So my parents arrived yesterday afternoon, and we went to a trattoria. They brought some birthday cards from home, which were wonderful to receive. Today we saw a lot of sights — I wish I had more time to elaborate, but I don't. I think we're going on a day trip to Assisi tomorrow.

Monday we'll go to Pisa, whence I'm flying to Dublin. I might not have time to write again before I get back from Dublin. I'll elaborate on recent events later.

I couldn't post the last one because the ftp transfer failed, so...

Today's my birthday. Last night Maddy gave me a tiny leather bound book to write poems in, because she said she was sick of seeing the pieces of grid notebook paper I carry in my pockets. Mike tried to get me to take shots of vodka, but I only took a little with Coke. I was walking with Mike, Topi, and some others to go to some bar or club and we ran into a girl from school, and she lives really far (way south of the Arno), so I walked her home. Usually I'll do whatever I can to avoid going to some stupid bar. So it was fine.

I bought a few marked-down cds yesterday: the Velvet Underground and Nico (only had it on mp3 before), The Smiths Rank, and Edith Piaf La vie en rose.

Maddy made gnocchi for me, with a really good tomato sauce. I didn't have to worry about the girls downstairs because it was just an indefinite plan to have dinner sometime. I didn't make the potato soup either; Mom's recipe has corn starch in it, and I don't think that it's really used here!

I think tonight or tomorrow I'll take my parents to Ottorino.

I just took my Beginning Italian midterm. È stato molto facile. Che sorpresa! I think I did well.

My parents will be here tomorrow. They're arriving in Rome tomorrow morning. I don't know how it is for them, but I was jet-lagged for a week. I hope they can make it up here to Florence, because last weekend there were strikes at la stazione. Actually, today I was supposed to have a field trip to the Uffizi, but it was cancelled because there's a strike there! So the trip is postponed till March 6.

I talked a to a couple girls from downstairs on Tuesday and, on a whim, invited them all to dinner for tonight. I haven't talked to them since then, though, and I don't know if it's still on. Maddy said she wants to cook me a birthday dinner tonight, so even if they don't come, I'll have something to do. I'm going to go ask them now if they're still coming, so I know whether to get potatoes for potato soup.

Our group that's going to Ireland made our plans on Tuesday. I guess I'll just follow along the itinerary that everybody else wants to go on, because it's just easier, and I don't know anything about Ireland anyway. We're all meeting in Dublin on Monday the 26th.

People are going all over: Sicilia, Morocco, Paris, Switzerland. Devon (who lives in the house in the garden) was going to go to Turkey, but she cancelled here plans because of the US bombing Iraq, and hence the anti-American sentiment that tends to spring up when we do things like that.

Ancora mi piace l'Italia ma non posso aspettare l'Irlanda.

Another Early Renaissance (I'm not in the class) field trip yesterday, to Siena and San Gimignano. It was quite foggy early in the morning, so when we got to Siena's famous tower (I don't remember its name), it was mostly obscured. We saw a large church there with a dome and an enormous tower of its own. I don't have my itinerary with me so I don't recall everything. The city itself was beautiful, with all its streets lopsided because of the hills. Siena was supposedly founded by Romulus or Remus, the mythological founders of Rome who were raised by a wolf (whose name has something in common with "Siena", but I forget it). The city is surrounded entirely by a wall built by the Romans. Strike that. Siena was supposedly founded by a son of Romulus, I found out.

San Gimignano is known for fifteen large towers built in the late middle ages by Italian familes, as status symbols and for defense against enemies. There used to be many more, but these are the last surviving. During World War II some of these towers were even bombed, but were not destroyed because their walls are so thick. We went up inside the highest one, and the view was spectacular. Actually, all the countryside I saw on the bus ride from Siena to San Gimignano was incredibly beautiful.

We had taken the scenic route to San Gimignano. On the way, la polizia pulled our bus over, and the bus driver was fined L. 250.000 (about $125) for driving one kilometer over the speed limit! At the end of the day, on the way home, we passed a hat around and everyone contributed a little to help him out.

For some reason, the night before, I went to bed at 2am. I woke up at 6am because we had to be at the bus station at 6:50. So last night I went to sleep at midnight and got up today at noon. I went to lunch with Lesley and had good pasta and minestrone.

I don't feel like doing anything at all. I have to do expensive laundry and homework.

I had a bacio candy today and the quote inside was from Walt Whitman: "We were together, I have forgotten the rest." Something like that. Actually, I just looked it up online, and the original line is "Day by day and night by night we were together - all else has long been forgotten by me", but I think it got altered in translation to Italian and back again.

All right, apparently they have those supermarket vegetable stickers in America, too, so I shouldn't be impressed. But I still am.

The potluck went well. I brought peppers and pickles and people were pleased with them. There were more people there than just those who lived in the apartment building. I don't have much to say, which means I'm coming to the computer place to often.

Oh yeah - it's cool, at the grocery store. When you buy fruit or vegetables, you put them in a bag, put it on the scale, and press a button for what kind of food you're getting. Then it prints out a little sticker to put on the bag with a bar code to run across the scanner when you check out.

And everything's metric.

San Valentino.

Last night I read a book called The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Maddy had it and said it was "depressing". I'd heard about it and was curious, but it turned out to be really boring and melodramatic. But it only took one night to read so I didn't lose much time over it. Yesterday I bought a paperback copy of Primo Levi's The Drowned and the Saved, which I've wanted to read for a while. Haven't started it yet.

Tonight is another potluck at the house in the garden, with a Valentine's Day theme. I'm just going to bring The Magnetic Fields' 69 Love Songs, and bread or something. I'll go to the grocery and try to find something that nobody else will bring.

I just realized that Otis Blackwell has written some of my favorite songs.

I went on the fieldtrip to Pisa and Lucca yesterday. We started early, of course, at about 7, and took a train to Pisa. We took a bus from the station to where the church was located, and right there was the leaning tower. It was pretty impressive, I must admit. They have a couple long cables gripping the sides of the tower, and they're connected to something fifty meters or so away. The risk of it happening isn't that great, though, since they did some construction several years ago to stabilize it. The church and baptistry were almost as impressive, actually. The baptistry was enormous and perfectly round. The security guard demonstrated the tremendous echo effect by singing a little chant. There was also a grand cemetery that had the tombs of people from centuries ago to very recently deceased people. It was a long building with a grassy courtyard in the middle, framed with columns. I've seen a lot of columns since I've been here, I can't remember what kind they were.

In Lucca we went to a few churches... I can't remember it very well at the moment. Lucca seemed to be about the same size as Florence, but definitely not as touristy. There were all these kids in the piazzas playing with spray cans, and some very young kids had costumes on in anticipation of Carnivale.

Got Chinese food when we got back, and went to a bar with some people. It wasn't that great.

Got my ticket to Dublin today, from Pisa on the 26/2, returning 4/3. Mom and Dad will be visiting the weekend before.

All my housemates (except Maddy) and I and a gal named Sarah went to dinner at another trattoria. I had patate arroste and a gigantic calzone. I've become quite fond of calzoni; I could eat them all day. Calzoni from the 24-hour bakery and Chinese food will be my cheap way of eating. The wine was very vinegary, but it was compensated for by a very entertaining waiter. He goofed around a lot. There was also a little kid in the restaurant, the owner's son, who did stuff like flipping off all the lights and shaking up bottles of carbonated water.

Going to Pisa tomorrow.

So right now I'm making plans for my spring break, which begins the day after my birthday (which is 23 febbraio). My birthday is a Friday though, and I don't have classes on Fridays. I'm planning on going to Ireland with a couple of my housemates and some other people they know.

I'm done with classes for the week. I really need to study Italian and work on a drawing project. I'm going to Pisa on Saturday with the Early Renaissance class; I don' t know much about this trip and what we'll be seeing.

The last day of the Rome trip (Sunday) went like this. We went to the Villa Borghese, which has a large museum that includes a few Caravaggio paintings and several of Bernini's most famous sculptures (David, Rape of Persephone, Apollo and Daphne). They were incredible! to say the least.

Then we went to Tivoli, which is a little outside of Rome, to the Villa D'Este. It was huge and had all kinds of fountains. Then we went to Villa Adriana (Hadrian's Villa), built by Emperor Hadrian in 125-134 AD. It was even bigger than Villa D'Este and had tons of Roman ruins.

That took all day! We were all extremely tired and grateful to get back home.

Monday, our High Renaissance class went to Casa Buonaroti, which is a museum set in the house Michelangelo lived in. It had some early works of his, but most of it was rather boring.

Tuesday, the same class went to the Accademia where Michelangelo's David is! What can you say about it... you really just have to see it. I'd never seen it from the back before... Earlier I'd seen the copy of it in one of the big piazzas here.

Tuesday night a lot of us in our apartment had a potluck in the house in the garden (one of the apartments). It was one of the best meals I've had here so far. Pasta, salad, spinach, etc... monstrous portions.

I'm rather tired and maybe not making any sense. Goodnight.

Ok. Here's what I wrote about my first field trip outside of Firenze:

21 - 1 - 01
Yesterday I went on an all-day field trip for my High Renaissance class. We saw a couple of the gardens and villas of the Medici family. Impressive stuff but I needn't really go into details. We also went to Vinci, to Leonardo's supposed birthplace as well as two small museums dedicated to him. The first had constructed models from designs by da Vinci and others working in a similar vein. The other museum had a lot of artwork that was inspired by Leonardo, like etchings of the Last Supper, various takes on Mona Lisa - they had Duchamp's moustached one (not the original of course) and another small print by him of Mona Lisa sans moustache, and in French is written "shaved."

I met some people. The first half of the day I didn't really talk to anybody because I didn't know anyone. At lunch time people got a lot friendlier and I met couple girls named Stephanie and a Laura. One Stephanie was on my flight from Boston, and I noticed her because she seemed cool.

I'm on the bus again, this time on the way to Ravenna. It's almost 08:00. This is for Early Renaissance, which I'm not in, but there are extra seats for every field trip and you just have to grab it when you can. Stephanie is on this trip too. So are Maddy, Lesley, and Alyssa, who are all in the class, so it's mandatory for them.

So presumably Bush was inaugurated yesterday. Che brutto! I haven't checked the news in a few days... Oh boy.

Hmm... It's only about 2am back home... I still think that's neat.

08:07.

That wasn't very interesting, but it's all right. I've got my Ravenna itinerary here to remember what we did... First, we saw the Mausoleum of Theodoric, "a unique funerary monument constructed of Istrian stone instead of brick and covered by a single massive circular block weighing approximately 300 tons." It was interesting - a big solid looking tower kind of thing. The simple sarcophogus inside had been broken apart some time ago.

In Ravenna, we basically just went to several different churches that had mosaics made over hundreds of years. One of the most interesting churches had a crypt beneath its altar (you could see it through a door). The interesting part was that the crypt was flooded with a meter or so of water, so you could see the mosaic floor through the water with goldfish swimming around. We also saw Dante's grave. Dante was from Firenze, but he was exiled later in his life and died in Ravenna. Firenze has tried to get his body back, but Ravenna is happy to keep it, so Firenze only has a monument to Dante. We also went to Classe to see more mosaics.

All right, now. Rome. We were supposed to meet at the stazione at 07:00, and I woke up at 6, but I felt back asleep (d'oh! as usual). So I woke up again at 7:20! I ran to the station, but it was too late. I wasn't sure what train to get on, but I'm pretty sure I saw the one I needed pull away as I walked toward it. So I was in sort of a panic, and I went and bought a ticket to Rome for L. 25.000. The ticket guy didn't say anything, but I didn't get the right ticket. Anyway, I walked to an express train to Rome and asked an American there if I had the right ticket, and he said no, and I'd have to pay a fine and he didn't know how much the fine would be. I figured "fine" and got on, and found a seat, and considered myself lucky that I wasn't asked to give up my seat to anyone. A couple with a cute little girl sat across from me. The train started pulling away and I felt nervous and relieved simultaneously. (The train station, by the way, is really cool. You walk in and there are all these tracks, and all this open air. I'd never really been to one that I can remember.) The ticket taker came by and when I presented my ticket, sure enough, I had to pay a fine. But she was very kind about it and I gladly paid.

I arrived in Rome very soon, at about 10:30. I was worried about pickpockets and stuff when I got off, but I walked right out without a hitch, onto the streets. Everything seemed a lot bigger, and I was grinning from ear to ear just walking down the street. I had an itinerary, so I planned on just finding the group when they met to go to lunch in the area of the hotel at 13:30, so I had some time find the place. I walked in the general direction of the hotel... suddenly the Colloseum was looming large in front of me. I took some photos, walked around it to the Forum area. I walked around there, and got a little lost and ended up walking all the way around the Circus Maximus. I found the Tiber River and from there made it to the hotel, shortly before 13:30, but the group didn't show up for about an hour after that, but I was glad when they did. I had tried to check my (heavy) bag at the hotel, but since I wasn't there when they checked in the morning, I didn't have a room. (I ended up sleeping in a room with an available bed, rather illegally, but got away with it.)

Ate lunch at L'insallata Ricca, famous for salads. After lunch, I was launched into the intense touring that I was actually sort of happy to have missed in the morning. I should mention that the professor, Helen, walks and talks very quickly and nearly ceaselessly. Everything is sort of a blur. We saw... architecture by Borromini, a Caravaggio painting (I missed some other Carvaggios in the morning), the Four Rivers Fountain, some famous churches, the Trevi fountain, and Bernini's "Ecstasy of St. Teresa". I'm sure we saw some other things, but I can't remember it all. It was a lot to take in. We ate at a nice restaurant where I had ravioli for the first course and eggplant with some kind of cheese for the second. We had some nice red wine and an alcoholic drink called limoncelo that was tasty. I guess I consider the details of the food more important than the artwork.

Saturday morning we went to a church on a hill that overlooked Rome. It was also where the Tempietto is located, built where St. Peter was supposedly crucified but actually wasn't.

Next we went to the Vatican, which was a big deal, being its own country and all. Its gallery was wonderful, with too many paintings to enjoy in so little time. At the Vatican you have to go through the whole winding series of rooms full of artwork, and it was sort of an overload for the senses. At the end of it, you get to see the Sistine Chapel. When I first walked in, I was incredibly excited from waiting for so many hours. The first thing I thought was that it was rather small, but then I remembered it was only a chapel. Experiencing the actual space of the place was so much different than looking at photographs of just the ceiling and the Last Judgment back wall. It was great. We got to look at it for about half an hour, then the whole place was closing.

We broke for lunch. I ate at a great trattoria where I had ... hmm... I think pasta for the first course, and then roast chicken for the second course. It was funny because the chicken is simply a big leg on a plate that they set in front of you. But it was delicious. After lunch we looked at St. Peter's Basilica, which was just incredibly enormous. We saw its museum too, which was cool enough. St. Peter's is great, I don't know what else to say about it.

We took the subway to a church that had a couple Caravaggio paintings, but we couldn't get in because a wedding was about to start! We all applauded when the bride arrived in a limo and walked up the steps. Instead of that, we walked over to the Spanish Steps, paid for by the French but named for a nearby Spanish Embassy. It was great because the steps went up high on this hill and you could overlook the incredibly crowded streets. A lot of Roman teenagers were hanging out there. It seemed like all of Rome was out that night.

I should mention that for the whole weekend, Rome was flooded with Irish people because there was a rugby match between Ireland and Italy Saturday night. Apparently, Ireland whipped Italy soundly, and that night they were celebrating full force. I walked by one restaurant where Irish guys were singing loudly at a table on the patio, and the waiter was telling them that they had to be quiet or they'd have to leave. After dinner (a really good pizza) I went to a bar with Billy for a Guinness. An old Irish guy standing next to me was trying to order a beer over the loud music and through a thick accent, and had a really trying time of it, so an American girl nearby intervened and helped him out. He said with a smile, "Thank you... I'm useless." It was refreshing to experience another foreign culture while already in another foreign culture, and see their take on it.

Uh oh. I'm late for dinner. I've just got to write about Sunday, which I'll do next time I get a chance (tomorrow). This post was too long anyway. A presto.

Got back from Rome last night at about 9. It was a really great trip, but it wore me out and all I want to do is rest. I wrote a little bit about it on paper, but I need to reflect and write a little more before I put it down here. And before that, I'll write about Vinci and Ravenna (from two weeks ago).

Maddy, Mike, and some other people are going to Ireland for spring break, and I think I'll go with them. I miei genitori are coming here at the same time, so I think I'll meet up with them for a day or two before or after Ireland.

More soon.

Un otro giovedi.

Monday was another Roberto Benigni film at SACI, Jim Jarmusch's "Down By Law". Another excellent one, so check it out if you have time.

I haven't heard anything more about our inevitable eviction :) , so I won't worry about it. Somehow I get the idea that this has happened before and that the consequences weren't as serious as were threatened.

Last night I went to a lecture at SACI by a documentary photographer who took photographs at the Fillmore East in the late sixties and early seventies. She showed slides from those and from photographs she took of daily life in China in 1984 and 1987. It was interesting. She's giving a workshop this month at SACI.

Tomorrow at 07:00 my High Renaissance class is going to Rome for the weekend. I'm sure it will be a good time, but there'll be a whole lot of walking.

Somehow I thought I had more to say today, but I don't.

Check out (my brother) Phil's UK and Ireland trip. I'd like to do something like this with my photographs when I return from Italy.