October 7, 2011

October 7, 2011

This morning I woke up around 7:30 so I could get into the city before the buses stopped running, due to the strike. I caught the bus around 8:45 and got to school around nine. First, I used the school’s printer to print off my boarding passes for my flights both to and from London so I wouldn’t have to worry about those later. Then Franzi and I booked tickets for the bus to the airport in Pisa from Florence, as well as coming back. And THEN we booked tickets for the bus into the city of London from the airport we’re flying into and, of course, vice versa. It feels so nice to have everything booked and printed out now! I cannot believe we’re leaving in a little over a week!

After we had gotten everything booked, I headed out to San Marco to look at the painting I am focusing on in my paper. I got into the church/convent museum for free with my student museum pass, which was so nice and went right to my painting. I studied my painting for a while, taking notes and sketching it to the best of my ability for later use when I am actually writing the paper. After I had studied it long enough, I studied the similarities between that painting and the other paintings by Fra Angelico throughout the rest of the room. By the time I was going to leave, it started down pouring so I decided to explore the second floor of the convent and I am so glad I did! Upstairs is where all of the cells of the friars were and you can go into each of them, including the double cell of Cosimo de’ Medici. The whole upper level was a really cool place to explore. Once I had spent some time up there, the rain had stopped and I ventured back out into the city. I wandered back toward the school, stopping by the central market on the way to grab some lunch. I discovered the dried fruit stand today so I had delicious dried grapes (raisins) and dried mangos! I also got a Panini from my favorite little bakery stand. After my stop there, I went back to school. At school, I sent a few emails and then headed out to catch the bus home before the second half of the strike started. Strikes here are so funny…they have breaks during the times when people absolutely need the buses…isn’t that kind of against the whole point of a strike? Anyway, I was thankful that I did not have to walk home because, as soon as I got on the bus, it started raining again.

When I got home, I finished up my research for my Medici paper by reading a few more chapters in various books and articles on Fra Angelico, the Altarpiece d’ Annalena and Cosimo de’ Medici. I decided I needed a little bit of a break so I decided to write my blog. Now it’s time to start writing my paper and see how far I can get before dinnertime. Who knows, maybe I’ll be able to finish up a first draft—it’s ambitious but we’ll see!

Guess what?! I FINISHED MY ENTIRE PAPER BEFORE DINNER! Writing papers always gives me such a feeling of accomplishment and I feel so wonderful after writing that one. It was actually kind of a fun paper to write because I was actually really interested in the subject of it and had done a lot of background research—enough to fully understand it. So, anyway, my 2,000-word paper is written (it’s not due until next Friday), complete with bibliography, and now I am going to go enjoy a delicious (I’m sure) dinner, free of worries!

For dinner this evening, we started off with my favorite light bread rolls that we always have before pizza with cheese and salami. We followed that with margherita pizza and salad and finished off with clementines. It was absolutely delicious and the perfect “celebration” for finishing my paper! AND we got to watch the Italy vs. Serbia soccer game while we had dinner and it was VERY exciting. Italy got a goal within the first minute and Andrea jumped up and down cheering! As I write this, I can tell when something exciting is happening because he yells “vai vai vai vai vai!” (“go go go go go!”) It definitely reminds me of when Dad is watching hockey or football downstairs and you can hear him all over the house :) Anyway, it was a wonderful dinner filled with delicious food, lots of laughs and cheering and lovely company. A perfect end to the week!

Now that dinner is over I am going to finish up my blog, post it, stretch and then probably head of to bed pretty soon here. I am going with a few friends to Lucca tomorrow for the day and we are leaving at 8:00 a.m. so I need to get up pretty early. It’s supposed to be a lovely day tomorrow, though, so I am very excited—sunny and low seventies! In fact, today was in the low seventies here in Florence! I wore jeans and a cardigan and was just right! However, the rain cooled things down even more and, around 3:00 this afternoon, it was 58 degrees! I am definitely welcoming this fall weather. But it will be nice to have the cooler weather along with the sunshine tomorrow, hopefully. I hope you all have a wonderful rest of your Friday and a lovely start to your Saturday tomorrow!

Love, Kari

P.S. As I post this, I am sitting out on the balcony and it’s really chilly….CRAZY!

I clipped this from an Italian newspaper article about Halloween...they tried so hard to write "Trick-or-Treat" but it appears they didn't quite understand :P