I realize I probably shouldn't even be bothering with the blog thing as I hardly ever update it, but here I go anyway.
I went to London to visit Nikki the first weekend in October. It was so great to see her and to meet her friends in London. It was also nice to be in an English speaking country for a little while. I saw Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, we hung out in Foyles book store for about 2 hours (that's Nikki and me for you), we went to the Tate Modern and saw some lovely modern art, celebrated her friend's birthday, saw St. Pauls, took the beefeater tour at Tower of London, went to Buckingham Palace, and went shopping on Oxford Street. All in 3 days! And I had a burger in a pub that cost me about 9 pounds, with the beer, it cost 11.50 pounds which I work out to about 22 dollars? Ridiculous, and I thought the Euro was bad.
Apart from the unpleasant flight home (British Airlines suck-THEY TOOK MY PEANUT BUTTER AWAY! AND MY FAVORITE LIP GLOSS! AND THEY MADE ME CRY!)it was a lovely trip and I was so sad to see Nikki go :(
Since then, I started my classes at UNiBo and my ECCO classes are in full swing. My UniBo class is now Semiotica dell'Arte which means Semiotics of Art in English. It's very interesting because it's like a whole new way of looking at art. Semiotics is the study of signs and symbols, so this class takes apart works of art analyzing things like the connection between the frame and the artwork, the perspective lines and their meaning etc. Kind of complicated to explain, even more complicated to take a class on when it's taught in Italian.
Other than that, I've just been hanging around Bologna...went to Florence again for a day, went to Ferrara on a field trip for art history class. On Tuesday this week I got sick. It was not fun. Im pretty much just starting to get over it right now, but I had a really bad stomach virus that included going to the hospital to get a blood test and make sure it wasn't something else. I had intense chills, really high fever (39.9 C which is like 104 F, scaring the bejesus out of my Italian roommates who apparently never get fevers that high), and basically couldnt eat for 2 days. It's friday now and I'm feeling better, just HORRIBLY sick of being in my apartment. I'm convinced that now the headache i still have is really just from lack of visual stimulation, looking at the same surroundings constantly.
Anyway, next week my family gets here! Wednesday was Mom's birthday! And that's about it for now!
venerdì 19 ottobre 2007
martedì 2 ottobre 2007
Firenze
I've decided that my photo album of Florence is not quite enough. It requires explanations, insights and a commentary that's longer than a one sentence caption. So.....
Last weekend, Sept. 22-24, I went to Florence with Liise. Ok, now imagine this- an art history nerd (me) and a European history nerd(Liise) let loose in Florence, Italy. Craziness! Instead of listing off the things that we did- boring- i'll tell some fun stories and interesting bits of information that we learned.
Palazzo Ritti- Residence of Cosimo de'Medici after he lived in Palazzo Vecchio (not called vecchio-"old" until he left it for the other palace), now houses several galleries full of amazing art that I pretty much drooled all over (obviously not literally, they would have thrown me out). The Boboli gardens are also located within the palace walls, we only saw them from inside the galleria but they were still beautiful from afar. Funnily enough, on the last day we were in Florence, we were taking a walk and happened upon the back entrance to these gardens. So, something really intriguing about this palace is that when Cosimo lived here, he had a passageway built from Palazzo Vecchio, over the Ponte Vecchio into his residence here. Dude didn't even have to walk outside to get to work in the morning (which I assume was the point). He also had all these cool secret rooms, staircases and corridors in Palazzo Vecchio that Liise and I took a tour through (In Italian, with an adorable guide)! Probably the coolest part of Florence, in my opinion. Although i do have to admit, David was pretty rad.
David- Okay, so after one walks into the Galleria Dell'Academia, there are tons of people, you waited on line with some of them for about an hour. Pretty much, even though one tries to pretend they are interested in the multitude of medieval religious art filling the anterior gallery rooms, everyone is really there to see one thing. David. The shining star of the gallery...actually no scratch that, the shining star of all sculpture ever created by anyone. Extremely tall, about 25 feet or 7.6 meters. Perfection, absolute perfection. And I snapped an illegal photo! Ill put it below the text. Our time here was definitely well spent, we plopped ourselves down and pretty much stayed there for an hour. I sketched a little bit, but overall, the major activity was staring at the beauty that is Michelangelo's David.
That's all for now, but I will add more on Florence later!!
Below are David (i cant figure out how to rotate him) and Ponte Vecchio
Last weekend, Sept. 22-24, I went to Florence with Liise. Ok, now imagine this- an art history nerd (me) and a European history nerd(Liise) let loose in Florence, Italy. Craziness! Instead of listing off the things that we did- boring- i'll tell some fun stories and interesting bits of information that we learned.
Palazzo Ritti- Residence of Cosimo de'Medici after he lived in Palazzo Vecchio (not called vecchio-"old" until he left it for the other palace), now houses several galleries full of amazing art that I pretty much drooled all over (obviously not literally, they would have thrown me out). The Boboli gardens are also located within the palace walls, we only saw them from inside the galleria but they were still beautiful from afar. Funnily enough, on the last day we were in Florence, we were taking a walk and happened upon the back entrance to these gardens. So, something really intriguing about this palace is that when Cosimo lived here, he had a passageway built from Palazzo Vecchio, over the Ponte Vecchio into his residence here. Dude didn't even have to walk outside to get to work in the morning (which I assume was the point). He also had all these cool secret rooms, staircases and corridors in Palazzo Vecchio that Liise and I took a tour through (In Italian, with an adorable guide)! Probably the coolest part of Florence, in my opinion. Although i do have to admit, David was pretty rad.
David- Okay, so after one walks into the Galleria Dell'Academia, there are tons of people, you waited on line with some of them for about an hour. Pretty much, even though one tries to pretend they are interested in the multitude of medieval religious art filling the anterior gallery rooms, everyone is really there to see one thing. David. The shining star of the gallery...actually no scratch that, the shining star of all sculpture ever created by anyone. Extremely tall, about 25 feet or 7.6 meters. Perfection, absolute perfection. And I snapped an illegal photo! Ill put it below the text. Our time here was definitely well spent, we plopped ourselves down and pretty much stayed there for an hour. I sketched a little bit, but overall, the major activity was staring at the beauty that is Michelangelo's David.
That's all for now, but I will add more on Florence later!!
Below are David (i cant figure out how to rotate him) and Ponte Vecchio
lunedì 1 ottobre 2007
Picture Link
the link to my picture website is below on the left of the page in the link section, enjoy!
Update
Woah, I am TERRIBLE at keeping this up. I think my goal from now on will be once a week. For now, however, I will quickly run through what i've been doing since in Bologna.
I arrived in Bologna on September 5th, after my 3 weeks in Lecce, and my vacation to Napoli, Capri and the Amalfi Coast. All of which are documented in my photo albums on Picasso, just search samanthaboyce5 in google pictures and you'll find my albums. I found out about 3 days after arriving in Bologna that I had shingles. Tons of fun, I know, but I was better in about a week and a half after resting and taking anti-virals, pain medication and benedryl.
Bologna is absolutely gorgeous. It's a medieval city that is now a "university city" to the fullest meaning of the phrase. The population here is about 1/5 students, just walking outside you're door any night of the week you can tell the city is full of young students. Bologna is organized just like any old medieval city, with a large piazza (Piazza Maggiore) in the city center, with narrow side streets radiating out from the center and larger concentric streets connecting these(in general). The city is full of old medieval buildings, palazzi (palaces) and churches. I'll beposting a Bologna album soon.
So, what have I been doing here? After getting over my shingles, I went on a trip to Ravenna- a really beautiful medieval city about an hour from Bologna, where San Vitale is, full of byzantine mosaics, used to be the Western capitol of the Holy Roman Empire etc.
Classes until Sept. 25 were intensive language and basic art history (in order to learn the Italian vocab necessary to be taking art history courses in Italian). I don't know if I mentioned that all of my courses are taught in Italian quindi all of my work ecc. is in Italian.
Anyway, after the language classes finished we had a long weekend in which I went to Florence with my friend Liise. It was amazing! I saw the Duomo, Ghiberti's Baptistry Doors, Santa Maria Novella, Palazzo Vecchio, David, and so much amazing art I can't even begin to list all of it(but some includes Botticelli's Birth of Venus and Primavera, Michelangelo's Doni Tondo, Titian's Venus of Urbino, Caravaggio's Bacchus, and some Raphael, Da Vinci, Rubens, Van Eyck, etc.) Pictures from Firenze will also be up as soon as i can get my act together.
Classes at ECCO (my program) started last week- I'm taking 3 classes at ECCO and one directly at University of Bologna. My classes are:
1. Italian Cultural History- modern Italian cultural history since unification in the late 19th century, especially since WWII. We talk about globalization, how Italians see themselves in world context etc. Very interesting and enjoyable.
2. Women Italian Artists during the Renaissance- Exactly what is sounds like, also really interesting, this is a fairly new topic in Art History- lots of these women artists influenced the style of Da Vinci and the like.
3. A writing class- basically to improve my style and grammar in Italian writing.
4. UniBO course- Ancient Greek Art- yeah. i dont know how to describe that any further, so, yeah.
And that's it so far in terms of classes. Except that I have no classes on Fridays which rocks! Oh, and I'm going to London this Thursday to visit Nikki for the weekend (until Monday), so I'm really excited about that. I guess I'll write more about my roommates and classes when I get back from London.
Until then,
Sam
I arrived in Bologna on September 5th, after my 3 weeks in Lecce, and my vacation to Napoli, Capri and the Amalfi Coast. All of which are documented in my photo albums on Picasso, just search samanthaboyce5 in google pictures and you'll find my albums. I found out about 3 days after arriving in Bologna that I had shingles. Tons of fun, I know, but I was better in about a week and a half after resting and taking anti-virals, pain medication and benedryl.
Bologna is absolutely gorgeous. It's a medieval city that is now a "university city" to the fullest meaning of the phrase. The population here is about 1/5 students, just walking outside you're door any night of the week you can tell the city is full of young students. Bologna is organized just like any old medieval city, with a large piazza (Piazza Maggiore) in the city center, with narrow side streets radiating out from the center and larger concentric streets connecting these(in general). The city is full of old medieval buildings, palazzi (palaces) and churches. I'll beposting a Bologna album soon.
So, what have I been doing here? After getting over my shingles, I went on a trip to Ravenna- a really beautiful medieval city about an hour from Bologna, where San Vitale is, full of byzantine mosaics, used to be the Western capitol of the Holy Roman Empire etc.
Classes until Sept. 25 were intensive language and basic art history (in order to learn the Italian vocab necessary to be taking art history courses in Italian). I don't know if I mentioned that all of my courses are taught in Italian quindi all of my work ecc. is in Italian.
Anyway, after the language classes finished we had a long weekend in which I went to Florence with my friend Liise. It was amazing! I saw the Duomo, Ghiberti's Baptistry Doors, Santa Maria Novella, Palazzo Vecchio, David, and so much amazing art I can't even begin to list all of it(but some includes Botticelli's Birth of Venus and Primavera, Michelangelo's Doni Tondo, Titian's Venus of Urbino, Caravaggio's Bacchus, and some Raphael, Da Vinci, Rubens, Van Eyck, etc.) Pictures from Firenze will also be up as soon as i can get my act together.
Classes at ECCO (my program) started last week- I'm taking 3 classes at ECCO and one directly at University of Bologna. My classes are:
1. Italian Cultural History- modern Italian cultural history since unification in the late 19th century, especially since WWII. We talk about globalization, how Italians see themselves in world context etc. Very interesting and enjoyable.
2. Women Italian Artists during the Renaissance- Exactly what is sounds like, also really interesting, this is a fairly new topic in Art History- lots of these women artists influenced the style of Da Vinci and the like.
3. A writing class- basically to improve my style and grammar in Italian writing.
4. UniBO course- Ancient Greek Art- yeah. i dont know how to describe that any further, so, yeah.
And that's it so far in terms of classes. Except that I have no classes on Fridays which rocks! Oh, and I'm going to London this Thursday to visit Nikki for the weekend (until Monday), so I'm really excited about that. I guess I'll write more about my roommates and classes when I get back from London.
Until then,
Sam
Iscriviti a:
Post (Atom)
