Venezia, La citta su acqua

This past weekend I went to Venice with a group of 8 fellow students from my program.  We left Arezzo on a train around noon Saturday, got to Venice around 3:30pm and left at 6:30 the next day to get back to Arezzo for school the next day.

 

photo from a friends Facebook page 

 

Venice is on of the few cities I've been to where it's beautiful as soon as you step out of the train station.

 

 

Our first mission, after we got off the train was to find some lunch, which was a lot hard than it sounds because many places were closed for the afternoon but we ended up finding a nice place to have some pizza. We didn't try this "American" pizza with eggs and bacon but the pepperoni pizza I had was very good.

 

 

After lunch we made our way to Piazza San Marco. It was a pretty long walk but there was so much to see along the way, it wasn't too bad.

 

Rialto Bridge

Carnivale masks in progress

 

Piazza San Marco is a huge plaza with many important things all clumped together. There is the San Marco Basilica.  Unfortunately we never got to go in due to our timing.

 

 

One of my favorite sites of the trip was the Piazza San Marco clock tower.  It has balls that move to show the phases of the moon and it is rung by mechanical statues.

 

 

While at Piazza San Marco, we took an elevator to the top of another tower to get some great views of the city.

 

 

Right around the corner was the Bridge of Sighs which use to be used to transport prisoners from the prison to the execution spot.

 

After that we walked back to the train station to catch a shuttle bus to our hostel. The next day we took a water taxi to the island of Murano.  They have been blowing glass on this island for over 700 years.  I did buy some of the glass but most of what I bought was gifts so I won't show you much.  I'll will show you this bracelet I bought though.

 

The owner of the store I went to made everything himself. We walked through this island for most of the day.  It was much more relaxing than Venice because not many tourist were there.

Friends Facebook photo

 

 

After we got done at Murano we tried to go back to San Marco to go inside but there was a really long line of people waiting to get in and no one really wanted to wait so we walked back to the train station and had lunch on the Grand Canal.

 

 

It was a great trip.  Our next trip is with the school.  We are heading to Florence this Saturday.

 

 

 

 

 



Italy: Week 1

Sunday June 2nd:  I got to Arezzo!!!! Then immediately went on a tour of the city with the group and then we all went out to dinner.  We had some really great pizza. I didn't take many pictures because I was so tired from traveling that I totally forgot to take my camera out. I'll remember to take some later.  After dinner, we went home and I finally meet my host mom!  I am staying in a really nice apartment with a woman named Daniella.  Her husband is a sailor and he's in Greece right now and her children are all married and living on their own so it's just us and my roommate, Brittany.  I told her that any weekend she wanted to go visit her husband, I would be happy to go with her.

Monday June 3rd:  Classes started.  My class load is pretty light.  I am taking an Italian culture class that everyone in my program is taking and I am taking an Italian independent study class.  For that I have to keep a blog for the trip.  I can write about anything I want, it just has to be in Italian and I will be given a word limit I have to reach.  If anyone wants to see that you can find it here.

Wednesday June 5th:  We went to a wine tasting.  The vineyard we went to is called La Striscia and we got a tour of the vineyard and tried three different types of wine.  We learned all about the wine making process and how to the alcohol content or type of grape by looking at the color and if it leaves legs on the glass.  I also learned that wine companies sometimes like to make dry wines because it dries out the back of your throat and you want to drink more.  My favorite was the Chianti so I bought a bottle.  I'm hoping to get this bottle back the the States but I might need to drink it before then.

Saturday June 8th:  8 out of the eleven of us decided to go to Venice for the weekend! It was a beautiful city but it deserves it's own post so I'll talk about that later.  I will say we all had a really good time and it was great getting to know the group a little bit better.

Delayed

Right now I am suppose to be on a flight to Rome on my way to study abroad in a nice little Tuscan town called Arezzo.  Where am I? Sitting in the Cleveland Airport Sheraton.  I was suppose to be flying from Cleveland to Montreal and from Montreal to Rome.  I don't know what's going on in Montreal but apparently they did not want my flight from Cleveland to land there.  So after two hours of standing in the customer service line I learned there was absolutely no way I could get to Rome by the time I was suppose to be there.  Instead I am now going to arrive in Rome a day later than planned. 

 

I'm kind of bummed that I'm going to be missing the welcome dinner tomorrow night and probably the tour of the city on Sunday afternoon, but I can think of worse situations to be in right now.  Standing behind me in the customer service line was a group going to Sierra Leone on a mission trip.  Turns out they were originally planning on leaving Monday and then decided to leave today so they could get started earlier. Now they aren't going to arrive in Sierra Leone until....you guessed it, Monday.

 

Because I am arriving late, I am going to miss the nice chartered bus the program got for us from the Rome airport to Arezzo, so now I am responsible for my own transportation from Rome to Arezzo.  I figure if this is going to happen to anyone, it might as well be me.  I am comfortable enough with my experience traveling and my Italian language skills that I am positive that I can get myself to Arezzo. I just wish I didn't have to 

 

Maybe you can imagine that I'm not in the best of moods right now, so I'm going to write a list of things to be happy about:

 

1. I am going to Italy.  I might be getting there late, but I'm still going to get there.

 

2.  I am going to get there before my classes start,  I don't have to worry about having to catch up with everyone else.

 

3.  I am only missing a dinner and a city tour.  There will be many other dinners and plenty of time to learn about Arezzo.  It's not like I'm missing a tour of Rome or the day trip to Florence.  I am not missing anything that I would be truly upset about missing.

 

4.  This is a great way to jump right into using my Italian.  If I was traveling to Arezzo with the program I would not have to speak Italian until I was left alone with my host family.

 

5.  This is a pretty sweet hotel they've hooked me up with.

 

6.  I had a sandwich and glass of wine for dinner that would have cost me $20 and I didn't have to pay a cent.

 

7. I have my suitcase with me, so I don't have to wear the same thing for 3 straight days.

 

8. My flight out of Cleveland tomorrow isn't until noon so I don't have to wake up early.

 

9. I have a 3 hour layover until my flight to Rome so, unless my flight out of Cleveland is delayed, I won't have to rush.

 

I'm sure there are many more things I could be happy about, but these nine things are already making me feel a lot better and I'm too tired to think of any more. I'm going to go decide which big, fluffy bed to sleep in tonight.

Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer

Emphasis on the crazy.  

 

This morning I had my last final exam of the semester at 8am.  I was done by 8:30.  And so began my summer!!!!   I have some pretty crazy plans for this summer, mainly, going to Italy.  I'm leaving on May 31st (that's this month!!!) and I will be gone until July 16th.  In the mean time, I've been making plans for what else I want to do, particularly what I want to read and what I want to knit.

I want to finish all of these books plus On the Road, Old Man and the Sea, La Sombra del Viento and maybe an Italian novel.  Nine Hills to Nambonkaha, Festival for Three Thousand Maidens,
The Village of Waiting and Mango Elephants in the Sun are all memoirs written by return Peace Corps volunteers and To Touch the World is a collection of essays about the Peace Corps experience.  I have a list of about 10 more books about the Peace Corps that I want to read at some point but I think I should read the book I have first. It might be a little unrealistic for me to get through all of these books this summer.  It's a good thing I don't usually get too disappointed in myself for not meeting my goals.

I was going to make a list of all the things I want to knit this summer but that would probably end up being even more ridiculously long and impossible than my reading list.  I do know that I want to knit The Old Man and the Sea cardigan by Mel of Single Handed Knits and I would like to knit through as much of the yarn that I already have as possible.

It also sounds like the ISA office on campus will be open for the summer so I will hopefully be working there a bit before and after I go to Italy.

This summer is just going to be full of fun things for me!

Peace Corps Update

So I think I mentioned awhile ago that I applied for the Peace Corps and then I kind of just stopped talking about it.  I'm kind of afraid that if I talk too much about what's going on with the Peace Corps and really let on how excited I am about this possibility that I'm going to jinks myself or something like that and I'm not going to get in.  But I thought I should just give a little update about where I am in the Peace Corps application process. 

Over my spring break, I had an interview and shortly after that I received a nomination for the education program.  A nomination isn't a guarantee that I'll get in, but it's a pretty good sign.  So what's going on now is that the medical people with the Peace Corps are looking over my health history form to see if they need anymore information from me and I've sent in a couple of copies of my fingerprints for a background check.  Seeing as my health history is a couple of broken bones and a pair of dental implants, I'm not really expecting that they'll need much more information from me.  The background checks can take between two and six weeks to finish and then after that and my health history have been cleared, all my information will go to the head administrative team and they will look through it, maybe contact me and ask me a few questions and then they will make the final decision. 

I'm not expecting to hear from the Peace Corps for at least another month or two, but I'll keep you posted!

Featherweight: The Remake

In the past couple of months my Featherweight cardigan has gone from this

 

to this

 

 

and ended up like this.

 

 

I should say that I am ten to fifteen lbs lighter that I was the first time I finished this sweater so it did look a little different on me when I took it apart, than it did in that first oh so lovely picture.  It was pretty large, especially around the arms but then the bind off on the bottom and the neck band where too tight so it kind of clung to me in those areas.  I also knit this for the first time when I was at a point in my knitting where I felt the need to knit everything exactly as the pattern says.  So I knit the body of the sweater for exactly as long as the pattern said, when I would have felt more comfortable with a longer sweater. Basically, I felt uncomfortable in this sweater so I never wore it.

 

Anyway, I reknit the sweater and made it exactly how I want it and it looks awesome and I love it.

 

Next up is....finals week and papers due. I don't have time for knitting.   

KWLA Festival

Friday, during my Spanish American Civilizations class, the professor passed around a piece of paper to get volunteers for the KWLA Festival (I'm pretty sure that stands for Kentucky World Language Association and it's basically a festival for any student (high school or lower) of any language to come and practice and show off what they know).  The Festival was today, from 8am to 2pm so I really was not all that interested in volunteering, but when the paper got me ( I was the last person to get it) there wasn't a single name on the list and I felt bad that no one else wanted to volunteer so I went ahead and put my name down.  So today, I got to lead 4 rounds of Spanish Jeopardy, 2 beginning level rounds and 2 intermidiate rounds.  It was a pretty fun day but I'm pretty sure I don't want to be a high school Spanish teacher.  I don't think I have the patience to work with some of these students.

 

Although it was an early day, this gig did come with some pretty sweet perks.  I got free lunch and $20 worth of gift cards! I think my professor is also giving me some extra credit for helping out.