. I unfortunately didn't know how to say "are these metal etchings or woodcuts?" Or "did you make your own ink?" So I just said hi and thank you instead. Sigh language barriers are annoying sometimes. Also, random, but it was really busy in the main square because there were 3 weddings going on that day.
We get there and we meet up with a local tour guide who gave us a private tour for our "pilgrimage" essentially. People in the Middle Ages would take this trek up the mountain to visit the resting places of St Francis and St Clare, and visit other churches with holy relics and sacred things inside. It was pretty cool learning about caltholicism, christianity, art history, architecture and regular history. This lady knew everything, she was a wonderful tour guide.
Just for giggles I'm including some of the text that was in my itinerary because it had some historical information in it. So this'll be a tiny history lesson, hope you don't get bored. We technically did this pilgrimage backwards, because the medieval people would have began in the valley where they lived, and then walk up the hill. But it was easier to drive to the top and then walk down. So our first stop was San Rufino. This cathedral was so pretty and it's dedicated to Saint Rufinus. His remains are still there, and in this church Saint Francis, later Saint Clare and many of their original disciples were baptised. It was upon hearing Francis' preaching in this church in 1209 that Clare became deeply touched by his message and realized her calling. (I couldn't remember all of that from the tour so, thanks google!)
Santa Chiara or Saint Clare was our second stop. It was a smaller basilica and less decorated than the first, but still beautiful. She was a follower of st Francis, but because she was a woman she could not be a part of the monastery, so she created her own convent. Like Francis she was born wealthy, but gave it all up to live in absolute poverty and live out her faith life alongside other destitute people. She and the others were called the "poor Claire's" which people still talk about today because to my knowledge, it's still around. It is dedicated to and contains the remains of her and also St Agnes. What was interesting is down in the crypt, her bones are encased in a life size, realistically painted statue of a prostrate woman sleeping with a flower in her hands. So it was kind of scary at first to walk down the stairs and at the end of the hall then you see what looks like body... Lol. But once you got closer the shrine was beautiful. Also, I took pictures of all of the outsides of the churches. Of course. Also housed here was the relic that St Francis heard Jesus's voice speak to him and call him to rebuild his church, which started his life of ministry.
Before lunch we also did S. Francis's Basilica. Which is the mother church of the Roman Catholic order of Friars minor, commonly known as the Franciscan order, in Assisi, the birthplace of St Francis. Down in the valley is where he was born. There is a piazza around the church where he renounced his father and took his vows of poverty very publically- by taking off his clothes and giving the last object that tied him to his family back to the father. They never got along after that apparently. The church is also the burial place of st Francis and the basilica is one of the most important places of christian pilgrimage in Italy.
Then we had lunch at this really awesome little restaurant that served some specialty of Umbria called Torta. It's like a pita bread only they cook it by putting hot ashes on the top, then cutting off that top part and opening it up to stuff various things in. It was so big and so tasty, I ate it all. Because yolo.
Lastly we visited a little bit away from the mountain part of Assisi another church called Santa Maria Degli Angeli, the place where it is said St. Francis passed away. Theres a little chapel inside the big church which they call La Porziuncola which is one of the churches that Francis restored during his ministry, and that was his inspiration and his model for his followers, and there it is considered the literal birthplace of his order.
Wow I know that was a lot, but hey imagine being told all of this while being inside the buildings! It was overwhelming but very interesting. Also our guide pointed out paintings and frescos that I studied in school, so I was getting art history plus regular history plus some christian history. Basically I was nerding out for 2.5 hours.
So then we went to a little village about 30 minutes away called Torgiano and we visited Cantine Lungarotti, or Lungarotti vineyard, for a wine tasting and tour of their vineyard. We saw all of their machinery and it was fascinating how long it takes to make just one bottle of wine. Then after our tour, which we had to have translated because the owners didn't speak any English, we got to taste 3 of their wines! How italian, right? They were actually pretty good. If someone told me to drink them I wouldn't have gagged which was surprising because most wines I don't like. I felt so classy though learning how to smell it, how to spin it in your hand to see the colors, how to detect "flavor notes", it was all very impressive the whole process of winemaking and wine tasting. So culturally interesting.
So umm sorry for the really long post, but mainly these historical things are for me to remember and look back on once this journey is over. Because I want to remember this amazing time and I don't want to forget the knowledge I've acquired here. It's much faster than writing in a journal you know :)
Well, it's lunchtime here so I think I'll go get uno panino!
Ciao!
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