Art Show and Interlaken
Oh, did I mention that i’m in an art show today? Three of my prints are on display in the SUF student art show today in the painting studio in Piazza Donatello. Ha, whoops. I guess a lot of stuff has been going on and it totally slipped my mind. I had my first art show over the summer and I spent most of the summer slaving away over my two paintings in it; I think the fact that I worked so hard on my pieces was the reason why I was so excited for that show.
For this show, I admit, I’m not that excited. Firstly, I don’t really like printmaking that much. It’s a cool art-form and I’m really glad that I got to learn about and experience it first hand BUT I think it’s a little bit out dated. I don’t like it half as much as painting; there are a lot of variables in printmaking and I always feel like I don’t have total control over how the final image turns out.
My first image is a plexi-glass dry-point of the leaning tower of Pisa, the second is a zinc etch of a lifeguard tower and the Manhattan Beach pier, and my third print (that I finished yesterday) is a zinc etch of a picture of Marilena, Kate, Amelia, and I that I took on Halloween in Barcelona; I like the third one the best. It bothers me that my images aren’t perfect. They def are a good display of the printmaking learning process and you can see through all the pieces that I get more and more used to the technique with more experience. However, I hate that it’s a show about “improvement” rather than “look at how freaking good I am at this!” Ifthatmakessense…?
Anyways, I wasn’t even planning on going but Susana, Marilena, and Laura convinced me that I should (I’m a sucker for other people that are excited about my art). It starts two hours before the bus leaves for Interlaken sooooo I GUESS it won’t hurt to stop by for a second to check it out. Now that I think about it, it’s going to be cool to see what everyone else has been working on all semester long.
My mom called me yesterday evening to tell me that she missed me. :) Usually I’m the one to call people at home cuz I’m the one missing them; it felt good to be the one being missed this time. I MISS YOU TOO MAMA AND I WISH WE COULD HAVE GONE CHRISTMAS SHOPPING TOGETHER!
Bytheway, I’ll be home in two weeks… crazy!
In Italian please?
Dec 6
The weather report for Interlaken this weekend looks crappy: rain and cold on Friday, snow and cold on Saturday, then clouds and cold on Sunday. Meeh, whatever. I’m still really excited because about 60 kids from SUF are going (majority SCUers I assume) and even if there’s nothing for us to do we can all just hang out and party together for our last free weekend before we head into finals and packing for home. Unfortunately it’s looking like snowboarding isn’t going to happen because, well, Interlaken doesn’t even HAVE snow yet! What? I thought the Alps always had snow… hm…
Today is a mellow one again. I actually plan on doing work this afternoon. I know, what?! Me?!? Work?!?! I told my famiglia Italiana that this morning and they laughed at me and thought I was joking. Yup, they still think I’m stupid. Fabulous.
Last night, I scolded the fam because they ALWAYS speak Spanish to each other! It takes me twice as long to understand what they’re saying in Spanish than when they speak Italian (which makes eavesdropping really difficult) AND in Italian class lately I’ve been mixing up Spanish and Italian words sooooo I told them that the Spanish has got to stop. Solamente parlate Italiano per due settimane! This morning at breakfast they kept messing up and switching to Spanish. I had to yell at them, liek, three times!
Hey, it’s pretty cool that I can recognize the difference between the two the second they start speaking…
Let’s see… what else can I say about today? Oh, I’m buying a new shampoo and toothpaste since the bitches at the Amsterdam airport confiscated mine. Oh, and I’m packing for Svizzera. And um… yea, that’s it. CIAO!
THREE months!
Dec 5I haven’t been in the USA for three months (94 days to be exact)… that’s a loooong time. The countdown to go home is getting small and smaller; I think everyone’s pretty excited about that. It’s painful to STILL be in school. Ugh, the semester system sucks. It’s such a freakin looooong time to be in the same class! SCU started 2 weeks after us and are already in finals week right now. What? Another reason to add to my list of reasons why I hate Syracuse in Florence.
Speaking of lists, I added/edited a few things to my “Things I’m Starting To Miss At Home” list that I posted about a week ago:
#3 was El Sombrero but seeing as that is no longer a possibility since it burned to the ground, I’m going to have to replace El Som with “Mexican food” in general
# 5 has been edited to read: “Diet Coke and non-fat milk” because even though eating my morning cereal with warm cream was good for a while, it’s gotten old and I’m really missing the ice cold watery milk that I’ve been drinking my whole life
#16 was added a few days ago: “the nook.” I’m not even sure if there are a lot of people that even know what this is, but for those who do (and especially to the specific person whose nook I miss) you’d feel the same way if you used to have one too.
Finals coming up are seriously starting to make people go crazy. I noticed it today down in the dungeon where the computer lab is. I usually arrive around 9 every morning to get all my blog/homework/printing/gossip column reading/e-mailing out of the way for the whole day – usually at 9 it’s nice because it’s completely empty. Today however, it was jam packed and people were basically beating eachother up and getting in fights in order to get on the computer. WHOA EVERYONE.
This afternoon after the gym Marilena and I zoned out and had arts and crafts time. Our project was a little Christmas card for our brother Manuel. About a week ago when I bought my Cosmo magazine it came in a package with another magazine, a SIMS sampler, and a poster of a girl modeling some Christmas lingere. Welllll, it only made sense to write a little speech bubble coming out of the lingere model’s mouth saying, “Ti amo Manuel! Oooh baby!” Right now the poster is sitting on his pillow waiting for him to come home. :) “Buone Feste Manuel – from, le tue sorelle.”
Mamone was over for dinner and a sleepover again. Ugh, I haven’t written about Mamone yet huh? Well. Where should I begin. Mamone’s real name is Nico and he is a friend of Susana and Kike’s from Argentina and now lives and works here in Firenze. He lives with his mother… she’s old; we met her at a dinner party one night. Anyways, Marilena and I call him “mamone” because our Fam and Gender teacher told us that the technical term for an adult male that still lives with his mother (yes, there really is a technical term) is “mamone.”
Anyways, I’d say Mamone is in his 40’s and is kinda weird and ugly and, until tonight, not very nice to Marilena and me. His mother has been visiting family in Argentina for a few weeks now and Mamone has pretty much moved in with us until she gets back. No joke. This dude is at our house more than Marilena and I are here. He eats dinner with us every night, he sleeps on the fold-out couch, he showers here, and he eats breakfast here every morning. The few times I’ve been home during the day, he’s here too…? Ehhh…
He only speaks Spanish and Italian and usually ignores Marilena and I (even though we sleep, liek, a wall away from him and eat basically every meal together) but tonight he was sitting next to us in Manuel’s usual spot (who was MIA tonight) and it was actually pretty fun. Usually at dinner Susana and Kike pour us the saddest little glasses of wine but tonight, Mamone was in charge of pouring our wine and he did a very good job at basically keeping our glasses full all meal long. Then he actually spoke to us and even though it was in his broken English/our broken Italian he told us jokes and actually laughed at ours when we told them back! I was very surprised… I’ve been hating him for about a month now and all of a sudden tonight he was cool. Maybe he was drunk? Hahaha.
Oh and PS, I just walked to the bathroom to brush my teeth and walked by the fold-out couch with Mamone comfortably snuggled up on it… that’s the 3rd time THIS WEEK; it’s TUESDAY!
X-mas lights in Le Cure!
Dec 4It rained on my walk to school today but it was fine with me because my new sweatshirt is soooo comfy that I hardly even noticed the rain. Yup that’s right, I broke down in Amsterdam and bought myself a hooded sweatshirt. I’ve been without one this whole time and figured that since I only have a little over two weeks left it’d be okay. :)
Nothing too exciting happened today. Everyone’s starting to get stressed about finals. Luckily I only have one actual final exam and it’s Italian (piece of cake). I have a little 5-pager to write for Va Bene and a three-question take home test but I’m not expecting either to be that hard. Actually, the hardest part is going to be the action of making myself sit down to write them both out! I think next week I’m going to spend the whole week finishing everything/studying… this week I’m still taking it easy.
Hahaha, I actually have so few things to do that I volunteered to help Natalie’s group out for their marketing project. They have to create a business and they asked me to do all the illustrations of how they want the store to look for their proposal. Since I have really nothing to do (at the moment) I said I’d do it. I LOOOVVEEE stuff like this anyways sooo it’s not that big of a deal.
After the gym on my walk home I was really excited because all of the Christmas lights were put up in Le Cure. I took the long cut through the piazza instead of under it through the graffiti tunnel (even though it was raining and freezing and I was wearing soccer shorts) just so that I could look at the lights and get myself feeling all holday-ie. Ahhh, I can’t wait til Christmas!
Okay, enough procrastinating. Back to working on other peoples’ homework!
back from Amsterdam
out of respect for my mama and papa i have chosen not to post my entries from Amsterdam. if you're interested in the details, e-mail me and i'll tell you everything. :)Amsterdam was weird and beautiful and sooo much fun. more stories to come later -- 17 days to go!
Buone Feste!
Nov 30Today all Florentine’s are celebrating. No one’s at work, stores are packed with people, and… I had school. Booo. I don’t understand. SUF claimed that the reason we didn’t have Thanksgiving off was because they want us to live like Italians but then a day like today comes along where all Florentines have the day off to celebrate and we still have school. What bitches. Syracuse sucks.
Oh, bytheway, the holiday today? They’re celebrating the fact that Florence was the first place that abolished the death penalty. Hey, I’d prolly be pretty proud of that too? I think that Kike and Susana are going to a big dinner party tonight with friends. Susana’s been cooking all day long (our house smells incredible!) – hopefully, the party’s not here. Oh god. What if it is?!?
Turns out that dinner tonight WAS a party. There were 10 fast-talking Italians sitting around the dinner table with Marilena and me. Luckily we planned ahead and had been sipping wine all afternoon and were able to actually enjoy ourselves and the company for the entire meal.
Italian was cancelled today so Marilena and I took our extra two hours this morning to walk downtown and do a little bit more Christmas shopping. I’m excited about the things I got but am not going to give away any secrets!!!
Va Bene (our Fam and Gender teacher) showed up 15 minutes late today? Er? She’s really cool as a person (she came in bitching about how retarded people who work at SUF are) but as a teacher she’s just terrible. It’s really too bad. We started watching a movie today called “Angela.” We moved onto studying women’s roles in the mafia – cool! Unfortunately it was a subtitle movie aaaand a girl with a big head was right in front me sooo I only got to read half the words, which made it really hard to understand what was going on. Something about an affair, and dealing coke, and someone being murdered and dumped into a river? I guess it was just your typical Italian mafia movie actually.
I got a few really fabulous surprises in the mail today – my award for sending in my Christmas letter to my mom first was a teddy bear wearing the most awesome outfit I have ever seen (now Lily has someone to keep her company during the day) and a little bit of spending money. Yay! Thanks mama! I love them both!!!
I talked to Pete this morning. It was a save-this-conversation-and-read-it-later-when-I’m-feeling-sad-about-our-realtionship kind of talk, so that’s cool. I feel like I’m starting to get nervous about seeing him again, notgonnalie. Ah!
Tomorrow we leave for Amsterdam; I’m a little bit anxious but at the same time really excited. I’m going to try to be open-minded about what the city has to offer. Hehe. My luggage for this trip consists of a backpack full of 3 shirts, 4 scarves, a toothbrush, shampoo, some sweatpants, and a few diabetes supplies. Hahaha, I’m flying to a different country and only bringing these things… it’s crazy. At home over the summer I’d drive to San Diego FOR THE DAY and bring a bag twice as big as this backpack for this weekend. Things change I guess?
Marilena also packed while I was packing – this weekend she’s going down south to visit her Italian family in Bari. They are crazy. Apparently they plan on surprising her by renting out a banquet hall so that all SIXTY of her relatives can gather for dinner and get to know her. She’s like a celebrity. All the fam (that speaks only Italian and are all total strangers to her) will be there! At this point it’s hard to tell who’s more nervous: me going to Amsterdam to do who knows what or her going down south to meet the fam.
All I know is we’re both going to have fabulous stories to tell eachother when we get back!
