italia

Miniature

Last week was an inadvertent vacation from blogging. I thought about posting many times and just never got around to it. See my musings on this here. But in an effort to get back on track, I thought I'd share with you my "Mini Italy." I know it sounds odd... but just wait til you see the pictures. They almost look like miniature models, especially the last one.

(Confession: Before you view these pictures I just want you to know that I war with myself about post picture taking editing. If I had my choice I would take pictures like Ansel Adams who rarely ever had a bad negative. Each frame was perfectly exposed through careful calculations of the dark and light areas of the picture. It was a detailed and deliberate process. I like the idea of knowing how to take the perfect picture without needing any post production fingering. But that said, I am not there yet, and so, I am learning the process of editing. I don't know how I feel about deliberately altering what was captured so that it no longer testifies to what was truly there but that's a whole other issue. For now, I'm just going to take joy out of learning new things and sharing them with you.)

friday confessions

Confession time: I have no clue how people maintain their blogs nearly daily.

I realize that part of keeping a blog and being attentive to your readers is posting on a consistent basis. The blogs I enjoy perusing the most are ones that are updated often. BUT... where do people find the time? Granted some of these blogs have sponsors and so they generate income and therefore are part of someone's job and for some others, well they don't work full time or maybe they do it in the evenings. For me, being on the computer all day for work does not lend itself to evening postings because by that time all I want is to be OFF the computer. So, all that to say, I'm trying to figure out how to keep up the blog so it doesn't get stagnant, but also find the time to do it! I'm working on it.

|Ponte Vecchio : Firenze, Italia|

Capri

My apologies... I've been negligent in posting this week. Let me make it up to you with an onslaught of pictures from Capri.

Enjoy!

I love Italian doorways/entrances. I'll spare you the essay I once wrote on them and just say, "They're awesome."
Some day I'll make a book of my favorites.

tmam: parte tre

My apologies for leaving you hanging in suspense the last few days. It's just been so busy around here lately I haven't had time to think about writing more down. But, since you're being so patient, I'll try.

Let's see where were we... oh, right, Orvieto (the first time around).

When I think about trying to describe Orvieto to you, so many things run through my mind that I hardly know where to start. Coming upon it from the road below, it seems like a town rose right out of the tufa rock, high above everything else, sitting contentedly on a tall plateau. The town below it is quite modernized, but as you wind your way up to the top, things begin to take on a distinctly older hue. Roads are paved with cobblestone and sand and weave about in no particular order. Houses are tucked into nooks and crannies, with clothes lines hanging from balconies. The tiny cars zip around corners and make seemingly impossible turns on roads built long before macchine (cars). The church bells toll on random hours and from nearly all directions, as there is a church in almost every piazza.

The convent I lived in was built in the 1400s and had not only a courtyard, a terrace, a marble staircase, but also caves. Yes, caves that formed part of the basement, where our kiln for firing our ceramice (ceramics) sat in an abandoned corner. There were times when it felt like living in a maze of sorts. Stairs leading one way, hallways leading another, doors opening to rooms I didn't know existed. It made for an adventure each time I left my room.

The impact of not knowing the language was bigger than I could have anticipated. Because Orvieto is relatively small and doesn't get many touristi, very few people spoke english, in any amount. This meant every interaction I wanted to have outside of the convent (who's nuns didn't speak english either) it required speaking Italiano on my part. It became obvious early on that picking up a language was not one of my strong suits. I struggled to hear where the breaks were for each word, I confused my pronunciations, I labored over what article went in front of which gendered word (and what gender was it??). It was painful and time consuming and most of all humbling. I watched other students learn it with much more ease and for the first time I felt like the kid who sits in the back of the class, not at all confident in their ability to learn something new.

I can now look back and realize that my main difficulty was my unwillingness to make a mistake. If I was going to speak, I was going to speak correctly; grammar, pronunciation, all of it would be spot on. And so, because I set the bar so high for myself, I rarely spoke. Never in my life have I said so little for four months (or so it felt that way). I would study and study and figure out how to say something, only to break under pressure and forget it all. I distinctly remember being on a train, sitting with some of my friends and a few Italian women who had engaged my friends in conversation. It was soon apparent that I was saying not a word and so they tried to "help" me out by coaxing me into speaking. This was mortifying. Any vocabulary I might want to use was flying out of my head, scared off by the pressure. And so, as I had become accustomed to doing, I just smiled and shook my head. But they persisted and kept repeating words in an effort to get me to repeat them back to them. I remember thinking, "Is this what it was like for kids in school? For those who just didn't get it as quickly as others? Did we pressure them into feeling even more inadequate by putting them on the spot and forcing them to learn before they were ready?" If anything it gave me a great appreciation for students who struggle and overcome those struggles to learn. Because my natural instinct was to hide in the corner and be a mute. Luckily, the second time around was not so traumatic. In fact, it was quite full of great interactions, but only because I decided to allow myself to make mistakes, lots of them. And wouldn't you know? It worked.

More later, but for now I must get to work...

PS: I did make it to the library on Monday and I came home with Julie Andrews memoirs of her early years (brought on by a recent watching of Sound of Music on tv).

PPS: The picture was taken from inside San Lodovico, looking out to the stairs that lead up to the terraza that overlooked the valley below.

| straight from Capri

I was having some fun last night and updated our desktop wallpaper image to one I'd taken while sitting on the dock in Capri waiting for our jetfoil to arrive to take us back to the mainland. M was so impressed with it ("You took that? And didn't do any editing?" : it was very sweet of him) that I thought I'd share it with you and your desktop. So if you're in the mood for a nautical theme, just click on the link BELOW the picture for the large version.



Desktop version right HERE

lens flare and sun spots in orvieto

for a friend who's fond of those little spots...

|Via Della Commenda, Orvieto: just off the Corso|

firenze

I have a lot of pictures from Florence I want to share with you, so this will come in installments over the next few days.

|Il Duomo, Firenze : Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore|

|Cupola of Il Duomo, Firenze : designed by Filippo Brunelleschi, to appreciate the magnitude of this endeavor you can read more about it here.|

|Standing on Lungarno Torrigiani looking towards Ponte alle Grazie, with our backs to Ponte Vecchio, Firenze|

20 points to the person who can spot my Mom!

can you imagine?

So, as I'm sure you've heard, Italy was hit with a pretty bad earthquake on Monday. As of tonight, they're still trying to find people in the rubble. And while it's all very saddening, I did find one tidbit of the story that I thought you might enjoy...

From BBC:
"A 98-year-old woman was pulled out alive in L'Aquila after being trapped for 30 hours, local media report. She spent the time crocheting"

That is one tough Grandma. Or Nonna as they say in Italia.

tmam: parte duo

Today's "to do list" is quite long, but I know you're waiting for the second installment of the story I started on Friday, so I'll tell a bit more to hold you over til I have more time.



M and I often joked that we spent the first year of dating apart more than together. Leaving him at the end of sophomore year was hard, and I immediately began counting the days until he would visit. He was in Colorado most of the summer so it wasn't like we could just drive to one another on the weekends. I have many wonderful handwritten letters from that summer, exchanged back and forth across the many miles.

He came for about a week just before school started and before I was to fly off to Italy. I was on cloud nine. I probably had the biggest smile plastered across my face all week. Watching him drive away at the end of that week nearly broke my heart (and his, I'm sure). My poor mother spent the rest of the following week trying to comfort my tear stained self. As any normal melodramatic young love, I was sure I was going to curl up and die without him for the next 4 months.

About a week after he left I received a package in the mail, that along with other things, contained a dated letter for each week I was in Italy. I wasn't supposed to open them until the date written on the outside. Each week was filled with anticipation of opening the next letter. It was a way of counting down the days til I was home and could see him again. I distinctly remember getting to half way and thinking, "finally... it's downhill from here."

But I am getting ahead of myself. Let me back up and tell you about Orvieto...

(next time!)

tell me a mitzi

Today I'm feeling a bit like an antsy student in a Friday afternoon B quad class. The sun is out, my brain is with it and my focus is... well, unfocused.

I've been ruminating about how to share all of my Italy experiences with you and I've come to the conclusion that instead of just pictures, I really should start telling some stories along with them. You can't truly appreciate what this last visit there meant to me if you have no knowledge of my first memories there. So I will do my best at trying to give you a glimpse at what it looked like then and how it appears now and the life time it feels I've lived in between those visits.

---

From the moment I started looking at colleges, I knew I wanted to do a semester abroad. My college choices were narrowed down largely based on their "study abroad" programs. If they didn't have one or it was very small, they were off the list. I'm not sure when I decided on Italy, but it was early on in the process. While Wheaton did not have program going to Italy, I found Gordon College did. I had no idea at the time that picking Gordon, who had a program in Oriveto, would end up giving me such a unique experience as opposed to a program set up in Rome or Florence. I liken it to studying in NYC vs a small town in rural America. I'm not saying one is better than another... just totally different.

Sometime during the spring semester of my sophomore year I was accepted into Gordon's program for the following fall. I was ecstatic. I couldn't wait to go and experience all the stereotypical things you think of when you envision Italy... food, ancient ruins, quaint shops, another language etc. Having never lived outside the country I had no inclination of how things would actually end up transpiring. While some daydreams played out nearly by the book, others were so far off the mark I had a hard time believing I'd been so off base (read as: naive).

The anticipation of my semester abroad pushed me through that spring semester. I was ready to go and have my Sabrina moment, just in Italy, not Paris. She went over there a little nerdy girl and came back this sophisticated woman! I would be untethered and free to experience it to its fullest.

HA. Oh was I ever wrong.

Towards the end of spring semester it became blatantly clear (no matter how much I tried to deny it) that I was falling for a guy. Let me correct myself. I was fallen. I fell. I was down for the count. In the beginning I had tried to say "I'm going to Italy, I don't want to be attached." But the more time we spent together and the closer we got to summer, it was evident that I would be leaving for Italy that coming fall, but my spirit was going to be wishing I was still in Wheaton.

And so my vision of what Italy would be was already changing before I even stepped foot off the plane.

(more to come next week...)

ancient modeling

|Sculpture from Piazza del Campidoglio, Rome : a piazza designed my Michelangelo in 1536–1546, commissioned by the Farnese Pope Paul III|

|Fountain from the courtyard of the Vatican Museum, Rome|

|Sculpture from the Trevi Fountain, Rome : marks the terminal point of an aqueduct that supplied water to ancient Rome|

orvieto

All little info on Orvieto:

Elevation: 1,066 ft
Area: 108.5 sq miles
Population: 21,000
Region: Umbria
Name origin: "ancient city" urbs vetus in Latin

|View of Orvieto from our hike to a convent nearby : I love how it just sits atop the rock, above everything else.|

|Close up of Il Duomo, Orvieto - where I attended mass on Sundays|

|Some laundry hanging on a line off of Corso Cavour : Nearly everyone line dries their clothing as a way to conserve energy costs.|

|Fruit stand of a shop off the Corso : Apple = Mele|

lunedi, marzo ventuno

|Piazza San Angelo, Orvieto|

|Costa De' Magnoli, Firenze|

|Piazza Simone Mosca, Orvieto|

the post vacation let down

It is a blur. An 11 day blur of driving, plane flights, bus rides, site seeing, eating, sleeping, shopping, touring, more bus rides and then more plane flights. As our bodies have still not yet adjusted to being back on Chicago time, we awoke in the wee hours of the morning. It should make for an interesting afternoon and evening when our eyes start to feel the lag.

As for the pictures (and the videos) that's going to take me a bit to compile and edit them for you. After living there for 4 months I took a total of about 360 pictures, this time in only 9 days I took 1,755. Film vs digital.



The comforts of being home:
1. A scalding hot shower in my own bathroom, with my own fuzzy towels.
2. Putting my kettle on the stove for my usual morning tea.
3. Clean clothes.
4. Our bed, with our pillows.
5. Living out of my dresser instead of a suitcase.
6. Falling asleep on the couch.
7. My wooden floors.
8. Getting back in touch with friends.

The sighs of leaving behind:
1. Cappuccino every morning.
2. Melon wrapped in prosciutto.
3. Church bells to wake me.
4. Cobblestone roads that date back to BC
5. The quiet that comes with not fully understanding the language around you.
6. GELATO. No need to explain.
7. My feet in the Mediterranean while I search for the right pebble to take home.
8. Sharing Italia with my family.

buon viaggio

I am officially in the last throws of "pre vacation" jitters. Our taxi to the airport comes in an hour and a half! (gasp!) It will basically go like this for the next 48 hours: Fly, drive, sleep, drive, fly (and hopefully sleep), wait, fly, drive, THEN destination! Yes, it will be a bit of an epic journey just to get there.

I can't wait to share with you all the stories and pictures that will come out of the next 12 days. Until then... ciao!

{pre} trip glimpses

Okay, only if you promise not to let it spoil the fun, I'll share with you a few glimpses of where we're headed at the end of this month. Hopefully I'll come back with more photographs than I can count and I'll be able to give you your own guided personal tour through central and southern Italy. But for now, here is a little peek at where I studied for a semester, which is also where we'll be staying the first two nights: ORVIETO

| Courtesy of the Hotel Duomo site, where we're staying |

preparations

I have not been back down this road in seven years. I hardly know what to expect. It seems a bit like a dream, getting foggy around the edges as time passes. Four months spent across the seas, away from everyone and everything that was familiar. Those cobblestones in the road and those buildings made of gritty tufa rock, those formed the foundations of my memories. I wonder what it will look like now, through eyes seven years older, seven years wiser. It is only 17 days away and I still struggle to wrap my thoughts around it. Soon I will be counting the days on my fingers, then with only one hand, then packing, then boarding planes, then waiting and waiting. THEN I shall be there again. My feet will touch the cobblestone and my ears will be filled with foreign sounds. I wonder how it will feel this time around.

another person has my job

Yet again, I found another person who unknowingly has my job. Well not MY current job, but the job I want, the job that would be just right for me. Last time it was the photographer from Philly. This time it's a gal who does "restaurant identity and food packaging." I know that doesn't really sound like much, but it basically means being the designer behind how the food is packaged and presented to the consumer. And doing the same for a restaurant (imagine interior designer + food). Making logos, coming up with a "brand look" for an item so that it is distinctive and easily recognizable in its own right.

Her name is Louise Fili. This is her site. And here are some samples of her work:




Plus, she teaches typography, her work is in the permanent collections of the Library of Congress and she also designs book jackets - need I say more? This woman is cool and I want her job. Oh, and I'm pretty sure she's got Italian roots.

For a sneak peek into her office check out design sponge.

italia

Seven years ago today I was living in Orvieto, Italy.

That seems a bit odd to say even though it's true. There's part of that semester abroad that will always feel a little like a dream from which I'm slowly waking.

It was the one year anniversary of 9-11 and one of the local churches had a memorial service. Here's this little ancient Italian town, across the ocean, willing to take a few hours to remember those who were lost on another country's soil. The village's firefighters and policemen came in uniform and we sat quietly in the pews. In all honesty, I have no idea what was said, as the whole service was in Italian (and at that point I was only a few weeks in on my studying) but I remember being very touched by the sentiment of it all. As we walked around town that day, shop keepers had candles lit in their windows and little American flags hung nearby. It seemed a very fitting way to remember. I think they're better at these things than we are. We seem to be too busy, pulled in too many directions to allow ourselves ample time to feel things and sit back to remember. The pace is much slower over there and much more conducive to days of remembrance.

This was my town for 4 months.
Picture thanks to Tuscia Garden B&B.