Happy Birthday Baby!

Here we go for the last two days, deep breath, and...

13April2005 – Wednesday

I woke up at about 7:30 and got dressed rather quickly. Quicker than I had intended when I woke up at this godforsaken hour, that’s for sure. So I went downstairs and checked my e-mail and then decided I may as well see about breakfast. My stomach was killing me so I thought food might help, well I quickly discovered it didn’t so much, so I stopped eating I decided to live with the pain – nothing too unusual as of late… I went back upstairs and got the rest of my things together while I waited for Daniel to finish eating and then went back downstairs to wait for him. We ended up having to run to the station (literally) because of Daniels second breakfast, which is really something I was trying to avoid. Anyway, we made it to the train station with time to spare and got on. The thing was full so we ended up in first class, darn the luck. Eventually we got to Florence where we all headed in what we thought was the general direction of the Academia. Eventually we did get there with only one wrong turn and we were actually there early. Well I was feeling really dehydrated so I went with a few people to a bar close by (Bars aren’t the same here as they are in the states, just FYI. Bars are more like places where they sell food and drinks, I don’t really know how to explain it better than that.) where I got some water and decided to give the food thing another shot since it had been nearly an hour and a half and my stomach felt different but still not so great. Well the food helped a little although I only got to eat half my calzone before we went in. Soon we did go into the Academia though, and really the only things worth seeing there were The Slaves by Michelangelo and his extremely famous David. Wow. Just, wow. It was quite an experience. The David was quite the piece of art work, and although I’ve seen two fakes and a thousand pictures and statuettes of it since we got here, seeing the real thing was somehow different. And since that was really the focal point of the Academia, I probably observed The David for a good half hour to 45 minutes. Soon after seeing there was nothing else worth looking at around though, I left and found a group of people outside. I finished my calzone as we walked and they headed to some famous little sandwich shop they’d heard about. When we got there I saw the funniest sign ever for “Slow Food” as opposed to American fast food, and you’ll find that on my picture site. After they got their food and I grabbed a few more bottles of water from the “Asia Market” across the street, (not Asian Market mind you…) we headed off to the Florence Duomo to sit and enjoy their lunch. We did so for about an hour while I again had some lovely time to bask in the sun and again you’ll find pictures, lol. After we finished that the group split up a little in to one really small group and then the rest of us and the rest of us headed to the Ponte Vecchio which was that famous bridge with shops down both sides that I’ve mentioned before. We hung out around there for quite some time looked at shops, basked in the sun some more, killed time, you know, stuff college kids do. Soon enough it was about time for us to head over to the Uffizi which is the biggest most famous museum in Florence - although id never really heard of it, lol. For whatever reason we ended up waiting in the little courtyard area there for a good 45 minutes before going in being scanned by security and then going up 4 huge flights of stairs… Once we finally got to the main exhibition hall we were split up into smaller groups with tour guides…vomit. Our tour guide was a woman with a very annoying voice who would take us to one painting ignoring all the others in the room and talk in front of it for half an hour then move to the next room. Well, I hate tour guides so I ignored her from the start and was wondering around n my own looking at the paintings and at first I’d wait for the group in each room or the following room. Soon I tired of this though and started exploring on my own a little ahead of the group. I went to the restroom at one point (which was on the opposite side of the museum) and came back to find them only just then getting to the room I had last seen. After this I conspired with a few of the girls to take off on our own (namely The Trio) and for whatever reason I lost them for a while but went ahead and kept looking at the paintings and soon found them again in the main hall. The guide had totally skipped the series of rooms I’d just gone through! So sad… anyway I was exhausted by this point and I had already seen some extremely famous paintings. Just to name a few, I saw The Venus, Leonardo Di Vinci’s first Painting, and a Madonna by Giotto that we’ve seen a number of times in classes. Well at this point I was finished, and so was The Trio so we really did conspire and took off early. We found out there was a train leaving at 4:26pm so we decided to give it a shot. Well once we all exited the museum – which was a maze and a half to do, I feel sorry for anyone caught in there during a fire because they’re dead – stopped in the courtyard outside and planned our strategy. The Trio had a few things to get real quick, and so did I, but we were headed in opposite directions so we decided to split up and meet at the train station. Well I got my souvenirs, which I really want to talk about because I think they’re really cool but I don’t want to ruin anyone’s surprise! Then I speed walked the entire city of Florence to get to the train station and made it in 10 minutes! 10 minutes! Florence is not small by any means, and I was on the opposite side of it from the train station, so I was thoroughly impressed with myself – although my shins are still killing me tonight over 24 hours later. Well I was there with 6 minutes to spare and started searching for the girls. I couldn’t find them anywhere nor could I find the train leaving at 4:26pm, but only one at 4:24pm. Well I missed it because I was frantically searching for them and almost gave up all hope when I checked the schedule again and realized there was a train going to Naples at 4:38pm and its first stop was Arrezo. This train was only making 4 stops which meant it was going to make it to Arrezo in extremely good time, so I thought id just meet them there. I ended up getting to Arrezo in 35 minutes when it usually would take over an hour, lol, so I decided id just hop on the next train to Castiglion which left about 5 minutes later. In the end it took me about half the time it usually would to get back to Castiglion Fiorentino and I made it back to the center by 5:50pm. When I got back I hung out with Jen for a while who hadn’t felt up to going for some reasons and we just kept each other company while we both wrote a paper. Right around 6:45pm everyone else got back and soon after I was asked politely to give them some privacy while they separated their laundry and I was more than happy to comply. I went and just relaxed on my bed until dinner. After dinner I watched Under The Tuscan Sun finally and I was pleased with it. I was still rather awake when it was over so I came down here to the lab and talked to Ma Mere (that’s my mother in French) before turning in for the night.

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14April2005 – Thursday

I rolled out of bed very unhappily at 10:30am and got in the shower and then got dressed, etc. The construction outside of our room has finally stopped, but the people that like to walk the streets in the morning talking loudly to one another and the street cleaners have not… Anyway, I went to class and was there right up until lunch where I was pleased to find my favorite soup, but wasn’t pleased with the rest of the meal. So with my bowl of soup to fill me I said Adieu to my lunch companions and headed up to the studio followed shortly by Andrew. Marcel had talked to Kim at some point about our project and things went slightly less than well so we needed to meet and reassess the project and redesign it before class started at 3:00pm. Well it took a few hours and a lot of “compromising” because I finally stood up to Andrew and told him to stop taking over the project and listen to us and he backed off and we finally got things worked out a little bit. Anyway once class started we were finished and ready to be re-critiqued only for the profs to come in and say they were going to pass around a sign up sheet for crits. Dangit! So we got on it as soon as we could and were third in line - which to us meant that somewhere within the first hour of class we were going to be seen. So we waited around and I took a short nap in studio with the headphones on and somehow we got skipped, but soon enough they finally got to us. I say they, but I mean Peter because they had spilt up and while I’m not usually fond of Peter’s crits, he had mostly positive things to say, surprisingly. In the end he concluded that everything was pretty good, we’d done a good job, but he was concerned with one part that he felt we hadn’t developed quite enough. So he gave us a little research assignment to see some projects that had already been done by famous architects that to him were similar to our and he wanted us to see if we couldn’t take some of their ideas and incorporate it into our thoughts and design, etc, etc, etc. Kim and Andrew went and looked that up shortly while I showed the project to Melanie (the TA for anyone who’s forgotten) and soon after I was finished Andrew reemerged and said they were pretty much done. The profs had disappeared and I was bored out of my mind so I said I was taking off and he said that was cool. I went up stairs and took a short nap before dinner, which was fabulous. Then I went to dinner and it wasn’t bad either. We had steak for the first time here and it was great. I actually ate three pieces, mmm… After dinner I decided to come in here and update which I’ve been doing for quite some time now and in a sec. Daniel and I are going to watch Lock Stock And Two Smoking Barrels before we hit the sack for the night. Our train to Cinque Terra leaves at 5:30am so tomorrow is going to be a long weekend, but hopefully it’ll be fabulous. Things have been a little rough here as of late, so I could use a nice weekend to offset everything. I won’t be back till Sunday so I just want to go ahead and say an official HAPPY BIRTHDAY! to JereBeth. I hope it’s a spectacular one!
I love and miss you all and I hope you are all doing well, Ciao!