On Friday, the whole house went to Montova with our professor and his wife. We took a Mercedes Benz bus to get there. I saw the alps!!! I was so excited!! Because I love them!!! We stopped at an autogrill and I got chocolate milk but it wasn't as good as yoohoo at home. It also wasn't one of the most impressive autgrills that there are. Some have bridges that go across the highway.
Montova was nice. I kind of had a headache all day so I couldn't really enjoy it as much as I might have. The small city is next to two lakes and it smells like a butt. When we got off the bus, it really just smelled horrible. Really really bad. But we went to a palazzo that had a lot of cool architecture and paintings. Really cool ceilings!!! I'm getting so many ideas for my future, probably unrealistic, dreamhouse that I'm getting really excited about finally finding it. What's really weird about walking around these palazzos and stuff, is that they are older than America. Like when that group had a snowball in the the piazza of the oldest university in Europe, that thing was older than America! Things like are pretty weird to think about. After we went to the palazzo, I had a Montovan speciality, which is tortellini stuffed with pumpkin. It was interesting. It had a sweeter taste to it and while I like spinach tortellini more, I would eat it again. Then we went to a "dallying palazzo" or something like that. I think it was a place where rich men took their mistresses to "dally." But they brought their horses, because they all loved their horses. I was kind of confused, because I don't really know what "dallying" is, but one can infer. The architect/painter of that palazzo had been expelled from Rome for drawing a sex book, so a lot of his paintings were supposed to be provacitive. He also played architectural jokes on the highly educated gentlemen that visited, such as putting arches over the windows, but not connecting the arches. The arches are supposed to represent strength and support, so this was ironic that they were not connected and it was supposed to be funny. Man, I thought it was really a knee-slapper. just kidding. Even though I really didn't, I could see how people would think that it was funny, so I took pictures of various jokes.
Then we went shopping and I bought two pairs of pants and a skirt for 30 euro. go me!
After Montova, instead of going home with the rest of the group, Ashley, Dan, Kati, and I got on a train to Verona. The train ride went quite quickly. We discussed some of the drama going on in our house, with one person being disrespectful to our professor and us being upset about it. He's a really nice guy and is really intelligent but is very compassionate so it is easy for him to get taken advantage of. It does not speak to us. (in my father-tongue that means, "it sucks." or "it stinks." or "it's not a good thing.")
Then we got on a bus to find our hotel. It was about 8 by now. We proceeded to spend the next 2 hours on buses trying to find our hotel. The people were all very nice and many tried to help us. But we were all very tired and hungry, so we finally got on the right bus and waited until we were going in the right direction and then got off at the wrong stop and then I saw a guy walking with a chainsaw to load in his car, which was pretty creepy but I laughed anyway, and then we walked some more and finally found our hotel. The woman working there had stayed late to make sure we got there and was about to come and find us. So that was reassuring. Then we went to an all you can eat buffet for dinner and came back and watched the end of "True Lies" with the current governor of California and Jaime Lee Curtis and then we watched CNN until we fell asleep.
The next day in Verona was quite lovely. We bought a Verona pass, which let us get into a lot of museums and tourist attractions, as well as use the bus without buying tickets. That saved us a lot of hassle. So we got on the right bus and went to a big piazza that was like a little tourist vendor market place. I bought two bags (one for the quilt that I am making with all of the places that I go to). Then we went Juliet's house from Romeo and Juliet. Ok, so I just think these things are funny because these characters weren't real, but we still visited the balcony where they met, went through Juliet's house, saw Romeo's house (which was closed) and saw Juliet's tomb, which had flowers on it. So that was entertaining. We got cheap pizza for lunch, but Ashley left her Harry Potter hat there so we went back several times until it reopened that evening to find it, which luckily she did. (Ashley says she could be Harriet Potter, because she had a lightning shaped scar on her arm. Her and Harry were separated, when Harry was asked to to Hogwarts and she wasn't. Quite a sad tale. But they still have a close bond.) We climbed 369 steps up the tower in Verona, which was by far the scariest tower we have climbed so far, for some reason. (We have now climbed a total of 1420 steps in towers.) While we were climbing the bell started ringing, but it was only 3 o'clock so luckily it didn't last that long. That was quite scary. Afterwards all of our legs were shaking and we all had to pee, but we could only find those hole in the ground things and that was not worth the hassle. Finally Ashley spotted a fancy hotel so we snuck in and used their awesome bathroom! We walked past the stadium and saw the Juliet's tomb (which is technically Romeo's too, I think.) And then we headed on home.
Sunday was glorious because that morning we didn't have to do anything so I just got my reading done and lounged around. Then we started making plans for first spring break. I'm going to London with Sarah and Amanda, and then I meeting Robyn, Ashley, and Dan in Amsterdam and am spending the rest of break with them. We're going to Amsterdam, Berlin, and Prague. Then we got sidetracked from planning that by looking at potential houses for us to live in next year. It will be really cool if that actually follows through with as little problems was possible. Then we went to San Lio for an Italian class project. We had to count the stores and divide them up into one of three categories being, "principally for Venetians", "prinicipally for tourists" or for both. We had to take pictures of some stores and put them in a powerpoint presentation. San Lio is a calle (street) in between San Marco and the Rialto, but it is also in between San Marco and a more residential neighborhood. Our professor thought that San Lio was mostly for Venetians, but we determined that 4 out of the 42 stores were only for Venetians, so we surprised him.
Ummm.... on Monday night we made good pasta. Well, Kati made the good sauce. and it was delicious. Red pesto. so good. and then we watched "bicycle thief" "saved!" and "blow." We liked to cover all ends of the spectrums with our movies. "The Bicycle Thief" is of course the Diseca classic we watched in Film Class, where the man loses gets his bicycle stolen and him and his son (who is so awesome!) spend the whole day/film looking for it, because he needs it to keep the job he just got. "Saved!" is the independent film that came out a few years ago with McCauley Culkin and Mandy Moore and is one of my most favorite movies. It's about how religion can be used in the wrong ways or judging others and I just love it. It's really deep but really funny and it just makes me really happy everytime I watch it. "Blow" is with Johnny Depp and is about the true story of a drug dealer. It was really really depressing and had a creepy face at the end that scared me a lot.
Yesterday we had 6 hours of classes and then goofed off for the whole evening and kept looking at future houses/making travel plans.