Friday was an extremely busy, crammed day. I had eight straight hours of class, which was more class than I had during any day of college so far. My day started out with a soaking wet run (it started pouring midway through my run). Then I had my art ed class. I found out that I will be working with third graders in the coming month! The school we will be working in is really small. It will also be quite a trek to be carry all the art supplies we need up and down our hill and then another to get to the school. Even so, I can honestly not wait to start teaching these kids. In the mean time, I really need to brush up on my useful art classroom Italian phrases. After art ed, I had my paper/book making class, where we learned how to create embossed and embedded paper, using interestingly textured objects such as buttons, bubble wrap, string, and other fun stuff. This time, I planned ahead and wore my rain boots, to prevent myself from getting soaking wet toes. Directly following my art ed class, I had my art history class. By this point, I was EXHAUSTED! But I survived my final two hour class of the day. I really love all my classes, but it was a lot for a rainy Friday. That night at dinner, a big realization dawned on me. One of our servers at the restaurant has been reminding me of someone, and I finally decided that this server reminds me of the clock from Beauty and the Beast. This server is an enthusiastic Disney cartoon, specifically the sophisticated French Clocksworth.
Saturday, we had to wake up at the crack of dawn in order to go on our first field trip from Cortona: Pisa! As exciting as Pisa might seem, it really does not have much to offer other than the Cathedral Complex, which consists of the church, baptistery, and of course the famous bell tower. I was actually scheduled to give my art history group presentation about this lovely leaning tower, which ended up being quite a success. We ended our presentation with a demonstration about the various clever poses one can photograph next to the leaning tower. And then of course, we actually carried out this necessary Leaning Tower of Pisa photo shoot. It was quite a sight to see so many people out on the lawn in front of the tower pretending to hold up the tower or pretending to have it fall on them. We only stayed at Pisa for a couple hours. Afterward, we went on to Lucca, an adorable old city surrounded by a wall. I love Lucca. I could not stop taking photographs of its little alleyways. I loved the colors of all the buildings: so many warm yellows, peaches, and oranges. I also happened to notice that there was a rather large collection of beautiful pastry shops and bakeries. It was difficult to tear my eyes away from their display windows. One of my favorite parts of Lucca was a massive, never ending antique market that took up block after block. Each of the little tents sold trinkets that I could imagine being sold at an Anthropologie store. I fell I love with this table of old fashioned vintage photographs of people. I was so intrigued by them, that I decided to buy some. I decided they can provide some good inspiration for paintings. Lucca is definitely a city I would like to go back to during a future free weekend. As we were leaving, there was a sun shower, and a full vibrant rainbow illuminated the sky. A very happy ending.
Sunday was super productive from the moment I woke up. First I hand washed every article of clothing that I brought with me in the sink in our bathroom. This chore needed to be done, or I would have no clothes to wear, which would not be a good thing. However our sink is not very big, so it took lots of washings to get everything clean and then it took another hefty amount of time to drape everything over the various space heaters in our room. After all my efficient rounds of laundry, I went with my paper making partner to make more embossed and embedded paper. This was the first time we were completely on our own in the paper making lab. I like to embed patterns in the paper which means you make a sheet of paper, and then place flat objects such as rubber bands, buttons, tooth picks, and string, in a lovely arrangement and then finally make and place a sheet of paper directly on top, sandwiching the objects in between the two papers, making one thicker sheet of paper. The paper is then pressed and dried. We worked in the lab for two hours. Then, I went on my longest run yet all around and up and down the mountain. During the time frame of my run, the weather did all sorts of weird things. It started out beautifully sunny, and then starting lightly raining, and then the sky cleared up, and then a little while later it drizzled again…After my run, I put my first few marks on my newly made gigantic canvas. I officially decided to make a self-portrait. Another painter in my class, Charlotte took photographs of me, and then we switched and I took photographs of her, because she is also painting a self-portrait. Our photographs turned out to be very dramatic images, so I was excited to finally start painting. Before I knew it, it was time for dinner. My room mates and I were all craving pizza, so we walked down the hill to one of the pizza parlors in town. When we got there, a lady before us snatched all the last pieces of vegetable pizza. Everything else available had meat on it. I was about to have a conniption when at the very last moment, one of the chefs brought out a beautiful zucchini egg plant pizza. They packed for me in an even more beautiful pizza box. That may sound weird, but the pizza boxes from this restaurant were, in my opinion, a work of art. I am planning to go back to this place a start a collection of these boxes, although I am not sure what I am going to do with them. None of you will be surprised to here that when we got back to our school, I added on some of my own vegetables to my pizza to make it an even more delightful experience. Which it was.
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