London and a Stomach Virus

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!