AHH! It is already March. I have already been abroad an entire month. My Monday started off with a nice long run to the grocery store in the town at the bottom of the mountain. I needed to stock up on cereal, although even in this huge grocery store, they have a very poor selection. It ranges from corn flakes, frosted flakes, and Special K, which are all essentially the same cereal. I miss oatmeal squares and multigrain cheerios! Immediately after this exciting trip, I had my painting critique for my massive, colorful, figural self-portrait piece. I decided for my future paintings that I am going to keep up with the larger scale canvases, because it really allows me to move freely with my brushstrokes. (Shipping all these pieces home will be another story…)
Tuesday morning I woke up extremely sore. Both my legs and back ached, probably from the steep hills I have been running on and not enough stretching post runs. I decided a nice walk would loosen myself up, so I explored around the mountain before class. In art ed that day, we are preparing for meeting our students on Friday, and then our first day of teaching the following week. I am in the process of attempting to translate my lessons in Italian and then practicing reciting what I can, but this is a very slow and challenging effort. I am also making a cute little accordian-style book to use as a visual aid (and script) for my introduction on Friday with my class of third graders. I am basically sharing my name, where I am from, who is in my family, what I am studying, my favorite thing in Italy, and my favorite food. This was supposed to be a small ten-minute project, but I am having way too much fun coloring it and putting in as many details as possible. In book making later than afternoon, we learned how to apply surface treatments to our hand made paper (such as dyes and varnishes) and then, we finally learned how to put a type of book together. I work at a very slow pace to put the book together, starting from ripping the paper down, to cutting out the book board for the cover, to picking book cloth and decorative interior paper…trust me, this is a VERY lengthy process. I do not understand people like my suite mate Jordan who flies through the whole thing in record time. Maybe a few weeks from now, I will work more efficiently…Actually today in the midst of me cutting out my book board, I stabbed my finger with an exacto knife. I was more annoyed that I had to work one-handed for the rest of the class as opposed to the actual injury, although my poor finger was not a pretty sight. After dinner that evening, we had a third set of teacher presentations. This evening, our R.A. Daniel presented two of his short stories, and the creative writing professor read some of her poems. I was extremely impressed by both of them. I really like this part of the program, where the professors share with us their background and their work. We get to see a personal side of them that would otherwise remain hidden to us.
On a side note, apparently the fifteenth-century monastery we are living in is haunted. Numerous people in my program, including two of my own roommates, have reported having bad dreams and creepy visions at night of moving figures in the shadows or leering faces in the window. Thankfully, I have been free of any creepy dream or vision, but I will keep you posted if this changes.
Wednesday, after some serious stretching, I was able to go on a run again! It ended up being quite an adventure because it started pouring a few miles in. I walked back up the hill to our monastery soaking wet. That afternoon, before art history, I painted for several hours on my next canvas. On this canvas, I am focusing on all parts of the figure, which is still based on images of myself, except the face. Right now there are lots of legs, feet, and hands dancing around in different positions. I am in an experimental mode right now, so I am not positive where this painting is going to go, but it is an explosion of exciting colors right now. I am ending this post with good news and bad news. The bad news: sadly, I am developing a cold at the moment. There are a lot of people getting sick, so I am surrounded amid a lot of germs. Hopefully, my cold is just a slight glitch and will be gone in milliseconds. But for now, I am sneezing and blowing my nose quite frequently. The good news: The gelato place in Cortona, right at the bottom of our hill, FINALLY opened!!! It has been closed up until this point, and we have all gone such a long time without gelato, so everyone in my program is overjoyed. I look forward to being a frequent visitor to the gelato place from this point on. (I did not go today, because it was really cold and rainy. Maybe tomorrow…keep reading and you will find out!)
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