Arezzo, Week 1, Day 2

Buongiorno tutto! Today is our first full day in Arezzo and also our first day of classroom class. After Skyping until rather late last night, I finally got to sleep in, which was extremely, extremely nice. Plus, I had already written my paper last night, so I didn’t have to worry about it this morning (unlike almost everyone else in my class (though I can’t really blame them for waiting)).

After getting kicked out our room this morning so that the hotel staff could clean it, we walked around a bit, looking for lunch and gelato. Of course, gelato is an important part of every meal (that’s what we tell ourselves, at least).

                                               See the pizza. Eat the pizza.

Then we headed to the OUA (University of Oklahoma in Arezzo) Study Center so that that Elizabeth could print her paper and for planning a trip. That’s right, we’re going to Pompeii this weekend! Look forward to that blog post because you know that’s going to be cool.

Following the devastation of buying train tickets (…so. much. money…does. not. compute.), we had class from 3:30 to 6:30 pm.

                                                    Screen with school stuff

                                                      Class during break

Today was an overview of the history of:

Universities

Printing

The Renaissance

The Reformation

Both Professors Crowther and Barker are amazing teachers and obviously very dedicated to their subjects. I’ll probably have a post later focused on my teachers, so I’ll go into more detail about their awesomeness then.

After class, Elizabeth, Melinda, and I continued finalizing plans for this weekend while we waited for movie night to begin. The film was La Vita è Bella, known in English as ‘Life is Beautiful.’ Which if you’ve never seen before, you must. It is both emotionally uplifting and devastating (plus, it won three Academy Awards; Best Actor, Best Original Dramatic Score, and Best Foreign Language Film). Elizabeth had never seen it before and started to tear up by the end of it.

                                                Laughter. Tears. Movie Night.

Following movie night, we went to have dinner at 10:00 pm (true Italian dinner time) at the Osteria delle Poste, a place we will be frequenting as it takes our dinner vouchers. I ate some risotto dello scoglio (Seafood rice) and then we came back to the hotel.

Interesting Stories of the Day:

• Our shrimps at the restaurant had heads. Elizabeth was creeped out by them, so Melinda and I entertained each other by making them pretend to talk to her.
• My water was also in this awesome carafe and it just made me very happy.
• Also, our shower has a window. With blinds. That are controlled by remote from the bedroom. So that’s fun.

Now that we're in Arezzo, I probably won't update unless something special happens or it's been a few days. Never fear, I'm sure many interesting things will happen that I will want to share, so keep a look out.

A dopo!