A Horse is a Horse of Course of Course

This week kicked off with the 7 Stonehill girls reuniting for an evening of eating. It seems to have become a tradition for us to get together about once a month to share our stories as well as reminisce about the Hill. We really do miss everyone there! As usual this month everyone had crazy travel stories to tell. I think we have all learned that getting anywhere is half the battle. After wining and dinning we all realized we have less than a month before we go home. It is a crazy thought. What is even crazier is how we actually get home. We have recently been told that after a farewell dinner following the conclusion of exams everyone heads home to finish packing before hitting the bars before we re-enter the world were most of us are not of legal drinking age. Reality sets in around 1am when the 6 busses roll into the main piazza to take everyone back to Rome. Now this plan is not so bad in theory…a well known central meeting place to coral all 120+ of us. However this means that after several hours of being out and about in town we must all make sure we get ourselves and our luggage to the busses. If you’re thinking what I am thinking, that means I have to get both my enormous suitcases up the gigantic hill at 1 in the morning. As there are only 9 cabs in all of Perugia I foresee an adventure.

As far as my adventures of the weekend go, I headed back to Florence not only to see my dear Kristen Clark, but to do a little horseback riding though Tuscany. I love horseback riding but haven’t been near a horse since I used to go to camp year and years ago. Needless to say I was just as nervous as I was excited for our trail ride through the country side. To make matters worse it was POURING rain when we woke up. Thankfully, by the time we saddled up the rain had stopped and we only had to worry about muddy trails. Our trek through the country side of Tuscany was absolutely beautiful. Even though most of the fields had been plowed, and a lot of the flowers had died you could tell fall had arrived. All the left over grape vines were beautiful gold colors and all the other trees were changing colors as well.

By the time we got back to the farm we were a little chilly so we warmed up inside by the wood burning oven with a glass of the farm’s homemade wine. Once we had regained feeling in our fingers we headed off to lunch inside a castle in the Siena countryside. We had a delicious three course meal accompanied by wine tasting. After two days of wine tasting back to back (I had wine tasting in my food class the day before) I felt like an everyday wine-o. Before we headed back to the city we spent a little more time exploring the castle.

Once we were back in Florence, Kristen and I set off to do some shopping. I know my shopping is starting to seem excessive but I am finally almost finished with my Christmas shopping! We finished our night with a dinner at one of our favorite restaurant called the Cat and the Fox. I have eaten there every time I have visited Florence this semester. The food is delicious and not that expensive! Instead of going out for the evening we stayed in and watch a movie…horseback riding and shopping all days really just takes it out of you!

My plans for Saturday were a little up in the air so I took the opportunity to sleep in. Once again Kristen hit the streets in search of boots! I have been trying to find a pair of brown boots all semester, and I know what I want, and what I like, I just can seem to find them ANYWHERE! But I keep seeing people wearing the style I want so I keep having home one day I will find them. As consolation for not finding boots, I did get tickets to the Fiorentina soccer game. The trip to the game was organized through the school which the students in Florence study through. But since I was able to get a ticket I got to tag along. Not only did I get to see a really great game, our team won 4-2 againstUdinese I got to see a lot of Stonehill-ers again. I think there are about 40 of them studying in Florence, as it is one of the most popular programs. Saturday night they were all out in style wearing the purple and white of not only the Skyhawks but of Florentino…how convenient!

With One Month to Go

Sex and the City…After being in Italy for over 2 months I think many of us have reached that point where we start to miss things about home. I’m not talking specifically about friends and family, because you miss them from the start; it only makes sense after all, you are on the other side of the world. I am talking more about the things like readily available internet access, English TV, much less cable, cheeseburgers and french fries. Basically all those little things we take for granted at home. Now I have one of those crazy personalized yahoo homepages that pops up anytime I am able to get on the internet, and the other day I happened to give it a look over. What caught my attention was not any of the real headlines but the movie listings—the greatness of the internet has my homepages list the movies playing at my local theater back home. I quickly realized that out of 16 different movies playing I had not a slightest clue what any of them were….except Disney’s High School Musical III of course. It was the weirdest feeling of being totally disconnected. That evening it hit me. I was walking home and passed the movie theater that shows movies in their original language on Monday nights. The movie poster displayed for the following Monday was Sex and the City. As news spread around Umbra that it would be showing the excitement was almost comical. Of course it is a great chick-flick of a movie but I think people were more excited to feel that connection to home. Needless to say, Monday night the theater was packed full of American girls clamoring to see “The Girls” on the big screen once again.

After the week always comes the weekend and this was my first back out on the road in a while (with the exception of my class field trip last week of course). Since I hadn’t been out of Perugia in a while I went big and got out of the country! One of my really good friends Mr. Ben Albert is interning in Geneva, Switzerland, so I headed out to visit him. Getting to Geneva from Perugia takes about 12 hours on the train so I had my first overnight train adventure! I’m happy to report that everything went as planned—I guess I’m finally figuring the trains out after all this time. On the overnight trains you are assigned a cart number and a bed. The beds are tiny and fold out from the walls, but other than being a little small they were fairly comfortable…they even give you sheets, pillows and breakfast! You fall asleep in Italy and wake up in Switzerland! The country was just as beautiful as I remembered from my visit about 4 years ago. Stepping out of the station I felt like I was back in New England. The air was crisp, there were trees with leaves changing colors, and streets filled with the daily hustle and bustle.

Ben and I spent the afternoon walking around Geneva. There are lots of public parks all along Lake Geneva and so we walked through our fair share. We also walked through what is known as Old Town. And it is just that, the original or old part of the town. We visited one of the churches and the town office building. For those of you who know Ben know he is a fantastic tour guide and his skills were in fine form as he told me all about the history of Geneva. One of my favorite things I learned was that the men used to ride their horses right up to their offices in the Town hall building. To this day there is a ramp instead of stairs up to all the offices. We also took a break for a gigantic game of checkers in which Ben kicked my butt! Ben Albert…here is your prize, just like I promised, your picture, nice and big on my blog.

In the afternoon we headed right across the boarder into France for a little hiking. Mont Salève
is in the really small French town of Salève itself. Unfortunately I was a weekend late and the gondola which would take you to the top of the mountain was no longer running. Thankfully we were still able to take the foot train about halfway up. The views through the trees were beautiful as was the autumn leave covered path. Here are some picts of our hiking adventures.

In exchange for letting me crash at his place I cooked dinner and then we headed out to see Geneva at night. It is just as gorgeous as it is during the day! As we made it back down toward the lake the large fountain in the center was turned on and illuminated bright blue! Sorry my picture does not do it justice. Before calling it a night and heading inside to watch a movie with on of Ben’s friends we happen to stumble across a Starbucks! I know most of you are probably Dunk n’ Donuts fans but unfortunately they have not made it across the Atlantic yet…Starbucks has. Even better is the fact that they already have this year’s holiday flavors out! I decided that Dark Cherry Mocha was worth the try and it was DELICIOUS! I hope ya’ll can try it soon!

Sorry for my Starbucks tangent! Back in Geneva I only had one more day. Ben and I joined the rest of the students in his program for their weekly venture across the boarded to the French market. By now I have been to my fair share of Saturday markets and this by far was one of the best. Even though I was headed home on the train that evening I still left with a bag full of fruit and bread! That afternoon Ben showed me where he has been spending his semester interning…the United Nations. One again I put Ben’s tour guiding skills to use and had him explain to me what the difference was between the UN there in Geneva and the UN in New York. In case you were wondering the UN in New York is where the Generally Assembly is held and Geneva has different ones like the one on human rights. Even though the General Assembly is held in New York today, Geneva was the original site for the League of Nations, but today serves as European Headquarters for the UN. Ben and I spent the rest of our afternoon exploring the beautiful gardens all around the UN. We actually stumbled into a few green houses that were absolutely amazing. Eventually we made our way back to his place via the small Geneva zoo and waterfront.

After a short pit stop so I could stock up on some chocolate, (and boy did I ever!) it was Ben’s turn to cook dinner. Sadly I had another over night train to catch and headed back to Perugia.

It was so great to see another Stonehill-er this weekend and I can’t wait to be back on campus with everyone. With only three more weeks of class before finals Christmas break will be here before you know it!

All Saints and All Souls

All Saints and All Souls

Hello again! I hope you enjoyed reading about my fall travels as much as I had actually having them! But now that I have been back home for over a week everyone here has settled back into classes and such. With less than six weeks left here in Italy, I literally just finished my first paper of the semester! (I’m typing this while waiting for One Tree Hill to finish downloading in Itunes! What can I say we all have our guilty pleasures ;-) It was a 10 pager on the invention and evolution of Italian-American Cuisine. When I signed up for The History and Culture of Foods in Italy class I thought I would be doing a lot more eating and a lot less reading throughout the semester but I really do enjoy the class. I had not written a paper since the end of last semester so I was a bit rusty, but I am glad my first paper is out of the way. I’m even more glad I only have two papers left!

In other news the end of October and beginning of November are an exciting time here for the students at Umbra. First off is Halloween! Now the Italians themselves do not celebrate Halloween like we do back home. No decorations, no scary music and worse of all, no free candy. However because Perugia is a college town we still got to have some Halloween fun! Many of the bars around town had Halloween themed parties giving everyone a good excuse to dress up! Of course that posed a little bit of a challenge as there are no costume shops or even art supply stores to construct your own. Thankfully Sam’s grandparents had sent her and all the roomies bright orange jack-o-lantern shirts, so the four of us went as a pumpkin patch! Even though it was rainy and cold going out was a lot of fun, and everyone did a really good job getting creative with their costumes.

The first of November is what Italians celebrate rather than the 31st of October. November 1st is the Feast of All Saints. It is a national holiday here in Italy so everything is closed except for a special Fiera dei Morti market. The market is set up around town and has vendors from all over selling all sorts of interesting things. Apparently this is the time when the Italians get a jump start on their Christmas shopping. While I was excited to experience this holiday I was more excited about what November 1st meant for our apartment. This is the day that it becomes legal to use heat in our apartments. Italian law regulates when you can turn the heat on, what times of the day it can be one, and for how many hours a day it can be used. Thankfully it has not gotten to cold here but I am glad to have the heat run, only if it is for 5 hours a day. We are told that as it gets colder we can gradually request increases in the amount of time we have our heat on, but we cannot ever exceed 8 hours a day! Thank goodness I brought some thick socks!

This week rapped up with my second to last field trip of the semester. For my Roman Empire class we had an overnight field trip to the old Roman port town of Ostia and Rome itself. I can say that our day in Ostia was probably one of the neatest things I have seen since I have been here. It is basically a huge archaeological site. All the ruins are separated from the modern day city so you as you walk around all of the sights you feel like you have been transported back in time. After spending the morning there we headed into Rome. If you don’t remember I visited Rome earlier in the semester but did not visit all the ruins so of course I was excited. We started at the Forum. We have been learning about it all semester so it was really neat to actually be there and know what we were looking at. We also visited the Palatine hill, which is the hill Rome was founded on. Over time it became the residences of many of the Emperors and today you can see the ruins of their gigantic homes and gardens. Right about the time it started raining we headed inside to visit the Colosseum. As many of the buildings of Ancient Rome it is pretty impressive. What I found most interesting was that under the main floor there was a network of rooms and passage ways the gladiators used to get from their training area to the Colosseum itself. Also, contrary to popular belief gladiator battles were popular but just like extreme fighting today, was almost always a show. Hardly ever did a gladiator actually die; the only person in all of Rome who could have a gladiator killed for spectacle was the emperor himself. The last stop on our field trip was the Baths of Caracalla. They are some of the largest and most famous of the Roman baths. As we learned on our visit there you can think of them as the amusement parks of the Roman world, except you could go everyday! Of course there were the steam rooms, but baths also had swimming pools, gardens, a gym of sorts, as well as shops and bars. Almost everyone in Roman times was a frequent visitor because they were so inexpensive. Here are some picts of my class' field trip.

Part of the Square of the Guilds

Ruins by the old theater

Temple of Vesta

Gardens for the house on top of the Palatine HillThe Colosseum

So seeing Ancient Rome was amazing but while in Rome I also got to satisfy one more guilty pleasure…DINNER AT THE HARD ROCK CAFÉ! Now I know what you’re thinking…you are living in Italy, with some of the best food in the world! Well this may be true, but for starters I cannot afford to eat out every night and therefore am not enjoying the fine dinning Italy has to offer. My diet consists of granola, fruit, eggs and pasta…it gets old after over 2 months. Plus anytime we eat out we eat Italian food. Perugia does not have the plethora of different types of cuisines that we are used to back home…no Chinese, so sushi, no Mexican, no American food. So I know they say when in Rome, but I say when in Rome take advantage of a DELICIOUS cheeseburger, fries, and a margarita at the Hard Rock…it is worth every penny! I just hope when I get home I get to put in dinner requests for a while!

Ciao!