Wednesday, 4/16/03
Nothing is created, only discovered ~Ray Mullican
We're on our way to Vinci now, where, of course Leonardo was from. I never knew until a week ago that da Vinci wasn't his last name.
We, as the architecture group, are lounging in a park, eating lunch. We don't have enough of our budget left to join the other with their €16 meal. Instead, Taeg allotted us €5 each and most of us went to get €1 sandwiches. I'm making money today. When we walked down here together, Chase suggested we just go to the COOP and get mass food for a picnic. Taeg told him he was in charge, and gave him the money. The COOP didn' have much selection, so we kind of split of and decided to get our reimbursement later. Taeg was waitinug in the park for us. When he realized things didn't go as originally planned, he called to Chase, "Chase! Did you get me lunch?" He hadn't, of course, so Taeg had to go get his own. A few minutes ago Taeg said we had a number of options: stay here, split off, or Chase go to the tourist office to see if there was anything for us to see. We voted to send Chase on the errand. Ross said, "Yeah Chase, that's what you get for forgetting our professor's lunch."
Before lunch we went to Il Museo Leonardino di Vinci. Most of it was his sketches and technical drawing with models people had built based on his drawings. They were really fascinating but it was hard to visualize exactly how they worked because we couldn't touch them. The neatest pieces were a bicycle, these ski things to walk on water with, and a giant wing. Then there was a video playing on his work. It was fascinating, though it had the cheesy crummy feel of a '60s or '70s video. Now we're on the bus on the way to Leonardo's house.
If I write a book about my experiences I'll either call it "500 ways to eat pasta," or my personal favorite that I just thought of, "Over the Tuscan Rainbow."
For the first time in my trip, I would want to live in Italy. How I'll miss the gentle rolling hills, cultivated, yet still natural, and the horizons of soft mountains. How can I continue to experience the richness of art without all the originals at my fingertips? What variations Italy has! America is diverse as well, but not as compact. On the shores of Amalfi and Capri we felt like we weren't even in the country anymore.
Rome, Venice, Capri, Assissi, and now my favorite Tuscan town, Vinci, or the surrounding countryside. The house of Leonardo isn't in Vinci, but about 3 km outside. It's surrounded by an extensive grove of olive trees. The house was interesting, but we couldn't read the Italian explanations.
I was wondering what goddess Carmen was this morning, and she said she took the test and is Artemis. I told that was very much evidenced in how she frolicked in the olive trees today. We all walked through the groves. There were red poppies scattered, the first time I've seen poppies. I wanted to cackle and say, "Poppies! Poppies will put them to sleep!" like the wicked witch of the west, then take a nap, but there wasn't time. About half of us girls came back with flowers of different kinds in our hair. I cringe when I think of what I would've missed if they hadn't moved the field trip from last Friday to today. I took a picture of Taeg trying to whistle with a piece of grass.
We even had an adventure on the Moretti bus today. I slept most of the way to Vinci, but woke up when a weird dip in the road made us scrape against the concrete. We'd turned the wrong way and had to back up.
Cady and Karin just offered me €20 to ask ---- with a straight face to lay down on the floor, bring his ankles to his forehead, let one rip, and light it on fire.
Jen just walked in, and I asked her if she's seen anyone light their fart on fire. She said, "Yeah, I've done it." Then she said that they caught their tent on fire. Karin said, "In the tent? Why didn't you do it outside?" "It was raining and we had burritos for lunch!" I've been guffawing for the last 20 minutes.
Friday, 4/18/03
It's 5pm and I'm on my bed. I just finished eating an apple while listening to "Bridge over Troubled Water", then "Unchained Melody".
We had the most fascinating discussion in ARTS yesterday. Most people hated it because we didn't get anywhere. But I loved it because it was more about figuring out the questions than the answers. Then Paolo told us there was no time to do our presentations, so they were extra credit. Hooray! Then we had no slide projector for a lecture, so he and Dr. R stood up and started discussing the purpose of art and creativity. Dr. R said art was healing. Somehow it got morphed into the similarities between art and psychology. I was absolutely fascinated. The second half however, turned into us all trying to convince Paolo to be more open minded about the discipline of psychology. He was mostly trying to provoke us to discussion.
Before dinner we went to Paolo's brother, Franco's, harpsichord shop. He's one of about 10 people in Italy who makes harpsichords. They were beautiful. The finished ones were painted with color designs, or scenes with people in nature.
After dinner Valerie came up to our room and Edit walked in with a radio to have a dancing party. After she got her energy out, suddenly I got up and started acting crazy. I was kicking off my slippers and trying to catch them. The I started acting like a crazy humpbacked witch speaking a cross between German and Klingon. Edit had never seen my crazy side and Karin brought up their first taste of it--back in the hotel park when I ran up and down the secret stairs one night.
After lunch me, Omar, Chase, Morgan, and Sarah hiked to the Castel Montecchio. It took us about an hour to get there. We not only cut across fields, but even climbed up the levels of olive grove on the hill, rather than take the road up to the top. It was a lot of fun.
Saturday, 4/19/03
This morning I got an email from Grandpa. He said that a trip to the Mediterranean was on his and Grandma's agenda, and to take advantage of the opportunity to travel while I am young. I thought that was really sweet. I decided last night to make one more day trip to Rome because there are still several things I want to see there. I'll do that next weekend.
No comments:
Post a Comment