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