Okay so I don't normally blog, buttt--it may help me remember things for this sweet book project.
22.05.09
After a night packing and deciding what all to bring, the next day Alysha, Dominick, and I flew from Chicago to Philly. We found other fellow students-Molly, Liv, and Amanda. The outrageous Philadelphia crew kicked Molly off of the plane due to assumptions that she may have the swine flu. Lame. I love how Italians just laugh that off. Finally, off to Venice we went. Horrible flight since the seats did not recline in my row and I was sitting next to a man who snored super loudly (and then he would always be eating fried chicken when he was awake...gross for a plane ride, ha!) But I sat next to a fun-loving old couple who are about to celebrate their 20th anniversary in Venice, so kudos to that.
23.05.09
Venice, city of water and light...or so I hear. Damn, how true it is! I felt like I was a kid seeing Disney World for the first time again. Thank god I have not seen any leash kids thus so far...Americans. Anywho, riding the vaporetto for the first time was pretty sweet, although I did feel like I was stuck in a herd of cattle, except with babies kicking and old people in every direction. Finally when we arrived at our vaporetto stop Giglio something we had to go look for Campo San Maurizio, our new home. So since we all thought "oh it must be near San Marco," we decided to follow those signs, and boy, were we wrong. We ended up hiking our luggage up far too many bridges that we needed to, and we went in the total opposite direction. We would do that. After finding Campo San Maurizio, we decided to wait until 3 p.m. since that is when Lorenzo let us in. Little that we knew, we could have just knocked at 11:30 a.m. when we arrived. Oh well, people/gypsy/dog walking was amusing. Later on, we all chose apartments and met up with Ed to go to the welcome dinner. Although the musica latina blasted, we had fun. Everyone ordered crazy pizzas, especially Andrew's garbage looking thing, and mingled some. I decided that it will be a great group, and I'm quite happy for that.
24.05.09
So we met up with Ed to take a tour of the city. We just basically walked around and found the grocery store. I'm just so amazed that there are no cars, nor vespas in this city. It's quite amazing, but sad that the city is sinking. I wish we could preserve it all for future generations, but by the way global warming is affecting us-it may never happen! Lucky to come now I guess, eh? After getting back, we just went to the grocery store and made a huge family floor 2 dinner. Katya's an excellent cook, so we were all glad. Basically, everyone fell asleep super early thanks to the jet lag, and little did I know...
25.05.09
that I would wake up at 5:45 this morning to the sound of screeching sea-gulls. How I want to give them some alka seltzer so they could explode! That was cruel, but wow...those birds are annoying. So Alysha and I just literally found stuff to do to keep busy, and then we found out a ton of us were up early, so we went out for cappucino a la italiana, so we could make it through the day. Today was the first day of school, so we walked through this maze of a city to find the Scuola. Got some orientation business taken care of, so we can travel easily and whatnot. We looked at some artist books and we made some sketchbooks, although I sorta failed on that venture with my great craft. We left and redressed to go to an event at the Peggy Guggenheim Museum. I found some Jackson Pollocks that I actually liked and found interesting. I finally got to "look at one super up close to capture the whole essence of the piece"...oh a102 prof how I hated your nonsense. The museum filled up quickly and was pretty packed, which made it difficult to actually look at paintings up close and personally. So Annie and I venture out of the museum to find our way home...EPIC FAIL. We circled the city and wound up back at the Peggy Guggenheim twice. Afterwards Annie and I had a laundry dilemma, and Alysha, Annie, Dominick, and I decided to draw a campo at night. The night really is dead. It's not loud, and there seems like there really isn't much to do-probably due to the influx of tourists. But I really like the breezy dark nature of drawing at night..differnt than the normal crowds in the streets during the day. I think I may become a bit claustrophobic by the end of this trip.
