Arrivederci Siena!

Da Martedi a Venerdi

Wow wow wow. I can’t believe today is it! I just finished my last day of classes! Accidenti! It has been a little crazy the past fews days so I haven’t been able to write my blogs. Not to mention I never had internet so I wouldn’t have been able to post them anywho. So I’ll start on Martedi (Tuesday):

After class the whole lot of students from Utah went to our professor’s apartment to eat various different types of pasta. She made us four different types! All from the same noodle, but just different sauces. It was really good. There was a gorgonzola, salsa di pomedori, pesto di basil, and another that was a meat one. It was really good and all I really know is it took her two days to make. Yikes. It was really fun to just hang out with everyone. Per dolce abbiamo mangiato ananas e vari biscotti. Era deliciosimo! Doppo sono andato cercare un libro al liberia ma non lo ho cercato :-( Va bene. I went home after that and ate a hamburger that one of my roommates (Jake E.) cooked up. He was very nice to share some with me. After we tested out some wines that I bought (they were horribly cheap wines we discovered) and just sat and talked politics and everything for awhile. It was actually a very nice conversation. I ended up getting to bed very late though because after I went and hung out with some other people in another apartment. It was a late night!

Mercoledi:

Wednesday was a very long day. I started the day out really early having not slept much and headed to the weekly market. I hadn’t been yet and I really wanted to go. It was interesting. It was basically just like going to the swap meets in Mexico/Arizona, but things were too expensive here because of the Euro/USD exchange. For Europeans though it would be very cheap. Then immediately after school three of us (Jake E and Carly) headed to piazza Gramsci to catch the bus to Firenze! To Florence again! Once we got there Jake and I went to the Accademia to see the infamous David. Dun dun dun.... WOW. We ended up waiting in line for a little bit because sadly the tourist season is starting up over here. Prior to that we had ZERO lines anywhere, but people are starting to poor in because school is now out in England and most of the US. British folks are big time tourists these days because the pound is worth so much. Ugh. Once we finally got in though, words become useless. There is honestly no word I can think of to properly describe the David. Michelangelo was a genius. I would say that only one other sculpture has surpassed him, Bernini. But man Michelangelo was the best of the best until Bernini came around. It was also really neat because there are four statues there that Michelangelo never finished so it gives a lot of insight into his sculpting technique, what was absolutely amazing. The best way to describe it is to think of a person raising out of the water and under the water they are a solid piece of marble but as they break the surface everything crumbles away and leaves only the person. It’s hard to describe but it’s amazing to see. He literally released the subject from the marble. Nobody else ever really mastered his technique. It was his own. After the Accademia I headed up the Duomo Dome and that was amazing too! But holy cow. It was very very humid that day in Firenze and I about died. Ugh. The dome is probably around 500 or 600 steps winding up and over and everywhere climbing to multiple places inside the dome. Suffice it to say I ended up getting heat stroke (I’m pretty sure) because that night I was no buono. I had a bad headache, I couldn’t stop sweating, I felt like vomiting, I wasn’t good. BUT I ended up cooking dinner and then meeting a bunch of people at the Tea Room for one of our last get-togethers as a whole group there. Of course I left early because I just wasn’t feeling well at all. I really enjoyed the dome though! It was amazing. It made for a very long day though and I’m pretty sure that combined with the heat stroke I was exhausted from such a long day in the heat. Ugh.

Thursday was tough. My teacher had told us not to worry about our test and that it would be easy but of course it wasn’t. We had our final and I did horrible. The test was just not put together very well and the structure was VERY difficult to understand. It’s strange because they take tests different here. It’s not the same way we test in the states so not only are you trying to fill in the answers but you’re also having to figure out the structure of the test too. It was strange the first time I took a test here. Just different. It ended up being very draining, not to mention that it is horrifyingly hot here. It’s bad. It makes it so hard to concentrate. (Today is even worse. This morning at 8 it was already unbearable). After class the school put on a big lunch for the U of U students and some of the teachers came and it was really fun. My teacher is a riot lol. I’ll have to show you some videos of her, but she’s the talk of the group. She’s crazy! We love her! I wasn’t doing so great Thursday though because I still wasn’t recovered from Wednesday. After the lunch I ended up just relaxing in the camp with Sarah and just doing nothing. We just sat there and talked and people watched and I drank lots of water and it was great to just relax. Essentially it was the last time I’d be hanging out in the campo! It was a little sad. We had all planned on going to an enotecca later, but Sarah and I headed over there to check it out and discovered it was way way too upscale for tourists! It was a good thing we didn’t go because people were dressed way too nice. Hopefully today we will be going though because I want to pick up some wine I found there that is amazing. On the way there we stumbled across an Italian basketball game though! In the street they had blocked off a section and there were tons of high schoolers out playing ball in different jerseys. We watched for awhile on the way there and then on the way back we ran into some people from our group and we all watched them play a few tournaments together. It was really interesting. Italians play basketball kind of like soccer! It’s strange. They weren’t the greatest but it was really fun to watch. They were blasting American rap and shooting hoops, serving hot dogs and hamburgers, it was just like being at home... Sort of. After that we headed to the Tea Room again for a smaller version of goodbyes to everyone. We were some of the only people there so we ended up playing the piano and singing and having quite the time. I ended up heading home early though so that I could get some much needed sleep.

Friday:

Today I woke up much better! The sleep was nice. It was also nice to know that school was basically finished and so there was a bit less stress. We ended up talking all morning in class about random things like religion and Africa and just talking. It was wonderful! It was nice to be able to carry on conversation in Italian (even though it was horrid italian!). Then we all headed to a local bar to get caffé and cappucinos and just sit and talk outside of a classroom setting. After that we came back and spent some time on Facebook with my teacher looking at pictures and talking about them and it was so much fun! I am now friends with my italian teacher on Facebook! Woot! After class we all wrote on the wall in the student lounge (tradition) and here I am! I made some lunch and packed a bit. Then I went to the Ennoteca to buy some wine to bring home but....it was all gone! I was very upset. This is the best wine I’ve ever tasted here in Italy and it’s really rare. I ended up traversing all over Siena trying to find it and everywhere I went everyone had this look on their face of “You want what?” *sigh* Hopefully I can find it online in the states because I only have one bottle :-( Immediately after that I met up with a group and we all went to San Giseppi, a tavern/restaurant that is really really good and fancy. It was delicious! Really expensive but really good and it was awesome to hang out with some people one last time. There were three people there, two from Holland, one from Sweden, that have become pretty good friends. It was a little hard to say goodbye! It’s starting to set in. Hopefully tonight I won’t be staying up too late, because tomorrow I’ll be waking up around 4 o’ clock! Yikes! I get on the train to leave Siena at 6.27 and I head to Svizzera! Wish me luck!