Maria in Venice

Feast of St. Lucia, the MOSE, the Port, and Paolo

2009-12-15T18:32:00.012-05:00

Pictures: Christmas trees for sale on the side of the canal; the outdoor sale; inside the Miracoli; the cruise ship in progress; one of the massive cranes at the port; the MOSE-not much to see, that's a boat with a crane in the middle there, but under the water is a row of twenty gates that stretch from the bit of land you can see at the left side of the picture to the bit of land you can see at the right side of the picture; us with Paolo, from the left that's Natalie, Stephanie, Lizzie, Paolo, Audrey, Shannon, me, Dane, and Elyse.

Hi guys,

Sunday was the Feast of St. Lucia, or St. Lucy, who is the patron saint of eye problems. A feast day is just simply a day specially dedicated to a certain saint. In this case, the feast day of St. Lucia was important because her tomb is in Venice, in the church of San Geremia, which means St. Jeremiah. So for Mass on Sunday, Lizzie, Shannon, Audrey, and I went to San Geremia. The church was much more crowded than San Marco normally is for Mass, I’m not sure whether it was just because of the feast day or because more normal parishioners attend this church. Either way, it was packed and we ended up having to sit in the very front row. It was a little weird at communion, because the pews were set up so that there was a group in front of the altar, one off to the left side of the altar, and one off to the right side of the altar (we were in the front row of the left side) and at first there was only one priest handing out communion. And instead of lining up neatly as people do in American churches, everyone just stood up in no particular order and started forming a crowd around the priest handing out communion. It was a little crazy and we weren’t quite sure what to do, but luckily a second priest came up fairly quickly and started handing out communion, too, which made things a little less hectic. It was like at the McDonalds in Florence, and so many other places, though, because for whatever reason, Italians just don’t know how to form lines. The music for the Mass was awesome, they had two people playing guitars and singing and all the songs were really pretty. After Mass, we joined the line of people in the church and got to go around and touch St. Lucy’s tomb, which was pretty awesome.

After leaving the church, we wandered down Strada Nuova, which is one of the main shopping streets in Venice. We eventually came to this great outdoor sale, almost like a rummage sale or a really, really nice garage sale, going on and we did some looking around and shopping there. There were some cool things, including a lot of antiques, such as these neat opera glasses that Audrey was interested in until she asked the guy what the price was and he told her they were 100 euros, which is about $150 (quite a bit more than she was looking to spend on them) and then some more modern stuff too; for example, I saw DVDs of the original Star Wars trilogy in Italian.

On our way back to the boat stop from this sale, Shannon and I stopped and went into the church of Santa Maria dei Miracoli (which means St. Mary of Miracles), which is a very pretty, quite small church that is almost hidden down a street. The inside was beautiful, though, my second favorite after Saint Anastasia’s church in Verona. The marble on the outside is continued on the inside and so instead of the frescoes or mosaics in many other churches, you can just see the beautiful marble, it’s not even covered up by paintings. The ceiling was also neat because it looked like big, carved wooden blocks with gold around them. I liked the Miracoli because the church was simple but elegant, a rarity in Venice, and in Italy in general.

Monday was really enjoyable. We took a boat tour of the port of Venice and then went out to where the MOSE project is being built. The MOSE project is supposed to keep the acqua altas, the high waters that flood Venice, from happening. It’s really cool how it’s designed: basically, there are these massive metal doors under the water and when the water level is dangerously high, the doors are inflated with air and they rise up to the surface, holding the water back. Then, when the water level drops, the doors are filled up with water and they sink back down again. Unfortunately, because all the good stuff is underwater, there wasn’t much to see when we went out to where they’re building the MOSE, but there were still cranes and things and it was still great to learn about the project. Plus, the water was much choppier out there and since our boat had picked up some speed because we were outside of the city, we were actually airborne over the waves a couple of times, which was awesome.

The port was much more interesting than I’d expected it to be. We got to see where all of the goods get unloaded from the ships that bring them in and saw coal being unloaded from a ship, plus we saw the massive cranes that are used to unload the ships. The port also has the largest silos in Europe, which are used for storing various goods. The best bit, though, was getting to see where they actually build cruise ships, two are being built there right now, our boat went right around them so we could see. One looked pretty much finished, but the other was clearly still in the process of being constructed, there were workers on it who looked like they were welding and doing other jobs. That was exciting to see, especially because apparently the port of Venice is one of the very few places in Europe where cruise ships are constructed. So the boat tour was definitely a good time.

Then, Monday night, we met Paolo, our Italian professor, for drinks and to get our certificates saying that we successfully completed our Italian course. It was very nice to get to chat with Paolo again; we haven’t seen him in a few weeks since we finished Italian class. He told us that he had really enjoyed our class, and that he didn’t tell everyone that, and then, as surprises for us, he gave each of us a special coin that the Dante Alighieri Institute made. The coin is actually based on one that the doge used to have minted and apparently the Dante Alighieri Institute “borrowed” a replica stamp which made doge coins from the Venetian library and, without anyone knowing, made a bunch of these coins and then returned the stamp to the library. So our coins are actually pretty rare, because the Dante Alighieri Institute only made so many of them; it’s a really awesome gift. Drinks with Paolo was a nice way to finish the day.

Oh, I almost forgot to add that there was actually snow in the air yesterday! Yesterday morning, as we were waiting for our boat for the tour to pick us up, it was flurrying just a little bit. Apparently snow in Venice is a really rare thing, so I was excited that we got to see it.

Sunday and Monday were a good way to start off my last week in Venice...just three more days left in Venice, I can’t even believe it, and then early Saturday morning I’ll be leaving to fly home!

Ciao,
Maria

Naples and Pompeii

2009-12-09T16:37:00.012-05:00

Pictures: Group picture when we first got to Pompeii, from left, me, Shannon, Sara, Natalie, Audrey, Caylen, and Dane. Then the main open square with ruins and Mount Vesuvius. One of the bodies. Some of the napping dogs. One of the roads through Pompeii. Some more ruins with Vesuvius in the background again. A random shot of the ruins. One of the frescoes. Pompeii with the mountains behind it. Sara, Audrey, and me in the amphitheater in Pompeii.
Hi all,

First of all, thank you everyone for my card! I finally got it yesterday and it completely made my day, it was awesome! Also, some business, for whatever reason Blogger has stopped letting me put up videos on my blog, so I’ve put some up on YouTube instead. If you just search “mariasteinmetz” on YouTube it should bring up all my videos. Right now there are four, “Naples Castle”, “The Bells of St. Francis”, “Across the Salute Bridge”, and “The Salute”. So check them out if you get a chance! Also, I have added a countdown clock to the bottom of the blog, right below the new and final poll, “Which is your favorite holiday?” The choices are Christmas, Thanksgiving, Halloween, Easter, and Fourth of July. The results from the previous poll, “What’s your favorite book series?” showed that most people prefer the Twilight series, which won with 63%, while Harry Potter came in second with 45%.

Now, moving on, this past weekend I went with Shannon, Sara, Audrey, Caylen, Natalie, and Dane to Naples, Italy, which is in southern Italy, about a ten hour train ride from Venice. We had been warned by several people to be very careful in Naples and not to take anything with us that we really didn’t want stolen. Apparently, the Mafia is big in the city, too, so I was sufficiently nervous about going. However, the city was actually fine, not really any different than any other big city. I’m sure there probably were bad parts, like in any big city, but as we stayed mostly in the historic district, it wasn’t that bad. I was actually more concerned about someone being hit by a car because the drivers were crazy and in many places there weren’t crosswalks. However, we all managed to get out unscathed, and we saw some pretty cool sites. We got completely drenched trying to go to this one castle because it was pouring rain, but the rain had stopped by the time we went to a second castle, so we got some really good pictures of the view and I even took a video, which is now on YouTube. Our hostel, Hostel of the Sun, was cool, too, much nicer than our one in Brindisi; apparently this Naples hostel was voted second in the world in 2006, so that was exciting. Naples is famous for its pizza, so we had to try some of that and it was excellent. Overall, Naples was fun.

However, the main event came the next day because to be perfectly honest, while I’m glad that I enjoyed Naples, I was really just using it (and I think the others were too) as a jumping off point to get to Pompeii. In 79 AD, Mount Vesuvius erupted and the city of Pompeii was covered almost immediately in layers of ash and rock. This ash and rock unfortunately very quickly killed all the citizens of Pompeii, but it also perfectly preserved the city exactly as it was that day. So when Pompeii was finally uncovered, it was the best example of what life was like back in the first century AD. I had always wanted to go to Pompeii, but never actually expected that I would get the chance, so I was thrilled when we planned this trip.

We caught a bus in Naples and it ended up being our own private tour bus from Naples to Pompeii because no one else got on, which was pretty sweet. The day was beautiful, the weather was perfect, sunny and warm, but with a bit of wind to keep it from getting hot. We drove along the Mediterranean coast, with Mount Vesuvius on our left. The drive itself was fantastic, up until the driver let us off in what we thought was the middle of nowhere, and he told us to walk two minutes up the road to get to Pompeii. Luckily, his directions were accurate and within a few minutes we walked through the entrance to Pompeii and got our first look at the ruins on the hillside. These were just the tip of the iceberg, though, as we quickly found out after we bought our tickets and went inside. I had always imagined that Pompeii was a pretty small city and I couldn’t understand why Dane’s guidebook said that it would take four hours just to take a cursory look at the city. However, within a few minutes, I understood. The city was massive. We got there at ten in the morning and had to leave at 3:30 to get back to Naples to catch our train back to Venice, so we had a good five hours in Pompeii but it wasn’t nearly enough time to see even half of what was there. We saw a ton of stuff though, including the Roman baths, the amphitheatre, 2000 year old frescoes that are still in great condition, actual bodies of people who died when Vesuvius erupted, and many houses, temples, and shrines. It was, beyond a doubt, my favorite day of this entire trip, which is really saying something. One of the best parts was when Shannon and I went through this gate into this part of the ruins that I’m not entirely sure we were supposed to be in and we were the only people back there. The ruins in that part were almost clichéd because they were overgrown with trees and bushes, they didn’t even have floors anymore, just grass, and they were fantastic. We were running around taking pictures like a couple of little kids in a really awesome playground.

The whole day was pretty much like that. A lot of the time we were literally just lost in the ruins and it was great. The weather was perfect, the view outside of Pompeii was gorgeous, too, because not only was Mount Vesuvius towering over the city, there were mountains all around, and you could also see the Mediterranean Sea from some of the higher parts of the city. The ruins themselves were incredible, too, because they were so well-preserved, and it was amazing to think that I was walking along the same roads that people walked across 2000 years ago. It was just an awesome day.

One cool fact about Pompeii that I didn’t know before I got there was that there are a lot of stray dogs that live in the ruins, we probably saw about twenty while we were there. People can adopt them and pay for them to be taken care of. All the dogs seemed pretty happy, people petted them and brought them food, we saw several just napping in the sun, they seem to have a pretty good life.

Overall, Pompeii was excellent, it was a great last weekend trip. Now it’s all about finishing up my final projects for class and enjoying this last week in Venice. So far, this week in class we went to a night concert Monday in the prisons in the Doge’s Palace, which was really good, then on Tuesday we went to the Ca’ Pesaro modern art museum, which was neat, and today we went to the Peggy Guggenheim modern art museum, which was really cool, there were paintings in there by a lot of famous artists, like Jackson Pollock and Salvador Dali, even a couple of paintings by Picasso, which were of course strange but still awesome. Also, on Monday night, the ten of us went to the Hard Rock Café, partly for Natalie’s birthday and partly just because we are all craving American food. We weren’t disappointed, the food was great, and, naturally, so was the music. Then, last night, since it was the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, Lizzie and I went to a night Mass at San Marco, which was really beautiful.

So, that’s what I’ve been up to lately. I can’t believe there’s only one week left of this program, it feels like it went by so fast. However, as much as I do love Venice and Italy, I will be glad to be home, too. But there’s still a week left to enjoy Venice and that’s what I’m planning to do. Hope everyone is doing well! It’s almost Christmas!

Ciao,
Maria

Assisi

2009-11-29T16:59:00.014-05:00

The first four pictures are all views of Assisi and the surrounding countryside from the tower of the castle, the next one is of the mannequins set up in the dining hall of the castle, after that is a view of the mountains as we were walking up to the castle. Next is the church of St. Francis from the outside, then how it looked on the inside. I know the inside isn’t the best shot, but we weren’t really supposed to take pictures in there so I kind-of had to be sneaky about it. Then, there’s just another shot of Assisi as a whole, followed by the castle we went to earlier, then a shot of the entire city from when we were walking in the countryside, and finally Santa Maria degli Angeli, right at the end of the day at sunset.

Hi guys,

This weekend I went with Lizzie, Shannon, and Dane on a day-trip to the town of Assisi. It’s just about in the very center of Italy, in the region of Umbria. I have to say that this was, so far, absolutely my favorite place in Italy. It was beautiful. The town is in the mountains, it actually sits halfway up one, and the views from the town are beyond spectacular. It was a really enjoyable trip, too, very relaxing, even though we were running around the city all day.

We started off by taking an overnight train from Venice to this tiny town called Cortona, where we switched trains to go the rest of the way to Assisi. Sleeping on the train wasn’t as bad as it was on the trip to Lecce and Brindisi, which was a relief; I think it helped that the trip was only about six hours, rather than twelve. The station in Cortona was a little bit creepy, because it was about 5:30 in the morning and there were only about three other people there, but our train came within an hour, so it was all good.

We got to Assisi at about eight. The train station is in the more modern part of Assisi, which is in the valley between the mountains. We had to take a bus up to the more historic part of Assisi, but first we stopped at Santa Maria degli Angeli (St. Mary of the Angels) which is in the newer part of town. The church was massive, but beautiful. Inside, there was a smaller church built within the bigger one and they were having Mass inside it. The little church wasn’t much bigger than a large toolshed, but apparently it is where St. Francis of Assisi first learned that he was to dedicate his life to God’s work (once more, thanks to Wikipedia!). Outside of the little church, but still within the larger church, was also a small shrine dedicated to St. Francis because it is supposedly where he died.

After leaving Santa Maria degli Angeli, we caught a bus that took us up the mountain and into the heart of Assisi. The bus ride was incredible, because the higher we climbed, the better and better the view got. It was fantastic, especially since it was early enough that there was still mist in the valley and around the mountains, which made for some great pictures. Once we got off the bus, we decided to climb up to Rocca Maggiore, which is a medieval castle that sits up above Assisi. It was a very long climb, up a ton of steps and a pretty steep road, but it was worth it when we got there. The castle itself was pretty cool, though we went through it fairly quickly because we had a lot of other things to see in pretty limited time, but the rooms I went through were really neat. The best was a dining room where a table was set up, plus all these mannequins in medieval costumes, like they were actually having a dinner party. After looking around the castle, we climbed up this narrow, steep, stone staircase to the very top tower. The view was incredible, I could easily have stood there all day and not gotten bored with looking. I took a ton of pictures, too, of course, but they don’t quite do it justice.

After the castle, we headed down to the church of St. Francis, which is situated at one end of the town, with a great wide courtyard in front of it. There were mangers set up, ready for Nativity scenes it looked like, though the actual statues weren’t set up yet. The church itself was very pretty, all white stone. Inside, it was unbelievable. The walls and ceiling were completely covered in brightly covered frescoes, which are paintings made directly onto the walls, instead of onto a canvas, and the windows were all made of stained glass. Then, underneath this main church, was a smaller, older church, also covered in amazing frescoes all over the walls and ceiling; it was incredible. From the lower church, you could then go down even further to the tomb of St. Francis. That was really awesome; again, like with St. Anthony’s tomb in Padua, there was just a sense of holiness and power that hung around the place.

Back outside the church, where we’d all agreed to meet up, there was another great view out over the valley below. Then, because we just happened to be there at noon, the bells of the church started ringing. They were really pretty and it was especially cool because they actually swung back and forth, which not all church bells do anymore. I don’t know how they make sound without swinging in other places, but they do, like in a number of the churches in Venice. So that was a pretty sweet deal.

After leaving the church, we grabbed a quick lunch at a small pizza place. We actually all ended up ordering the same thing, a slice of pizza with ham and artichokes on top, it might not sound like it would be good, but it was wonderful. Then, we headed over to the church of St. Clare, only to find out that it had closed at twelve and would not reopen until two. So, after a very brief peek into Santa Maria Maggiore church, we decided to split up for a bit, so Dane went back up to the castle while Lizzie, Shannon, and I went shopping. Most of the stores were pretty similar to ones in Venice, but one that was really cool was a store that embroidered your name, or whatever you wanted, onto aprons, towels, keychains, or whatever for you. This sounds semi-boring, I know, but the way they did it was what was cool. It was on a sewing machine and completely freehand, but they were so fast that it was incredible. There was a lady sitting outside the shop with a sewing machine who offered to do each of our names on just a piece of scrap material for free, so we all did that, which was cool, and then Shannon ended up buying a keychain for a friend of hers because she was so impressed and liked it.

We met back up and went into St. Clare’s church. It was pretty, but many of the frescoes had disappeared from the walls because they don’t hold up well to moisture. We also went into St. Clare’s tomb, which was also very cool.

After we left St. Clare’s, we decided to find one last church, San Damiano, which was a little ways outside of the main city. However, it was very pretty to walk too, down this gravel path through olive groves, with the mountains behind us and several parasailers in the sky above them. The church itself was very tiny, but pretty, and, because it is also a convent, used to be the home of St. Clare, long ago.

We left the church after a quick walkthrough and because we did not want to go back the way we had come, because it was all pretty steeply uphill and we were tired, we opted to follow a road which we thought led to a bus stop outside the city walls and which ran downhill. The walk was a lot of fun, especially at the beginning, because we were just wandering down a road in the middle of the Italian countryside, not exactly sure where we were going, but that was part of the fun. The fields around us were empty this time of year, but apparently in summer they are filled with sunflowers, which must be just amazing to see.

Eventually, we did start to get a little concerned, not because there was anything creepy about where we were walking, just because we only had about an hour and a half or so to get back to the train station and we weren’t sure we could get there in time. Luckily, about ten minutes after we realized this, we got back to a main road and a bus stop, where we only had to wait about another ten minutes before a bus came that we took directly to the train station. However, Lizzie wanted to go back to Santa Maria degli Angeli because she wanted to get a gift for someone from the stand there and since we thought it was the next stop on the bus, we all stayed on. But then, the bus turned in the complete opposite direction, back out into the countryside, and we all panicked, because now we only had an hour left until our train was leaving. I hit the button on the bus to get off at the next stop, but the bus kept going and the next stop was way too far out to walk back from. When I asked the driver, he said that the bus did in fact go back to Santa Maria degli Angeli (which was within three blocks of the train station), but what we didn’t know was when it went back there. As it turned out, the bus was on a loop, so we went all the way out into the countryside, but then back and got dropped off right outside Santa Maria degli Angeli about fifteen minutes after we left the train station. As you can imagine, we were just as relieved to get off the bus as we had been to get on it.

We managed to catch our train, no problem, which took us to Florence, where we had about an hour to wait before our train was leaving for Venice, so we got dinner at the McDonalds in the train station. I have to admit, one reason I will be glad to come back to the US is that at least people know how to make a line in the US. In Italy, everyone just kind of makes a massive crowd around the counter and whoever can shove through and up to the front first gets to order. So just because you’ve been standing there longer than someone else does not mean that you will get to order before them. It’s a bit chaotic. We all did eventually manage to get our food, though, and had plenty of time to eat before our train. I was pretty excited about this train because it was a Eurostar train, which are nicer and make less stops so they’re faster than the regional trains we’ve been riding most of the time. So the train ride back was fun, it made for a good end to the day.

So that’s all for now. I hope everyone has a good week this week! Keep leaving comments, I love hearing from you all!

Ciao,
Maria : )

Thanksgiving

2009-11-27T09:40:00.002-05:00

Hi all,

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful day, with plenty of food involved. Thanksgiving here was definitely a very different experience, as you can imagine. The weirdest bit was that no one but us was celebrating the holiday (since it’s an American holiday), which made it feel much less like Thanksgiving. However, it was still a pretty fun day.

We met up with our professors at about 2:00 for a surprise, which turned out to be a tour of the clock tower that stands in Piazza San Marco. Only half the group could go up at a time, though, so the other half of us (Lizzie, Shannon, Caylen, Sara, Emily our professor, Chris who works for Purdue and was visiting this week, and me) went over to the Correr Museum, which has some really great artworks and statues, while the first group was in the tower. Then, after an hour, we switched off and we went up the tower while they all went to the museum.

The clock tower may be my favorite thing that we’ve done so far in Venice. It was so cool, partially because it was completely different from anything else we’ve done. Our guide, Elena, was great too, she was really enthusiastic. She told us about the history of the clock tower, how one family had lived in and run the clock tower for about three centuries, until 1998 when the last member was asked to move out so that the tower could be restored and opened to the public. It was so cool inside because we got to see all the inner workings of the clock, plus we got to watch from the inside when the minutes changed, it looked like the wheel on Wheel of Fortune to be honest. Then, we got to go outside on the balcony and look out over the square and because it was on the hour, we got to see the clock strike four. This was the coolest part because on the very top of the clock are the statues of two men, each holding a hammer and they actually move and swing their hammers and strike the bell on the hour, since it was four o’clock they each rang the bell four times, the guy on the right hit the bell two minutes before four, the guy on the left hit it four times right at four.

After they were finished striking the hour, we could go up to the very top of the tower, where the bell and the statues are. This was really awesome, but scary too, because the roof was a bit slanted and the railing was quite low, plus the roof was damp because it was drizzling. The view was amazing and Elena our guide was telling us more about the bell and the figures, which was cool, but I was still glad to go back down the spiral staircase into the building. Like I said, though, it was totally worth it because the view was incredible, every roof was red-tiled and the walkways and canals are so narrow that it just looks like nothing but roofs stretching out until the water, except for the churches and belltowers that are scattered throughout the city. This view was only second in coolness, though, to the view on Monday when, instead of class, Emily our professor took us all up to the top of the belltower that stands in Piazza San Marco, the tallest in the city. The view from there was incredible, you could see all of Venice laid out, and it was so much cooler doing it towards the end of the semester than if we’d done it earlier because now we all knew where things were and what we were looking at, so it was really fantastic. Unfortunately, I didn’t have my camera yesterday for the clocktower, but I did take plenty of pictures from the belltower, so I’ll be putting some of those up.

After the clock tower, we all met up again and went to the church of Giovanni e Paolo, which means John and Paul. It was amazing because it was so massive, easily the biggest church we’ve seen in Venice. And because it was a gloomy day, and getting later, it was pretty dark in there, there weren’t many lights on, but that made it seem even bigger and the effect was actually pretty cool. We didn’t stay too long in the church though, and then it was on to dinner.

We ate Thanksgiving dinner at this place called an osteria, which is basically a very small, bar-like restaurant, which doesn’t really serve plates of food so much as just lots of appetizers. The first three dishes we got were all fish dishes, sardines with sauerkraut, baccala which is a kind of fish paste you eat on bread, and shrimp and some other fish thing on a plate together. I don’t like fish, so this was a bit of a problem, but luckily I was sitting at a table with Elyse, who is a vegetarian, so they brought out a platter of cheese and another of vegetables and she, Lizzie, Stephanie, and I all split that, since they don’t like fish either. We gave our fish dishes to Dane, Caylen, Audrey, and Chris from Purdue at the table next to us. The cheese and vegetables were really good, we had plenty of bread so we just made some little sandwiches. Then, after this course was over, they brought out several trays of meat. It was all very red, though, and while I did try several pieces, I was not a big fan, so went back to the remaining cheese and veggies. Then, at the very end, they did bring out desserts, and those were excellent, I split a piece of a chocolate cake roll with Lizzie and Elyse, and also had this little creamy cake thing which was very good. The best part of the dinner, though, was when Catherine, who also works at Purdue and was visiting this week, came around to the tables and gave each of us a goody bag with American candy and things in it, a card from herself and Chris, and, best of all, a card for each of us from our families. I have to say that getting the Thanksgiving card from my family was definitely the best part of my day, it even beat the clock tower.

After dinner was over, seven of us needed to go to the train station, so we headed that direction with Shannon’s parents, who have been here this week, and actually ended up stopping at the McDonalds in Venice. Lizzie, Shannon, Shannon’s mom, and I all actually got Happy Meals because it’s the best deal and I got an R2D2 toy which I’m pretty excited about. So that was fun, too. Then, after McDonalds, we said good-bye to Shannon’s parents, who were going back to their apartment, went to the train station where Elyse and Stephanie were getting on a train on their way to Switzerland, while Caylen was looking up trains to Bologna, and Lizzie, Shannon, Dane, and I were getting tickets to Assisi. We’re actually leaving tonight at about 11:30, it’s an overnight train, but I’m pretty excited, the city is supposed to be beautiful. Then, after the train station, we came back to San Servolo, played Apples to Apples for awhile, then I talked to my family and after that it was time for bed.

This was definitely the strangest Thanksgiving I have ever had, by far, but it was also a surprisingly good one. I definitely missed my family and seeing everyone at Thanksgiving dinner, but it was nevertheless a good day, even if there was no pumpkin pie. I hope everyone else had a good Thanksgiving and, because I didn’t get a chance to say it yesterday, I would just like to take a moment to say that I am grateful for my family, my friends, the opportunity I have to be here in Venice, and for all of you who are reading this blog. Happy Thanksgiving!

Ciao,
Maria

“We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures." ~Thornton Wilder

"Remember God's bounty in the year. String the pearls of His favor. Hide the dark parts, except so far as they are breaking out in light! Give this one day to thanks, to joy, to gratitude!" ~Henry Ward Beecher

Quick Notes on Last Weekend

2009-11-27T08:13:00.010-05:00

The pictures are of our class at the top of the campanile, the Salute festival bridge, one of the stands at the Salute festival, the view from the top of the campanile, the mosaics behind the altar in the old church in Ravenna, all of us on the carousel in Ravenna, and Dante's tomb in Ravenna (you can see our guide at the bottom, with her back to the tomb)

Hi guys,

Before I post my Thanksgiving blog, I just wanted to add a few quick sentences about last weekend.

I went with Elyse and Audrey to the feast of the Salute, which is a Venetian celebration at the church of Santa Maria della Salute, where they celebrate Venice being released from the plague about five hundred years ago. They also build a special bridge across the Grand Canal, that's only up for a few days, just for the celebration. We met our Italian professor, Paolo, there, and got to meet his daughter Sylvia. Then, after we left the church, we went down this street where all these stands were set up, selling balloons and any kind of candy or treat you could possibly think of, the only thing I can compare it to is Honeydukes in the Harry Potter books, it was insane. The three of us got some really good candy-apples there and then went to the Arsenale, which is a part of the Biennale art exhibition. It was really cool, there was modern art there from all over the world. Some of it was very strange, but most of it was cool.

Then, on Sunday, Elyse, Audrey, Sara, and I all went to a soccer game. I have to admit that I was a little nervous because I've heard about soccer fans in Europe getting crazy, but it wasn't that bad, no different, really, than a sporting event at home. It was still pretty cool, though, the fans were definitely very enthusiastic, and Venice ended up winning 2-1, so it was actually an exciting game to watch.

Monday we went as a class up the campanile (bell tower) in Piazza San Marco, which was absolutely incredible because the view was amazing, you could see all of Venice and if it had been a clear day I'm sure we could have seen the mountains.

Tuesday we had another day trip, this time to Ravenna, which is south of Venice, the bus ride was about two and a half hours, not too bad. Our tour guide was completely crazy, but the city was cool, we saw some neat mosaics, plus how they were made, Dante's tomb (he wrote Dante's Inferno), then also an old church that dates back to about the 6th century. So that was definitely cool. Oh, and there was also a carousel right in the town square, which we all got on, even though it wasn't actually open.

So, overall, a pretty cool weekend and week. Then, yesterday was of course Thanksgiving, so I'll have a post up about that very shortly. Hope everyone is having a great day!

Ciao,
Maria

Southern Italy Part 2: Brindisi

2009-11-21T20:05:00.007-05:00

Pictures: The tower we climbed; the Brindisi Appian Way column and the pedestal where the Lecce column used to stand; the outside of the cathedral, with its bell tower (campanile); the ancient gate into the city; and Audrey and Natalie in our hostel.

Hi guys,

Sorry it took me a few days longer than I had planned, but here is the second and last part of my trip to Southern Italy last weekend. When we got to Brindisi, we wanted to go straight to our hostel, but the problem was that none of us had written down the address of the place. Apparently we had all assumed that someone else had brought it along. Oops. After stopping and asking several people, who gave us conflicting advice, we finally stumbled into a tabaccheria, which is just a small shop that sells everything from candy to bus tickets. Luckily, the man working in there spoke pretty good English, so he was able to help us out by taking us next door to the travel agency there, where a very nice woman looked up the address of our hostel and gave us directions to get to the bus that would take us there. We had to wait about forty-five minutes for the bus, but it finally came and took us to our hostel. It was a bit of a scary ride, though, because we went through what seemed like some pretty sketchy parts of the city, including one place where we saw a fire burning in the middle of a parking lot, with no one around. We finally got to our hostel though.

For anyone who may not know, hostels are where people traveling around Europe on a budget stay. I think there are some hostels in America, but they are just not as popular. Of course, in the United States, you can get a hotel room pretty cheap, whereas hotels in Europe can be pretty pricy. So, the alternative is a hostel. They are usually pretty clean and nice, but you sleep in dorms instead of in a private room, except for some where you can pay extra for a private room, and it is much less formal than a hotel. For instance, in our hostel, there were three dogs that belonged to the owners running around, which of course would not be the case in a Holiday Inn or something. The people who worked there were all very nice, though. The next morning, they gave us tons of information about where to go in Brindisi and what was best to see and told us a great place to go for lunch. In our room, there were four sets of bunk beds and one of the beds was occupied by one of the ladies that worked there; she was actually, she told us, from Austria, she was just living in Italy for awhile and working at this hostel. Another girl who worked there was from New Zealand and had apparently dropped out of school to travel around Europe and was now working at the hostel as well. The dorms for boys and girls were separated, so Dane was in a different room than Natalie, Audrey, and I. He ended up sharing a dorm, though, with a guy we met named Brandon who goes to the University of Connecticut and is also studying in Italy, somewhere north of Venice. Overall, the hostel was pretty cool, but I think ultimately I’m still partial to American hotels.

The next day, armed with the information from the people who ran our hostel, we started by going to a tower not far from the hostel, which you can climb to have an amazing view over Brindisi, the port, and the Adriatic Sea. The weather was absolutely perfect, sunny, breezy, and warm. We stayed up on the tower for quite awhile, just looking around and enjoying the fact that we didn’t have to be in a hurry to be anywhere.

After the tower, we took a ferry over to the main part of Brindisi and climbed the steps towards where the other column that marked the end of the Appian Way stands, as well as the base of the column that is now in Lecce. For some reason, this column seemed much bigger than the Lecce column. It was really awesome, though, and again, we hung around there for awhile, just chatting and enjoying that we had time to just sit and enjoy the columns and the city around them, without having to be in a rush to get anywhere.

When we finally did start moving again, we made our way to the main church in Brindisi, La Cattedrale di Brindisi (the Cathedral of Brindisi), also known as the Basilica di San Giovanni Battista (which translates to the Basilica of St. John the Baptist). The church itself was quite beautiful on the inside. The neatest object in it, though, was the skeleton of San Teodoro, which was in a little chapel of its own, in a glass coffin, clearly visible. There are relics (bones, typically) of saints all across Europe, including in Venice, but this was the first full skeleton I have ever seen. That was definitely pretty cool. Apparently, San Teodoro, along with St. Lawrence, is the patron saint of Brindisi (all church information is thanks to www.brindisiweb.com).

After leaving the church, we went to get lunch at the restaurant recommended to us by the guy who ran our hostel. According to him, the owner of the restaurant used to work at one of the best restaurants in Brindisi, but decided to quit there and open his own restaurant instead. It was interesting inside, because it was set up kind of like a cafeteria: everyone got their tray, went through the line and said what they wanted, then paid at the end of the line. The food was delicious, some of the best lasagna I’ve ever had, plus really good spinach and these sausage things that were excellent.

After lunch, we still had about seven hours until our train left, so we wandered around the city a little more. We went to a bridge which used to be one of the old gates into the city. You can still see the crevices down the sides where they used to pour boiling oil on people trying to attack the city. The street that led to this gate was cool, also, because it was literally lined with orange trees. After the gate, we walked to the castle that is in Brindisi. It was really fantastic from the outside, it looked exactly like a medieval castle from a movie. Unfortunately, because it is now used as a naval base, we couldn’t go inside, in fact, Natalie got yelled at by a guard for trying to take a picture through the gate. So we just hung around outside it for awhile, then moved on.

We wandered down a few streets, with no particular purpose in mind and ended up stumbling upon a really great World War memorial, I’m not sure if it was from WWI or WWII. It was a beautiful fountain, very simple, but lovely, with a wide walkway in a tree-lined square that led up to it. On the other side of the memorial, across a small street, was a wall that looked out across the bay or port, where the sun was setting. We all sat on top of the wall and Natalie realized that we were actually sitting on top of a waterfall fountain, which was pretty cool. So we hung out there for awhile until it started to get dark. Then, we headed back to the center of town, grabbed dinner at a bar/restaurant place, and then made our way back to the train station.

We ended up sitting at the station for about two hours and then we had to stand on the platform for another hour or so because our train was an hour late. However, we finally did get on board and luckily there was only one other person in our compartment this time, so we had some extra room to stretch out on the ride back, which was nice. We actually had to change trains in Bologna at about 7:30 in the morning. The other three decided to stay in Bologna for a couple of hours, but I was pretty exhausted by that point, so I decided to just catch a 7:50 train back to Venice. It was actually kind-of cool, riding a train across part of Italy by myself, and the view out of the windows was gorgeous, the train passed through some really hilly countryside and quite a few small, very pretty towns. I got back to Venice in time to go to lunch on San Servolo, where I met up with Caylen, who had opted to stay in Venice for the weekend. After lunch, I had a good long nap and then did some homework, to try and get back into my routine for the week. Overall, it was a really awesome weekend. It was nice to get out of the city and go someplace else in Italy, but it was also nice to come back to Venice at the end of the weekend.

So, that was my weekend in Southern Italy. This weekend has been pretty cool, too, so I’ll have something up about it in the next day or two, hopefully. Until then, hope everyone is having a nice weekend! Keep leaving comments!

Ciao,
Maria

Southern Italy Part 1: Lecce

2009-11-18T14:59:00.008-05:00

Hi all,

Sorry it’s taken me so long to get this post up, this week has been really busy with class work, I’ve hardly had a chance to catch my breath. But, the post is up now and, fingers crossed, the next installment should be up sometime tomorrow evening. There’s a lot to talk about this week, so I’ll just jump right in here. Let me just start by saying that because it was a busy weekend and I don’t want this blog post to go on forever (plus it’s a really slow week here, in the classroom all week), I’m going to do the write up about this weekend in installments over the next couple of days. Now, on to southern Italy! This weekend, I went with Dane, Natalie, and Audrey to southern Italy, to the towns of Lecce and Brindisi, in the “heel of the boot” that is Italy.

Because Venice is in the very northern part of Italy, about as far from Lecce, the first city we went to, as you could get, we took an overnight train to save time. The journey took twelve hours. We left about nine o’clock on Thursday night from Venice and arrived in Lecce at just after nine the next morning. We opted not to get beds on the train because it was so much cheaper to just get a seat, but this was not the most comfortable choice, though still better than an airplane. It was interesting because there were only four of us traveling together and the compartment, which looked just like the ones in the Harry Potter movies, was for six people, so there were two strangers in the compartment with us. They seemed pretty nice, but because they did not seem to speak English, and our Italian isn’t that good, we really didn’t talk to them much. It was kind of a long night, partly because the conductor came in at 3:30 in the morning to check our tickets. However, waking up to the sight of fields of olive trees on one side and the ocean on the other side definitely made up for it. Plus, the weather was beautiful, sunny and warm enough for a t-shirt, we couldn’t have asked for better.

We didn’t have a particular plan in mind when we got off of the train, so Dane and Audrey bought a map from the store in the train station and we saw that the center of town had the Roman theater and the famous column we had heard about, so we headed in that direction. On the way we came across a gelateria (a shop where you buy gelato) where you could get three scoops for only one euro and fifty cents, which is a great deal, since usually in Venice one scoop is one euro and twenty cents. So, naturally, we all got some gelato, which was excellent. Something fun, outside the store was a machine like the ones you can get bouncy balls or candy out of. However, instead of any of the normal things, it had full-size Rubix cubes in it! Then, on the other side of the door was another machine with little Rubix cubes in it. It was pretty cool.

Gelato in hand, we continued on up the street and went into what apparently is the main church in Lecce, the Duomo di Lecce. It was very pretty on the inside, it had beautiful stained glass windows all around it, which is actually something that seems to be somewhat rarer in Italy than it is in the US. In Venice, especially, churches very rarely have any stained glass, so the windows in the Duomo in Lecce were a pleasant surprise.

After leaving the church, we headed up the main road which led directly into the city center. In the center of the city were the ruins of an ancient Roman theater, which were spectacular. It was awesome, too, because the ruins were just in the center of town, right in the middle of the more modern buildings, like they were no big deal. Next to the ruins was one of the massive columns that originally marked the end of the Appian Way in Brindisi. The Appian Way was an ancient Roman road that ran from Brindisi to Rome, way back when, and was one of the most important roads of its time (once again, thank you Wikipedia!). The two columns used to mark the beginning, or end, of the road in Brindisi, however, after one of the columns was struck by lightning and fell over, it was left to lay for about a century, until the people of Lecce claimed it and re-erected it in their own city. So now, the second column is in Lecce, while its original pedestal, as well as the first column, still stand in Brindisi. We saw both, but I’ll talk more about that when I get to Brindisi in a day or two. The column was definitely cool, though, it was huge, and made of this really pretty blue and white marble. There were also iron bands around it, presumably to keep it together.

We stayed on the square, just hanging out and enjoying the nice weather for quite awhile, partly because Dane was going to different banks trying to cash his traveler’s checks, which apparently was quite an ordeal. However, it left Audrey, Natalie, and me with plenty of time to just relax and enjoy Lecce. We went into a bookstore across the square from the theater. It was pretty neat, I saw the Harry Potter series in Italian. The entire book store was cool, there was even a small section at the front that had books in English, French, and Spanish as well. It was definitely weird, though, to see the names of American authors like Stephen King and Dan Brown on the covers of books with Italian titles because they were translations. Lecce was full of bookstores, too, there was literally at least one on every street, and sometimes two. This was fine by me, of course, because I love bookstores. And it was just cool to go into these stores and see the Italian versions of some of my favorite books.

After leaving the square, we just wandered down a few streets and came out near a small street sale that was going on. There were tents set up along this street, selling clothes, purses, CDs, DVDs, and books. We went to one stand that was selling all sorts of CDs, DVDs, and books and I actually ended up finding Italian versions of some of the Baby-sitters Club books (Il Club delle baby-sitter), so, naturally, I bought one, “Kristy e la festa della mamma,” which, after looking it up on Amazon, means, “Kristy and the Mother’s Day Surprise”, but which literally translates to “Kristy and the festivity of the mother.” What I especially enjoyed was bargaining with the man who ran the stand until I ended up getting the book for half price, which is definitely something you can’t usually do in the US.

We had lunch in a panini shop that was basically the Italian equivalent of Subway, but better because the bread was better, it was very crunchy and just had more flavor. Then, we walked through a beautiful park with palm trees where we would normally have oak trees and over to another church, Santa Croce, which had a crazy awesome façade, covered in statues including one of a dragon and one of a phoenix, it really looked like a wedding cake. On the way over there, too, we passed by an elementary school, where some kids yelled out of the window at us. I couldn’t tell if they were being friendly or mean, but we waved back anyway and said “Ciao!”
On the way back to the train station to catch our train to Brindisi, where our hostel for the night was, we stopped in for a bit at the archaeological museum, which apparently must be pretty new because half of the exhibits weren’t set up yet. There were masterpiece paintings in there just sitting on the floor and leaning up against the wall. It was a bit strange, but the place was still pretty cool, there were some really awesome ancient pieces of pottery, like water jugs and bowls, plus a few old instruments like lyres.

After the archaeological museum it was time to hop on our train and head to Brindisi, the next stop on our trip. And that it what I will talk about hopefully tomorrow, since this post is plenty long enough.

Ciao,
Maria : )

San Marco at Night

2009-11-12T09:31:00.008-05:00

Hi guys,

So, another somewhat slow week, a lot of time spent in the classroom during the day, but we did do two really cool things outside of class time, at night. On Monday night, we went to a concert at a church near San Marco. The music was really beautiful, it was all opera music, which I honestly didn’t think I was going to like, but the concert was wonderful. There was a cello player, a viola player, two violinists, a pianist, and two singers, a man and a woman. The singers were great and what they could do with their voices was amazing. I also loved watching the violinists playing, since I used to play the violin myself, their playing was incredible. After the concert, we all went to a cafe for a cup of coffee, since we had some time before our vaporetto. It was a really enjoyable night.

Even better than the concert, though, was getting to go into San Marco’s Basilica at night for a special tour with the Venice International University students. Our tour guide was the same one we had when we went into the Doge’s Palace a few weeks ago, and she did a really good job. The best part was right at the very beginning, because after we had looked at the mosaics in the entrance hall for a minute, we all went in and sat down and then the few lights that had been on all suddenly went off. It was actually surprisingly peaceful to just sit for a minute in the church with all the lights off. Then, however, they began to turn the lights back on, but very slowly and in a certain order, so that it got steadily brighter, lighting up the mosaics. It was gorgeous. I think I’ve mentioned before in this blog that the walls of San Marco are completely covered in gold mosaics and the way that they slowly came into view out of the dark church as the lights came up was just stunning, really breathtaking.

After we watched the lights come on and had a minute to just take in the mosaics on the walls, our tour guide led us up near the altar. Under the altar is a stone coffin which holds the bones of St. Mark, who wrote the Gospel of Mark, and who is the patron saint of Venice, and after whom the church is named. That was pretty amazing, to be standing that close to the bones of one of the Gospel writers.

Moving around the altar, we got to see the altarpiece which was originally designed for the church but is now only used during Lent apparently. It was unbelievable. It was completely gold and absolutely encrusted in jewels. Apparently there are literally thousands of jewels and pearls covering the surface, which seems about right. It’s massive, too, something like ten feet by six feet. It was really beautiful, naturally, the jewels and the gold sparkled in the lights. The pictures on the altarpiece, depicting scenes from the life of Christ and the life of St. Mark, plus some pictures of other random people, were also cool and very old.
After we got a good look at the altarpiece, we headed down into the crypts beneath the church. Though they weren’t nearly as creepy as I was hoping they would be, they were still pretty cool. The ceiling was very low and there was definitely a cave-like feel to the place. According to our tour guide, some people actually get married down there. It smelled a little weird, but apparently that was because of the chemicals used in the walls to keep the water out, because the crypts are about two feet below the water level.

You weren’t supposed to take pictures in the church, but I did manage to snap a few because I wanted to be able to put them on my blog. They’re not the best quality because I was trying to be sneaky about it, just holding my camera at my side, but at least you all can get an idea of how awesome the mosaics are, plus see the crypt a bit.

I suppose that’s all for now. I have to finish getting packed for Brindisi and Lecce this weekend, Dane, Natalie, Audrey, and I are taking an overnight train tonight, so we’ll get to Lecce about nine in the morning tomorrow, then we won’t be back in Venice until Sunday. I’ll have a blog up about the trip soon after that. Have a great weekend everybody!

Ciao,
Maria

A Few Fun Things About Italian Culture

2009-11-09T18:46:00.011-05:00

Hi guys,

Sorry I haven't posted much lately, we had a pretty slow week last week, mostly just classroom stuff, which would not be a whole lot of fun to write about or to read about. However, this weekend, I did take a nice walk down the front, which is the long path that follows along the edge of the lagoon. It's a really pretty walk, especially since it was a nice day. The only drawback was all the "purse guys" who were out. These are the guys who line the street, selling sunglasses, camera tripods, weird little dolls, and, of course, purses to tourists walking down the street. They're a bit annoying, because they try to talk to you to get you to stop and buy something, which would be fine if they weren't a little creepy about the way they approach you. What's really interesting, though, is watching the police, the carabinieri, pull up in their boat and then all the purse guys grab up their stuff and run. Apparently, this is because the items they are selling are not taxed properly, so it's kind of illegal. However, the carabinieri don't try to hard to catch them, they mostly just scare them away, wander around for about fifteen minutes, then get back in their boat and head off. About ten minutes after that, the purse guys have all set up shop again.

Another fun fact about Italian culture, a lot of the shops and some of the restaurants close down in the afternoon, usually somewhere between noon and five, so that people can go home for lunch and spend some time with their families. I believe kids in school also get an extra long lunch break, like an hour or two, for the same reason, so that they can go home for a family meal. Even though it can be a little inconvenient at times, like when you want to go to a certain store, still, I think it's a pretty nice custom.

Something else different in Italian culture, they don't say "texting" they call it sending an "SMS" which is actually an English abbreviation for "Short Message Service." Also, the @ symbol in an e-mail address is not called "at" it is called "chiocciola" (pronounced "key-o-cho-la"), which means "snail." Our Italian professor, Paolo, told us about both of these today in class.

Another fun fact, when Audrey and I went to the beach on the Lido the other day (it was just us because everyone else was going either to Florence or Munich for the weekend), there were actually some people in the water, even though it was November 5th and a bit chilly. We only went because I was talking about the beach for a paper for class, so I got some pictures, plus a video of the waves, just for fun, and we found some really pretty shells. I added the video to the bottom of this blog, it really just looks like any ocean, but I just think it's cool because it's the Adriatic Sea which, like I've mentioned before, continues down the coast of Italy on one side and part of Eastern Europe to Greece on the other and then empties into the Mediterranean Sea.

I'm not sure if I've talked about them before, but there are four cats that live on San Servolo, which people in our group have named Casanova, The Doge, St. Mark the Fluffy, and Ciao. They're always trying to come in the cafeteria and in the dorms, and actually, Caylen and Audrey have let Casanova into their room before, which apparently he enjoys. The cats also love table scraps, which Caylen makes sure to give them plenty of. I finally got pictures of them the other day, because I happened to have my camera on me when I was going to lunch the other day. The black one is Casanova, the skinny gray one is The Doge, and the fluffier gray on is St. Mark the Fluffy. I didn't get a picture of Ciao, though, because he prefers to stay on the other side of the island, near the cafe, rather than the cafeteria.

Finally, I only just realized the other day, that I don't think I've mentioned the fact that on days when the weather is nice, not cloudy and rainy, you can see the Alps behind Venice. There was one day last week when, right after it had rained and the clouds had gone away, the air was so nice and clean that the mountains showed up more clearly than they ever had before. They looked so close that it seemed, if you were only on the other side of the city, you could touch them. Naturally, this was the one day when I didn't have my camera on me. However, I've gotten pictures of them on other days when they've shown up, so I've added a couple of those here. In one, you can see a plane coming in to land at the Venice airport. I just think it's so interesting, though, because I know I never pictured Venice with mountains behind it, and it's hardly ever shown with the mountains in the background. I'm not sure why this is, because it's really beautiful to see.

So, I think that's all for now, I will probably have another post up this week after our night tour of the Basilica di San Marco (Church of St. Mark) tomorrow night. Then, this weekend, I'm going with Dane, Natalie, and Audrey to southern Italy, down into the heel of the boot, so I will definitely have a post up early next week talking about that. Until then, I hope everyone is doing well. Keep leaving comments!

Ciao,
Maria

New Pictures and the Poll

2009-11-04T17:06:00.003-05:00

Hi everyone,

Just so you know, I added some more pictures on Flikr, just click on the slideshow on the left and you can see them. Hope you like them!

Also, if anyone is curious, the poll at the bottom of the page is now closed. The question was "Which city would you most like to go to?" The clear winner was Venice, with 80% wanting to come here, then 40% wanting to go to New York City and 40% wanting to go to London. Coming in last was Sydney with 20%.

There is a new poll up, asking "Of the following, what's your favorite book series?" The choices are Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Chronicles of Narnia, Twilight, Goosebumps, Magic Tree House, A Series of Unfortunate Events, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Eragon, and Artemis Fowl. You can pick more than one and the poll will be up until midnight on November 16th. Please vote!

Ciao,
Maria : )

Halloween

2009-11-04T07:11:00.008-05:00

Hi all,

I know it’s a few days late, but I hope everyone had a good Halloween, with plenty of candy. Sorry that this blog took so long to put up but I planned to publish it Tuesday and then our Internet went out on the island. However, we’re back up now, so here’s my Halloween post, just a few days late.

Halloween on a Saturday is always a good deal. Since half of the group had gone to London to spend the weekend there, the rest of us decided we needed to do something special, even if it didn’t involve flying to England. So we (Caylen, Audrey, Natalie, Dane, and I) decided to catch a vaporetto out to some of the farther away islands in the northern part of the lagoon, specifically Burano and Torcello.

The boat ride was actually pretty long, about half an hour from the main part of Venice to Burano, but it was a beautiful day, though a little chilly, and the ride was nice because it felt like we were really leaving Venice and going on a day trip. Burano is famous for making lace and almost as soon as we got off the boat we saw three different stores selling lace goods, dresses, handkerchiefs, tablecloths, and baby clothes. Most of it was very pretty, but very expensive. Almost every shop that we went into also had tons of lace items. It was pretty touristy in most parts, but it was an awesome island, in spite of that. The houses were all different, bright colors, and it felt calm and relaxed in the non-shopping area parts, very different from Venice, which is always busy. There were also cats everywhere, we must have seen at least twenty of them, just wandering around, like the dogs do in Venice. We stopped for lunch at this sandwich shop/bar, which had absolutely amazing paninis, which are basically just grilled sandwiches with the crusts cut off. I don’t know if I was just really hungry at that point or if it was just a really good sandwich, but I thought it was delicious-ham, cheese, and tomato on nice crunchy, Italian bread. We also saw, in the main shopping district, signs that had been put up advertising a showing of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince (Harry Potter e il Principe Mezzosangue, in Italian) over the weekend.

After a little more shopping and wandering around Burano, we caught another vaporetto over to Torcello, which is this tiny island about five minutes away from Burano and on which apparently only 22 people live (according to Caylen). It was gorgeous, though. There’s only one street, which follows along the one canal, and which leads past a couple of restaurants to the museum and the church. Apparently Torcello was the original city center of Venice, way back when, and the bishop continued to live there for a time, even after the city had been moved to where Venice is now, which is why there is a church there (this is all according to Dane). We didn’t go in the church, because it was kind-of expensive to go in, but we did go in the baptistery next door, which was free, and which was very nice. There was also a giant stone armchair outside the small museum across from the church, so we took a picture of us all sitting on it. There was also a bridge, on the way to the church, called Ponte del Diavolo, which means Devil’s Bridge. It was a little scary to walk across, just because it was kind-of high over the canal and had no railings or anything. However, it was cool, and on the other side was this little gravel path that went back towards a couple of farmhouses that were there, very picturesque, it was like postcard-perfect Italian countryside back there.

On the way back from Torcello, we stopped at San Michele, which is the cemetery island. It seemed appropriate for Halloween, but it was actually disappointingly not creepy. It looked like a pretty modern cemetery, though there were some cool bigger buildings, about the size of garden sheds, which were either tombs or chapels. We couldn’t stay at the cemetery long because we had to get back to the stop to catch our vaporetto, so there may have been creepier, older tombs that we missed. Even though it wasn’t too creepy, it was still fun to be in a cemetery on Halloween evening.

Before heading back to San Servolo, Audrey and Caylen and I went down Via Garibaldi (Garibaldi Street) to get some snacks for the night. We did actually see some kids trick-or-treating, most of them dressed up either as witches, or wearing monster masks and black clothes. Those seemed to be the most popular costumes. They weren’t trick-or-treating at houses, though, they were going into the shops on the street and the people working there were handing out treats. Definitely a bit different from trick-or-treating in Greendale. We did actually have one trick-or-treater on San Servolo, our professors’ four-year-old son Lorenzo. He came around to each of our rooms and we had candy for him. Then, he wanted each person to say “trick-or-treat” to him, so he could give us each a cookie. It was very cute. For his costume, he had on an orange and black Venetian mask. My costume was simply all the black clothes I had in my closet, since I didn’t think to bring stuff for a real costume. Then, after dinner, Audrey, Caylen, and I hung out in my room and ate candy and watched Twilight and Interview with a Vampire, good Halloween movies. So all in all, a very fun Halloween.

I hope you all had a good Halloween, too, and as always, keep leaving me comments!

Ciao,
Maria : )

Accademia, Tintoretto, and Padova

2009-10-29T20:10:00.008-04:00

Pictures are of us in Padova (except Audrey, who was taking the picture), one of the domes inside Saint Anthony's, the inside of Saint Anthony's, the outside of Saint Anthony's, the Scrovegni Chapel from the outside, and one of the Tintoretto Last Suppers we saw with Gregory Dowling.

Buon giorno tutti!

That means, “good day all!” Now, I know there wasn’t so much going on last week, but this week was pretty jam-packed and awesome, so I will get to all that in just a minute. First, answers to a few questions. As this is Italy, everything is in Italian, but many signs also have English, French, German, and sometimes Spanish on them as well. The big sport in Italy, as in most of Europe, is soccer; I haven’t actually heard much about any other sport since I’ve been here, besides keeping up with the Purdue games and the Bengals (Boiler Up and Who Dey! lately). We have had a lot of homework lately, quite a bit of reading, plus weekly essays, but our professors gave us this weekend off, with no essay due next week, so that’s pretty nice. The swine flu doesn’t seem to be as big a deal here as it seems to be in the U.S., though there are places where you can get the vaccine. Someone asked if I have been sick, and actually I had a pretty bad cold last week, but I’m all good now, no big deal. Onto the events of the past week!

Monday we went as a class to the Accademia, which is a really fantastic art museum, with some world famous masterpieces that were absolutely gorgeous. The best part of the entire tour, however, was getting to see Leonardo da Vinci’s “Vitruvian Man” which apparently is only very rarely displayed, even though it is one of the most famous and well-known works of art in the world. It was amazing to see because it is very small, not much bigger than a piece of computer paper, and is really more just a page torn from da Vinci’s notebook than a true piece of art. The picture is in the center of the page, but above and below it was writing in da Vinci’s famous “mirror writing”, where he wrote backwards across the page so that nobody could steal his notes. I almost can’t even describe what it was like to see it, though, because it was so simple, almost like da Vinci was doodling while writing his notes; there was a sense of being very close to the artist, like just taking a peak into his personal notebook and seeing what was scribbled in there. Definitely a highlight of the trip.

Tuesday we had a guest speaker come, Gregory Dowling from Ca’ Foscari University in Venice. He is actually British, but moved to Venice a number of years ago and he is an expert in paintings by Tintoretto, an artist particularly famous in Venice. Tintoretto painted at least seven different versions of the Last Supper and Professor Dowling took us around to three of them at three different churches and explained about each one. It was a great tour, especially because he would stop and point out things as we were walking across the city, little details about places and things that were really cool but that you would never know unless you lived in Venice for some time. One of my favorite things that he pointed out was a church that was used in one of the Indiana Jones films, Raiders of the Lost Ark, I think.

Wednesday was by far the best day of this week, though. We took a class trip with our professor Dino Felluga to Padova (Padua in English), a nearby town. It was an absolutely fantastic day. We went in the basilica there, Basilica di Sant’Antonio, the basilica of Saint Anthony of Padua, which was stunning. And massive. There were domes in there so high that the tops of them were completely lost in shadow. The body of Saint Anthony is actually entombed there and you can walk around and touch his tomb, which was a very powerful moment. There was also a priest in there who you can go to and get a blessing from, which Lizzie, Audrey, and I did. He was very nice and told us that he only spoke a little English, so he gave us a blessing in Italian.

After the basilica and a very nice lunch sitting outside at this great Italian restaurant, we went to see the Scrovegni Chapel, which was one of the things I was most looking forward to seeing in Italy. An artist named Giotto painted the entire inside of this chapel with scenes from the life of Mary, the life of Jesus, and a Last Judgment that covers an entire wall. Plus, on the walls underneath the scenes from the lives of Mary and Jesus, he painted virtues on one side of the chapel and vices on the other, and around these he painted what looks like carved marble, but is really just painted to look 3-D.

The best part, or my favorite part anyway, is the ceiling, which is this amazingly bright blue, with stars painted on it, as well as more paintings of Jesus, Mary, and the saints. I also love that in the scene where the Wise Men come to see baby Jesus, over the manger there is a bright fireball in the sky, which experts say is the first time Halley’s Comet was ever depicted in a painting. The chapel was so gorgeous and magnificently detailed that I felt the entire trip overseas was worth it just for an opportunity to see it and be in there, even for a limited time. Only twenty-five people are allowed in at a time, and only for fifteen minutes, as a way to get the most people through and still protect the frescoes. Also, we had to leave all of our bags at the gift shop outside of the chapel, I think so that they could be sure that we wouldn’t bring a camera inside. I did buy a book with all of the frescoes in it at the gift shop, though, so I have pictures, even if I didn’t actually take any.

After the chapel, we spent a brief bit of time in the museum there, which was really cool and had, among other things, an Egyptian sarcophagus, a very tiny mummy, we think it may have been a cat, and a coffin that had in it the bones not only of a man but of a horse as well, which was not something you see every day. Then, after the museum, it was off to the University of Padua, where we got to see the anatomy theater where they used to do dissections in front of groups of medical students. Apparently, Galileo also lectured at the university and may even have attended a lecture in that same anatomy theater. After the university there was just time to stop for pizza and then it was back on the train and back to Venice.

After Dino left us at the train station to go back to his house, the ten of us had to literally sprint from one vaporetto stop to get to our vaporetto stop to get back to San Servolo. This is a pretty regular thing around here, but this was intense: Shannon actually nearly knocked this couple down the stairs as she ran past them. However, we all made the vaporetto about one minute before it pulled away. Not having to wait another hour for the next vaporetto to the island was the icing on the cake of an honestly fantastic day.

Overall, this has been a really great week, definitely busy, but that wasn’t a bad thing. Now, I’m just looking forward to Halloween, because even though it’s not as big of a deal here as it is in the U.S., it’s still one of my favorite holidays. We have a few things planned to do for it, but more about that another day. For now, it’s getting late here, so I’ll say buona notte (which means “good night”) and until next time, keep leaving comments, they’re fantastic!

Ciao,

Maria : )

San Marco, the Marathon, and the Mall

2009-10-25T13:37:00.005-04:00

Hi everyone,

First off, let me say Happy Birthday to my mom! Hope you are having a great day!

Next, I do apologize for not having posted anything recently, but honestly, it’s been a bit slow, we’ve mostly been in class, not doing anything especially exciting. We did go in a really beautiful church, Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, you weren’t really supposed to take pictures inside, but I did anyway, so there’s one up here. It was absolutely massive and had some really fantastic, decorated tombs along the sides, including one which looked like a pyramid.

Thursday we were supposed to take a class trip to Padua, a nearby town, but because of the weather, it had to be postponed. So instead, some of us took the afternoon off from class to go into town to a museum to work on a project for class. Getting to the museum, however, was a little difficult because there was an acqua alta, which in Italian literally means “tall water.” This meant that the lagoon was high and had flooded parts of the city, including Piazza San Marco, the main square. It was literally under eight inches or so of water, deep enough for a seagull to be floating in it. Because this happens relatively frequently, they actually have these platforms which they set up around the city so that people can walk on them and stay out of the water. The museum turned out to be very cool once we finally got around all the water and got to it, but the most interesting thing of the day was still the acqua alta.

Yesterday, Saturday, five of us, Lizzie, Shannon, Natalie, Dane, and I, caught a bus from Piazzale Roma, the last place in Venice that you can drive a car to before you have to get on a boat, to go to the mall, about a fifteen minute ride away. When we got there, it was more like a Wal-Mart or a Biggs, but with about a dozen mall-like stores in there too, including a GameStop, which had all the normal sorts of DVDs and video games you would expect, they were just in Italian. It was nice because it wasn’t set up for tourists, like some parts of Venice are, it was just a normal store where people go to shop for clothes or buy groceries.

This morning, I went with Lizzie, Dane, and Audrey to Mass at San Marco. The church itself is absolutely gorgeous, I’ve never seen anything like it. The upper walls and ceiling inside are completely covered in mosaics. The parts which are not depicting scenes are covered in gold tiles. And it’s massive, I can’t even imagine how long it must have taken them to do all the mosaics. It’s really spectacular. For as big as the church is, though, there were only about fifty people or so there for the Mass. Even though the service was in Italian, it was still pretty easy to follow along and know what was happening because Catholic Masses everywhere are virtually the same, plus they had nice little pamphlets on the chairs that had the responses and the songs written out, so you could just read along. Also, we figured out, from the little we could understand, that there was a visiting priest today, but he was actually either an archbishop or a cardinal, we’re not sure which, it sounded like the priest who introduced him said archbishop, but the man had a red hat like a cardinal’s. Either way, it was pretty neat. The archbishop/cardinal gave the sermon and it seemed like it was probably very good, he delivered it really well, I just couldn’t understand 99% of it, unfortunately. Overall, though, the Mass was really nice and it was really cool to experience church in another country.

This afternoon, the finish line of the Venice Marathon was set up not far from our boatstop. It was really awesome to see, apparently, according to the marathon’s website, there were 6,000 contestants. There was a constant stream of runners coming into the city for hours, it was really cool. According to the Venice Marathon website, www.venicemarathon.it, the marathon begins in front of an 18th century mansion in the town of Stra, continues through several other small towns, then comes to Venice. They actually built a special bridge over the Grand Canal for the runners to cross today, which was really cool. According to the website, this was the 24th year the marathon has been run.

Now, to answer a few questions. The tower in the picture on my post about Murano is not Big Ben, it’s just a random clocktower, there are a lot of them in Venice. Big Ben is the clocktower on the end of the Parliament buildings in London, England, you should look it up online, it’s a very pretty clocktower. It’s also in a couple of Disney movies, including “Peter Pan” and “The Great Mouse Detective”, if you’re interested. There is a public library in Venice, I haven’t had time to go in yet, but when I do, I will definitely take a picture and post it here. It’s supposed to have a really great staircase, though. Finally, the Italian word for “dog” is “cane” (pronounced “cah-neh”). To go along with that, the Italian word for “cat” is “gatto” (pronounced “gah-toe”). Speaking of dogs, though, there are a ton of dogs in Venice that just wander around the streets. They're not strays, they just wander around until their owners call them. They're almost like people, just strolling, minding their own business, it's pretty funny.

One more quick thing, there is a new poll up at the very bottom of the page, asking which city you would most like to visit. You can pick as many cities as you want, but you can only vote once, I tried to change that, but apparently that is just how it works. Oh, and the video is from the acqua alta, I just thought it was neat how the waves made the water come up through the boards, it looked like a really cool fountain. Also, the water has never been that high before, usually it's about two feet below that dock, so it was especially crazy.

Ciao,
Maria : )

p.s. sorry this was a long one again, there was nothing to talk about for a few days and today there was too much, I'll try to keep them shorter in the future.

Murano

2009-10-19T18:33:00.007-04:00

Hi all,

In an attempt to do more frequent, shorter blogs, I’m doing this post about today’s trip to Murano. Murano is one of the islands around the main island of Venice and it is famous all around the world for its glass. Walking up the main street, we must have passed at least twenty different glass shops, selling everything from tiny glass penguins for one euro each to massive chandeliers that probably cost at least a thousand. We also saw an amazing blue glass sculpture set in the middle of a square (campo), near the first church we went into, San Pietro Martire, which means St. Peter the Martyr. The church itself was very simple, but pretty, but what was especially interesting was that we ran into two other Americans in there who saw that my sweatshirt said “Purdue” and told us that they were from Valparaiso, Indiana, and that their two sons go to Purdue. So that was a fun little meeting. Strangely enough, that’s not the first time that someone has said something to me about Purdue when I’ve been wearing my sweatshirt. So far, it’s been a pretty great way to meet other Americans traveling abroad.

The second church we went into was Santa Maria e San Donato, which had the most beautiful floor I think I’ve ever seen in almost any church. There were all sorts of different mosaics spread across the floor, some with the tiles just making up different patterns, some making actual pictures. Unfortunately, because it is a church still regularly used for services, we were not allowed to take pictures, otherwise I would post one of the floor. The rest of the church was also very neat, especially the ceiling, which was made entirely of wood and resembled the inside of a ship. The entire place smelled like incense, which I thought was great. Apparently, the church is also said to contain the bones of a dragon which Saint Donatus killed (again, thank you Wikipedia).

After leaving the church, we went to the Murano glass museum, where our professor, Emily, had us all split into pairs and choose one item to tell the rest of the class about. My partner was Caylen and we chose one of the chandeliers because the parts that curved out to hold up the candles were made to look like fish, which was pretty cool. Other people chose another chandelier which had glass flowers on it that looked real, a bowl with images from Roman myths on it, a dish with glass fruit on it that also looked real, and several very small bottles and bowls that were made back in the first and second century AD. It was a fascinating museum and I wish we had had more time, but we had to rush to get lunch and then get to Italian class. As we were going into the museum originally, though, there was an old man sitting outside, just sketching the canal, with a building with really beautiful mosaics behind him, I just had to get a picture.

Lunch was interesting, because instead of going back to the cafeteria at San Servolo we stopped at this small restaurant where we got paninis, which are just small sandwiches with no crust. We each got two and mine were ham and egg and then asparagus and egg. I know those combinations sound really weird but they were actually really good. Other people got spinach and egg, tuna, and mixed vegetables. Then, it was on to Italian class, then homework this evening.

Thank you again, everyone, for your comments, I really love to see those. Also, if anyone is curious, on the poll at the bottom of the page, 38% of people who took the poll would most prefer to star in a movie, so that won. I tried to put another poll up, but Blogger was having technical difficulties. Or maybe it’s just me. Either way, I will try to have another poll up within the next couple of days, just for fun.

Buona notte (that means good night!),
Maria : )

About the Pictures

2009-10-18T17:08:00.002-04:00

Hi guys,

I apologize that the pictures aren't in their proper spots. I'm not sure exactly how Blogger goes about inserting pictures, because I thought I'd done it so that they'd appear where I wanted them to in the blog, but apparently not. However, if you click on them, you can see a bigger version of the picture. Sorry that they're kind of confusingly set up, I tried to make them nice and neat, but Blogger apparently didn't want me to do that. Also, the video at the bottom is of an exhibit at the Biennale which was pretty cool because it was all sorts of everyday objects and toys (I think you can see a Woody from Toy Story doll in the video) with these really bright lights behind them that made these awesome moving shadows on the walls. So, again, sorry the pictures aren't in there right spots, but hey, at least there are pictures, right? Hope you like them!

Maria : )

The Doge's Palace, the Biennale, and the Verona Trip

2009-10-18T16:15:00.015-04:00

Hi everyone,

Sorry it’s taken awhile to get another post up, it’s just been really busy around here. I’m going to try to make this post a little shorter than other ones have been because I know from experience how hard it is to read long articles and things on the computer because all our readings for class are online.

So, as I said at the end of the last post, we had a guided tour as a class to the Doge’s Palace. This was the home of the Doge, who was basically the mayor of Venice before Napoleon Bonaparte invaded the city back in the 1700s. It was a really beautiful building. All of the rooms were covered in artworks and frescoes (frescoes are paintings that are painted directly onto the wall). My personal favorite room was the one where the walls were entirely covered in massive maps that depicted all of the known world at that time. There were actually maps that depicted the United States, but only the original thirteen colonies and California. Then, in the great hall area, there is one of the largest paintings in the world, Tintoretto’s “Paradise”, which covers an entire back wall of the hall. It was pretty awesome, but there was so much going on in the painting that it was hard to look at and notice everything. We also walked across the Bridge of Sighs, which leads to the dungeons area. It’s called the Bridge of Sighs because supposedly prisoners would sigh as they were lead across because it was their last breath of fresh air before they were imprisoned. The one picture is looking through the side of the bridge out at the lagoon.

Friday, we went to the Biennale. The Biennale is the modern art fair which is held every two years in Venice and which contains works of art from artists from all over the world. Countries get their own pavilions to display the artworks in. There are Biennale exhibits all over Venice, but the majority of them are contained in one place. It’s a very pretty garden setting that reminded me vaguely of the Cincinnati Zoo. Some of the artworks were pretty cool, like two countries that had set up their art in two different houses that had stories behind them, or one that looked like a scene from Alice in Wonderland, or one room that just had these black strings across it that made shapes. Others were a little strange, like one room that was completely empty except for a neon sign that said “riot kitchen.” Even after our guide talked about it, I still didn’t get that one, but that’s modern art for you.

Saturday was fantastic because we went to Verona. It was just the ten of us, no professors or tour guides. We caught the train from Venice to Verona, it was about a two hour tour ride, which is quicker than driving to Purdue, so that wasn’t bad.

When we got there, we were all starving, so we went to a pizzeria where they had really delicious pizza. Then, we split up into groups just depending on what people wanted to see and just wandered around the city. I spent most of the day with Audrey, Stephanie, Elyse, and Lizzie. We checked out a couple of shops and then went to Juliet’s house, because Verona is famous, of course, for being the city in which Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is set. Even though Romeo and Juliet were not real people, there are houses set up which are called their houses. It’s mostly a tourist thing, but it was still cool to go into Juliet’s house, because somebody had lived here and it was a really neat place. You could take a picture standing on “Juliet’s balcony” which was fun. At Juliet’s house, we also got the Verona Day Pass, which lets you get into certain museums and churches and places for a lot cheaper than paying individually at each place. It was a great deal because then we could just go down the list and go to places that were on our cards.

After Juliet’s house we decided to go to Chiesa di S. Anastasia, which is the Church of Saint Anastasia. It was incredible. It doesn’t look like much from the outside, but the inside is literally breathtaking. Pictures don’t do it justice. I felt that the entire trip was worth it just to be inside that church, it was that beautiful.

Unfortunately, because we only had a few hours and a lot to do, we couldn’t stay long. We ran into the rest of the group who told us we should climb the Torre dei Lamberti, which is the tallest bell-tower in Verona. So we did. What the rest of the group forgot to mention to us is that there are 368 steps to climb. There is an elevator that will take you up for one euro but we decided to save the euro and climb, knowing that it was pretty high but not realizing that it was 368 steep steps worth of high.

We managed to make it to the top, though, and the view was incredible. The entire city of Verona was spread out around the foot of the tower and after that were the hills of northern Italy, dotted here and there by little towns, farms, and churches perched on the tops of the hills.

After we made it down from the tower, we went to the Arena. This is a Roman amphitheatre which was built in 30 AD and is the third largest in Italy after the Colosseum and an arena at Capua (thank you, Wikipedia!). It was very cool, especially since it is actually still used for performances. It ruined the effect a little bit to have the modern seats in there that resembled seats at Great American Ball Park, but it was still a great place. Even though we were still worn out from climbing the stairs at the tower, we climbed the seats up to the top of the old original part and looked out over the top onto Verona again. There was also a great view of the Arena from the top looking down into it. It was probably my second favorite place that we went to, just for the history behind it and the fact that it is still used today for performances.

After the Arena, there was just time to stop for gelato before we had to meet up with the rest of the group. Then, back to the train station and on our way home to Venice. It was a truly enjoyable day though, and I’m so glad we got the chance to go.

Due to a request, I am going to start trying to do shorter, more frequent posts, as opposed to these less often longer ones. So hopefully, look for something Monday night or Tuesday morning about our class trip to Murano, one of the islands in the Venetian lagoon which is famous for its glass!

Ciao,
Maria

First Weekend

2009-10-13T16:36:00.003-04:00

Hi guys!

After looking at your comments, I am so glad that this blog is making so many of you want to come to Venice and some of you also want to write. That’s fantastic! For anyone who is really interested in writing, there is a program called National Novel Writing Month, it involves spending the month of November writing a 50,000 word novel. It’s really fun and they actually have a Young Writer’s Program for anyone under the age of 17, where you can set your own word count goals. If anyone is interested in checking out either of these sites, I have posted the links to them in the sidebar under “Other Websites to Check Out.” I’ll be going for it, I hope some of you will try it out, too! In answer to a post, Kaitlyn, congrats on your new sister coming and I hope everything goes well with your braces. Very good question, by the way, yes, actually, the flight attendant on my flight from Frankfurt, Germany to Venice did have a very strong accent and they did all of the announcements in German and English. It was pretty cool.

Thursday afternoon was the beginning of our first weekend in Venice. We have three day weekends every weekend so that we have time to travel. Since it was only the first weekend, we didn’t go far, only across the lagoon to the Lido, which is a beach resort on the Adriatic Sea. The Lido is also one of the islands that protects the main part of Venice from the ocean. We didn’t get to the beach until about 4:30 in the afternoon, so it was a little cooler, but still warm enough to get in the water a bit. It was great to be in the ocean, even if it was only for a little bit. It was awesome too because on the other side of the Adriatic there’s Greece, then the Mediterranean Sea, then Africa. It was just so crazy, mind-boggling really, to stand in that water and think that maybe it was the same water which had once washed against the shores of Egypt or Turkey or the Greek isles.

Friday was our tour of the Venetian ghetto. Like I said before, this was not a ghetto in the way we normally think of it in America. The Venetian ghetto was where the Jews used to be forced to live, up until fairly recently. There are still some Jewish people living there, but there are other people living there, too, and Jewish people are now allowed to live anywhere they want in Venice. Originally, Jews weren’t allowed to live in Venice at all, but because Christians at the time could not lend money and Jews could, they were allowed to live on the small island of the ghetto, where they were shut in each night, with guards which they had to pay set up on the bridges to make sure that no Jews left the ghetto before dawn. Many were also taken to concentration camps, including Auschwitz, during World War II. There were two different Holocaust memorials in the ghetto that were incredibly moving. They included artworks of the Jews being taken to the concentration camps and a wall listing the names of all the Venetian Jews who did not return from the concentration camps. Of the 200 Venetian Jews who were taken to the camps, only eight made it home.

We were able to go in to see three different synagogues. They were very beautiful, especially the last one we went into, which was the biggest. It had an intricately carved altarpiece and a cabinet built for holding the Torah made of marble. This synagogue was actually used in the opening scene of the film The Merchant of Venice, originally a play by William Shakespeare. We are actually going to be able to see this movie on Monday night. I’m excited to see the synagogue on film after we were actually there. Two interesting facts about the synagogues in the ghetto: first, women are kept separated from men, because men are supposed to keep their minds only on God during the religious services; also, the synagogues are not built on the ground floors of the buildings, instead, they are built on the highest level of the building they are in, with apartments underneath. This is because, according to Jewish law, there should be nothing above the synagogue but God, and so, because they had such a small area to cram in so many people, they built the synagogues on the top floors of buildings so that apartments could be built underneath them for people to live in.

On Saturday, a few of us had originally planned to go to the mall outside of Venice. However, we had a pretty big storm that morning and it rained for several hours, so we decided to postpone the trip. I’m hoping we’ll get to go sometime this coming weekend, though. So, instead of going to the mall, I went with Audrey and Caylen from our group to the main part of Venice to take pictures of the campos, squares outside of churches, which we had each chosen for an assignment for class where we had to talk about the architectural features on the buildings there. Caylen’s campo was further away, so she went off to take pictures of hers while Audrey and I went together to find ours. It was still raining somewhat and I didn’t have an umbrella. However, when we got to my campo, a guy selling umbrellas came up and said he could sell me one for 5 euros. That was a pretty good deal, but I told him no anyway and he asked how much I would pay for it. I told him 2 euro and he said no, 4. I told him I would give him 3 and he accepted. I was pretty excited about how the bartering worked and it was also very nice to have an umbrella, especially since it was raining pretty hard.

After I took some pictures of my campo, we kept walking towards Audrey’s, but partway there we came across another campo that she decided she liked better because there were more architectural features to talk about. The church there was open, so we went in and to our surprise found a Biennale (the art fair currently being hosted in Venice) exhibit about antique instruments. It was a really great exhibit, they had violins, violas, cellos, double basses, oboes, clarinets, mandolins, and harps, plus there was classical music by Vivaldi playing in the background. Not to mention that the church itself was small but lovely. This is one of the things I love about wandering around Venice: even when you’re not looking for it, you can still stumble upon some amazing stuff.

The rain cleared off nicely and by Sunday the weather was gorgeous again, though a bit colder than it had been. I spent most of Sunday working on stuff for class. However, since it was so nice, Shannon, from class, and I took our laptops and read outside under the barbeque pavilion for awhile. It was nice because there was a view through a window in the wall of the lagoon outside. Then, after Shannon had gone back in to charge her laptop and I was just walking around the island procrastinating because I didn’t feel like reading anymore for the moment, I ran into Dane and Sara and while we were all procrastinating, we stumbled on another art installation, again for the Biennale, that was on the island. It was a very modern-art type of exhibit, but it was pretty cool. There was one picture that was all sorts of ripped up pieces of magazines that were put together like a collage that looked like a face.

So, all in all, that was my weekend. It was a pretty good one. I’m really looking forward to this week and weekend, though. Today we went to the Doge’s Palace, which was spectacular, but this post is long enough, so I’ll write about that next time, then later this week we are going to try to go to the mall, we are going to the actual Biennale, where the majority of the art exhibits are, and we are planning a trip to Verona, Italy for Saturday. Verona, which is only about a two hour train ride from Venice, is most famous for being the city in which Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is set. I’ll have posts up to say how all of this goes later in the week. Take care, everyone, thank you so much for your comments and questions, keep them coming!

Ciao,

Maria : )

Questions and Answers

2009-10-12T02:33:00.002-04:00

Hi guys,

Because so many of you have left questions in the comments of my blog, I decided to do a post just specifically to answer those questions. So this post is especially for the fifth graders at Central Elementary School, who have left most of the questions.

First of all, congratulations on your story, Elijah. I hope I get the chance to read it all when I get back.

Now, there were several questions about the other students in my class and where we are living. The other students, as you can see in the class picture that I posted, are Shannon, Sara, Caylen, Elyse, Lizzie, Stephanie, Natalie, Audrey, and Dane. Dane is the only boy who was picked to come. So there are ten of us total. They are all also Purdue students, and most of them are from Indiana, though several people have lived or do live in different places, like New Hampshire and Canada. We are living in the dorms on San Servolo Island, which is about a ten minute vaporetto (boat) ride from the mainland of Venice. I do not actually share a room or have a roommate because there are nine girls and so one girl got her own room and that ended up being me. I would say that we are all getting to be friends, it’s hard not to be when you spend so much of your time with people. We have met a few of the other Venice International University students, some from Duke and some from Boston College in the U.S., but also a few Italians when we went out one night. Our classes require quite a bit of reading and writing essays, but they aren’t too hard. They are very interesting, there’s a lot to learn about Venice.

There were quite a few questions about food and mailing food. While you can mail food, it is not the best idea because it is kind of expensive to mail things across the Atlantic and also it can take as long as two weeks to get from Italy to America, or vice versa, so some foods might not stay good that long. Also, everything coming into a country has to go through customs, to see whether there needs to be an extra tax on it, and sometimes food is not allowed through customs, or there is an extra tax put on it that you have to pay when you receive the package. It goes the same for bringing back food in suitcases, too, so I don’t think I’ll be bring back much food stuff, if any. It’s easier to get different kinds of souvenirs. I haven’t gotten any souvenirs yet, it’s still a little early for that, I think, seeing as I’ve only been here a week and I have nine more to go. The Italian food is pretty good. We eat mostly on the island, since those meals are already paid for in the cost of our trip, but we have eaten out several times, and everything has been excellent. The best stuff, of course, is the gelato.

There were also several questions about the squid that I mentioned in another post. Who eats squid in its own ink? People in Venice, it is a Venetian specialty. Because Venice is basically on the ocean, seafood is a staple here. And yes, they really do fry squids and do different things with various different fishes. I didn’t try it this time, though, because I am not a fan of seafood and I just wasn’t feeling it at the moment. If I get the chance again, though, and I probably will, I will try the squid cooked in its own ink. It is very strange looking, though, because the ink is black and because the squid has been cooked in its own ink, the entire dish is black. It actually turned some people’s teeth in the group black until they drank some water to wash it off.

Italians use the Centigrade scale, instead of Fahrenheit, which we use in the U.S. They also use kilometers and centimeters instead of miles and inches, which makes it a little difficult sometimes to know exactly what the temperature is and what the distances are of different things.

There aren’t really any fairs like the Farmer’s Fair or Fall Fest, but there is the Biennale, which is a huge art fair held every two years in Venice and which displays art from all over the world. We have seen several of the exhibits and are going on Friday to see more. The exhibits we have seen so far are pretty cool, like one in a church displaying all sorts of instruments, like violins and clarinets and harps, from the 1500s and 1700s. So we are learning something, not only about Italian art, but about art from all over the world.

There were also a lot of questions about “favorites.” So, here we go. Favorite thing to do? Walk around Venice and just take in the sights, though riding on the vaporetto comes close second because I love being on boats. Favorite place in Venice? So far, my favorite place we have gone to was the church that held all the violins, because I used to play the violin, and also because we stumbled onto it as a complete accident while we were looking for something else. Favorite part of Venice? I actually really like Sant Elena, where our Italian class is held, because it’s less crowded with tourists, it’s more like a suburb where normal people live, but I also like San Servolo, where we live, because the island is very quiet and peaceful compared to the main city and it’s very pretty, with great views all around. Favorite country? Well, right now I would have to say that Italy and the U.S. are tied for first. I love the United States because it’s my home and I will be happy to come back to it, but right now I am loving Italy because I feel so lucky to get to spend this time here and I want to enjoy it while I’m here.

The insides of most buildings are for the most part as interesting and beautifully decorated as the outsides and many of the ceilings in buildings we have been in are quite high. Why did I talk about the mountains in my first blog post after getting here? Simply because they were awesome to see from the plane, and because I love mountains, and because I just thought they were pretty cool. Are there haunted houses? I have heard that there are haunted buildings in Venice, however, we haven’t been in any yet, and I’m not sure if they celebrate Halloween the same way we do, with haunted houses and things. We have visited a library, and are visiting another one today, but I haven’t needed to check out any books yet, so, no, I haven’t checked any books out yet. I probably will when it gets closer to time to turn in a couple of big projects. Why don’t they fly straight to Venice? There are some flights from the U.S., usually that leave from places like Philadelphia, Atlanta, or JFK airport in New York City, that do fly straight from the U.S. to Venice, but I think the reason they fly north over Canada and then down over Europe instead of straight over the Atlantic probably has to do with wind currents and things, and maybe it has something to do with then being always within a few hundred miles of land just in case something goes wrong.

Some of the names of the streets are confusing, and it is hard sometimes to remember which street is which and where they go because Venice is such a twisting maze of canals and calli (the plural for the little streets, calle, which run across the city).

Is it hard to understand Italian? Yes, when you don’t speak it. It gets easier, though, the more you learn, though it can still be hard to understand Italians even when you understand the words, because they talk very fast. The Italian word for cheese is “formaggio.” “You’re welcome” is “prego.” And I can’t really translate a name into Italian, because the Italian for anyone’s name is just your name. Sometimes, though, you can make a name sound a little more Italian by adding an “a” or an “o” at the end of it, like Mark becomes Marco and Emily becomes Emilia.

As for what it’s like to be in Venice, that’s what this whole blog is about. Is anything different? Quite a few things, but again, that’s what the whole blog is for, so you will have to keep reading to find out!

Again, thank you so much for all your questions and comments! Keep them coming and I will try to answer as many of them as I can.

Ciao,
Maria : )

Pictures!

2009-10-09T12:45:00.003-04:00

Hi everyone,

I am happy to say that I have finally put up pictures! I'm sorry it's taken so long, but this week has been crazy and this afternoon was honestly the first chance I've had to get this done.

So, the pictures are actually on Flikr, because that was way easier and better than trying to paste them directly into the blog. Just click on the little scrolling pictures on the side of the blog, which will take you to Flikr. Then, the picture you clicked on should show up in the center of the new page and you can read about each picture underneath it. Then, to go to the next one, just click on the next picture on the side, under where it says "mariacsteinmetz's photostream" which will bring up each picture and its description.

Hope you enjoy them!

Maria

First Week of Classes

2009-10-08T08:31:00.002-04:00

Hi all,

Gratzie (thank you) to everyone again for the wonderful comments, I really appreciate them. In answer to a couple of questions in the comments, yes, the food is very good, especially the gelato, which is like ice cream only better, and I have not seen anyone eating snails, I think that’s more a French thing, however, they do eat a lot of fish, including squid that has been cooked in its own ink. Also, yes, I am liking it very much and it is a lot of fun. I was pretty tired when I arrived because I didn’t get much sleep on the plane, it was pretty uncomfortable, (and unfortunately I didn’t see Niagara Falls, it was getting dark when we were going over Canada) but I’m good now. Do I like the time difference was a good question, and I would have to say that it’s good and bad. It’s good because I like that it makes it feel like things are happening sooner, in a way, but at the same time it’s bad because it makes it hard to get in touch with people at home, because they are still at work or at school while I am already getting ready for bed. As for pictures, I am working on getting those up, but it might be another day or two, just because I’ve been really busy and I haven’t had a chance to do that yet.

Today was the end of the third day of classes. They’ve really flown so far, probably because we haven’t really been doing much class work yet, except in Italian class. Our Italian class is taught by Paolo Venerando from the Dante Alighieri Institute, which is on Sant Elena, at the far end of Venice. We catch one boat from our island, San Servolo, to the mainland of Venice, then catch another boat (vaporetto) from that stop to Sant Elena. You can also walk to Sant Elena from the main part of Venice. We walked back from class on Monday, it’s really a great walk, takes about half an hour, and is right along the waterfront, it’s a really pretty walk, there’s park all along the one side for most of the way and the lagoon on the other side. Italian class itself is so far really great. I’m not even sure exactly how he’s doing it, but Paolo makes it incredibly easy to learn the language. After only three classes, he already has us writing sentences in Italian. True, they are very short, simple sentences, such as “Mi piace il gelato” (I like the ice cream), but still for being only three classes in, that is pretty good. He’s very funny, too, especially when he does impressions of how Americans mispronounce Italian because he does a very good American accent.

We haven’t done much yet in our main class, but that’s because we have been busy taking tours and getting familiar with San Servolo and with Venice. On Monday, we got a tour of San Servolo and Venice International University. San Servolo Island, which is now home to Venice International University, plus a very busy conference center, was originally a monastery way back when. The monks eventually left and it then became a convent. Then, after the nuns left too, it became a hospital. It was a normal hospital for awhile, but eventually it became a mental hospital. It was only fairly recently, the 1970s, that the island ceased to be a mental hospital and instead became Venice International University and the conference center.

The tour of the island was nice, we got to see the computer lab and the really nice library, and then we just walked around checking out the views from different parts of the island, because there is a great view of the other islands and of the lagoon from anywhere you look. There are also lime trees on the island and it is perfectly fine to pick the limes and eat them. Then, Monday night, our group joined the other VIU students to watch a movie, A Dangerous Beauty, which is about Venice during the plague in the 1500s, and we met some of the students staying here who are from Duke University.

Tuesday was better than Monday because we went for a tour around the main part of Venice. We didn’t actually go into any churches or any of the usual tourist stops, like the San Marco church or the Doge’s Palace (the Doge was like the king of Venice back in the 1500s), we are going to go to those when some of the tourists have left in a few weeks. Instead, we went around the streets to learn about where places like grocery stores and post offices were. It sounds like it would be kind-of boring, but it really wasn’t because we ended up at a lot of places where tourists don’t typically go and instead there were real Venetians, just people going about their normal business, which was much more authentically Italian. It was pretty exhausting, though, because one of our professors, Dino, walks very, very fast and it was hard to keep up sometimes. The weather’s been pretty warm too, definitely in the 70s during the day, though it does cool off quite a bit at night. Tomorrow it is actually supposed to be about 76 degrees and we are planning to go over to the Lido, which is basically Venice’s beach resort. The only problem with this nice weather is that I didn’t pack enough short sleeved shirts, because I thought it would be cold and rainy, and so it’s already time to do laundry! I can’t really complain about nice weather, though, because warm and sunny beats cold and rainy every time.

Today we continued our tour of important spots in Venice. We started off by catching a vaporetto over to a side of Venice we hadn’t been to yet, the Accademia, on the Giudecca Canal. The water was extra choppy this morning, so the boat was really rocking on the water. We were sitting in the lower part of the vaporetto, which has windows on the sides so air can get through, because it can get pretty hot and stuffy in the lower part. I was sitting by the window when the vaporetto hit an especially large wave which sent up a huge splash which came right in through the window. I got pretty nice and wet and so did our VIU guide Francesca, who was by the window in the seat in front of me. Luckily, the water was actually surprisingly warm and it didn’t take long to dry.

Once we got off the vaporetto, we went to one of the Ca’ Foscari libraries. Ca’ Foscari is another university in Venice. One of the librarians showed us around, it was a really nice library, with a great study area. Apparently, it is several hundred years old and the librarian made sure to point out the massive timbers that stretched across the ceiling and supported the building. Most of the ceilings in many of the buildings here are really spectacular. There are a lot of very high ceilings and often they will have some design on them, either in wood, or painted on and a lot of them have exposed beams, which actually look very cool.

After leaving the library, we went to the grocery store down the street. The grocery stores in Venice are very different than the ones in the U.S. For one thing, even though this was a large chain store, it was only about the size of a Dollar Store, probably smaller. The aisles are pretty narrow, because it’s small, and people are constantly saying “scusi, scusi,” (excuse me, excuse me) to get through. There were a lot of different looking brands and foods, but there were also a surprising number of American products, such as Coca-Cola and M&Ms. We then all got Billo (that’s the name of the store) cards, which are exactly like a Kroger Plus card. That was exciting, you really feel like you belong when you have a grocery store discount card.

After all that, we walked (very fast, because our professor, Dino, was leading) across a large part of Venice, through tiny, narrow little alleyways, then more open sidewalks right along the canals, and across big, open campos (a campo is like an open square or space where people can just hang out, most have a church on one side of them and shops all around and often vendors selling things like scarves or sunglasses or knick-knacks or t-shirts in the center) until we got to a restaurant for lunch. The food was good, I had an olive that I think had been deep-fried, a pastry with tomato inside it, and a casserole type dish with ham and cheese and some herbs. Other people in the group had slightly more exotic food, like Dane, who got the squid that had been cooked in its own ink. The dish was completely black. He said it was good and several of the other people in the group who tried it also said it was actually pretty good. I didn’t try it today, I figure there are still two more months left, I’ll work up to that.

After lunch and after Italian class today, we went to our professors’ house for dinner. First, though, we played soccer, or football as they call it here, in the campo near their home with their son, Lorenzo, who is four and a half. By the way, I don’t think I have mentioned it yet, but our professors are a married couple. That was fun. There were many local people out on the campo, just chatting, kids were running around playing, it was very relaxed and just a nice atmosphere. Whenever the ball would go out of the circle, people walking past would stop every time to kick it back to us.

Dinner was excellent. After the antipasto, which is the name for appetizers, we were all sent in pairs on a scavenger hunt to find items that we would need for later in the meal. Not especially difficult, except for the fact that one of the rules was that we could only speak to other people in Italian. Unfortunately, my partner Sara and I failed in our mission. We were supposed to bring back strawberries, fragole, from a street vendor on a specific street. However, the only street vendor we could find was on the campo and we were not supposed to go there because it was too easy. So, after running up and down the street where the vendor was supposed to be on about eight times, turning down a few side streets that didn’t take us anywhere, and thoroughly embarrassing ourselves in front of the waiter who had watched us run by several times and couldn’t figure out why we weren’t just buying strawberries at the campo, we had to return empty-handed because time had run out. It turned out not to be a big deal that we didn’t get the strawberries, even though we offered to go back to the campo for them, and the rest of the evening went nicely.

Our biggest surprise came between dinner and dessert, though. We got to go on a gondola ride! It was awesome. With no cars and surprisingly few people on the streets (in the non-touristy areas anyway) after 8:00 pm, it was incredibly quiet and the ride was like going back in time. You could almost imagine that it was Venice during the Renaissance, back in the 1500s and 1600s, except for when people drove past in more modern boats, playing songs like “Footloose” and Alicia Keyes “No One”. The ride itself was very peaceful and calm, and a lot of fun, but getting in and out of the gondola was a bit frightening. The boat wobbles and moves and seems to really want to tip over. Once everyone was seated, though, it was great. It was such a classically Venetian thing to do, which made it seem even better, I think.

So that’s been most of the first week of classes. Tomorrow we have lecture for a little while, then we are going to try to hit the beach for a bit. No Italian class on Thursdays, so we have the afternoons off. Then it’s the three-day weekend. We are not traveling anywhere this weekend, but we are going to the Venetian ghetto for a tour on Friday morning. This is quite a bit different from the type of ghetto we are used to talking about in the U.S., but more on that after Friday. Thank you all again for all your comments and questions, keep them coming! I will try to have pictures up here within the next day or two!

Ciao,

Maria

Finally Here!

2009-10-06T17:08:00.001-04:00

First of all, thank you everyone for your posts, that was a really nice surprise when I logged on here. Sorry it took so long to get this post up, I was having technical difficulties with my Internet, hopefully things should go more quickly from now on. I actually wrote this post Sunday night after I got here, but, as I said, due to technical issues, it’s only just going up now. I should have something else up tomorrow about the first couple of days of classes.

It’s been almost exactly a year since I first saw the poster advertising the call-out meeting about spending a semester in Venice and now here I am. In Venice. I still can’t quite believe it, even as I’m sitting here typing this in my dorm room on San Servolo. If I look just to the right, around the trees, I can see the lagoon. It’s a pretty nice view. There are actually church bells going off right now, I’m not sure from where, but they sound really pretty.

The trip over was good. The flight to Philadelphia was quick and easy, the four hour wait between getting to Philadelphia and boarding the flight to Frankfurt, Germany was not. However, I did finally board and we finally took off. There was a delay because they were short two dozen meals and they had to have them brought over from across the airport.

The flight over to Frankfurt was long, naturally, but not bad. It’s interesting because instead of flying directly across the Atlantic, like you would imagine, they actually fly up through Canada, then over until they’re only a few hundred miles from Iceland, then down over England, over Amsterdam, then finally into Frankfurt. The city was really beautiful at night. However, the Frankfurt airport was less so. Thankfully, most of the employees spoke English pretty well, but that still didn’t keep me from getting lost, going down the wrong concourse, then having to turn around and go back the other way. Then, everyone had to go through a passport check and then go through security again. On the plus side, though, they were not making people take off their shoes like they normally do at security. Despite all of this craziness, I did still manage to get to my gate with twenty minutes to spare before boarding.

The flight between Frankfurt and Venice was by far my favorite. The seats were roomier, there was more legroom, and the views, when the clouds went away, were absolutely stunning. We flew over a mountain range, possibly the Nordkette range, which is, I think, part of the tail end of the Alps, that was so fantastic that the entire trip was worth it for that view alone. Some of the tallest mountains had snow on them, but most of the lower ones didn’t yet, they were still just brown rock. The mountains themselves would have been spectacular enough, but every now and then there was a lake high up in the mountains that had the clearest looking blue-green water; the combination of the two, the snow-capped mountain with the sparkling lake hovering just beneath the snowline, was just awe-inspiring. My favorite parts, though, were the little villages squeezed into the valleys between the mountains. There were tons of them, scattered throughout the range. They just looked like little toy villages set down there.

About twenty minutes after the mountains had been left behind, I got my first views of Venice as we were descending to land. It looked from the air exactly how you would imagine it to be, just like all the pictures, the old buildings with church steeples everywhere, and the canals winding throughout the whole place. Tons of boats were out, too, plus at least half a dozen massive cruise ships were docked just outside the city. I actually met two ladies from Oregon who said they had been on a cruise in the Greek isles and Venice was their last stop. The one lady told me that she had lived in Indianapolis back “in the war years,” as she put it. We were all waiting in line to get vaporetto (the boats that are the Venetian equivalent to city busses) passes. Those two ladies, myself, and another lady in front of me were, I’m pretty sure, the only native English speakers in the entire crowd. There weren’t just Italians either. It sounded as if there was a lot of French and German being spoken, as well.

After waiting in line close to an hour, I finally got my vaporetto pass and headed down the sidewalk to the bus stop that would take me to San Marco, which is the main plaza. I didn’t actually go into the square today, I didn’t think I’d enjoy it as much when I was lugging two suitcases, a duffel bag and a backpack along. The vaporetto ride was really fun. A bit crowded, but the people standing by me were nice and helped me get my bags down the stairs. In Venice, the boats are the equivalent of cars, so the waterways are as busy as a typical street. It was a beautiful day though, and the view of the city from the water was incredible. It’s so perfectly Italian that you’d almost swear it’s fake.

I switched vaporetti at San Marco’s and boarded the one that went to the island I’m staying at, San Servolo. It’s a small island, you can walk all the way around it in about twenty minutes. It’s really pretty though, the buildings are very Italian, there are so many trees that it’s more like a park than a campus, and, possibly because of the Biennale, the art festival held every two years in Venice, there are different statues and works of art scattered all across the island. Some of them are pretty neat, some are a bit strange. There are also a lot of pigeons that seem to be the San Servolo/Venice International University equivalent of Purdue squirrels: they’re all over the place and they’re crazy. I also saw two little lizard things, they looked kind of like salamanders. Oh, and there are palm trees. That’s one of my favorite parts.
I met up with my group this afternoon, after I had checked in and unpacked. Actually, we are supposed to meet for dinner at 7pm, which is in about twenty minutes, so I’d better get ready. Then, classes start tomorrow!

The First Post

2009-08-10T10:51:00.002-04:00

Hi all,

Here it is, my first post on the updated version of this blog. I originally started this blog on wordpress.com, but Blogger is simply easier to use. However, because I had already made about half a dozen or so posts on Wordpress, I am putting a link here to that site as well, in case anyone is curious: http://mariainvenice.wordpress.com That link should take you directly to that site. There's not a whole lot there, but if you're interested in some early posts that I wrote before I knew for sure that I was going, check it out.

Now that the old business is taken care of, on to the new business: this new version of "Maria in Venice" here on Blogger! There are several features I am really excited about with this blog, in particular the world clock that tells what time it is in Italy, the poll at the bottom of the page which I hope everyone will check out and vote on and which will be updated weekly (the current one is open until October 9th, though) and once I have some pictures worth posting, those will be up here, too.

That's pretty much all I've got for now, take a minute to check things out, and leave me comments!

Thanks,
Maria : )