Tally ho!

I was talking to a girl at a party last night who told me that she'd been so homesick at the beginning of the semester that she'd forced herself to write a list of all the things she would miss about Florence when the time came for departure. I wasn't nearly that clever, but I like the idea, so I thought I might compose a little list here (although I only have 4 days left to really appreciate these things)

• Hearing the bells of the Campanile ring the hour, especially 6 and noon.
• Walking past the Duomo to school every day.
• Painting what I want, in whatever style I want.
• My awesome teachers: the painting teacher that laughed when I saluted him when saying goodbye; my  fashion teacher who liked the title for my Marie Antoinette essay ("How to Dress Like an Ostrich"); my illustration teacher who gave us a cappuccino break every morning and told us hilarious stories about her life in Florence; my scatterbrained art history teacher who told me she was eager to read my final paper because she liked my writing so much.
• Cappuccini e paste per colazione! 
• Parties: everyone gets their own bottle of wine.
• Hearing little kids speak Italian in squeaky voices.
• The Arno, the Uffizi, and everything beautiful.
• The excellent chocolate bars on sale at the supermarket chain Conad. 
• Zecchi, the cramped art store full of everything awesome.
• Seeing the Palazzo Vecchio from my windows, especially all lit up at night.
• The beautiful Christmas decorations (see my last post), all draped over the streets and glowing everywhere.
• The rare occasion when an Italian person congratulates me on how good my Italian is.
• My friends:

CHRISTMAS

Everyone, only 18 (well, 17, since the 18th is almost over) days until I'm home. I'm so crazily excited. And that means that there are only 23 days until Christmas! Florence has appropriately decked herself out for the holiday. I just wanted to share some photos of the lovely drapery of lights that have been hung over a few streets.

50 Shades of...Fashion? Also: vegetable origins

Hi everyone! Did you miss me? I bet you did, a lot. I haven't posted in like, forever, and I apologize for that. Who knew that keeping up with a blog would be difficult? Ah ha ha, that was a joke. I like to share those with you.*

So here's an update on Alice's Life, as of...now, is pretty good. I'm finally feeling a little more comfortable in my Italy skin. This may be because I only have 23 days left...who knows. In any case, I'm doing well, I'm excited about my school projects (all but one, let's talk about that later -- maybe with some asterisks?**) and I'm having a good time with my friends. Want some evidence? Here's a video I took on Thanksgiving day, which was very fun, thanks for asking. Watch it!***

We had a great celebration, everyone bringing something from their own family tradition, or in my case, something they thought would be easy to make. For the record, cornbread, and it really came out as squished corn cake because I didn't have measuring instruments. Protip: MAKE SURE YOU HAVE THESE BEFORE YOU START COOKING.

All right, so let's get down to the meat of this post: my fashion illustrations. About 2 weeks ago -- I know, long time, be quiet -- I had a project to do 50 complete fashion sketches. In two days. Yeah. Full outfits. It was a little...horrible. But I ended up making a lot of outfits that I think are very cool. And now I'm making one! With real fabric and everything! That I dyed and painted myself! I dyed it in the mop bucket because we don't have any other buckets. Anyway, getting off topic. Here are the 50 fashion drawings I made, behold them and kiss/stroke/admire.

Did you like them? I hope you did. <3

*I've been listening to a lot of My Brother, My Brother and Me. And by a lot I mean A LOT (this is a podcast where three brothers answer advice questions and make fun of celebrities, other people, and each other). There are just so many of them, I can't help it! Anyway, I think it's skewing my sense of humor. I've been feeling funnier lately, I guess.
**An art history paper. I just have so little enthusiasm for this. I don't want to write it. I don't even have a topic, and I have less than 20 days to write it. Oh...dear.
***If you aren't my Facebook friend, you may not be able to watch it. Sorry! I had no other options, people. Don't be mad.

OH THE VEGETABLE ORIGINS THING. My Italian bodywash (that smells strongly of almonds, or more like marzipan, it's kind of gross and I feel like a macaroon) has a sticker on it that says "ORIGINE VEGETALE" which I think means vegetable origins. Or it comes from vegetables. I don't know, and I'm too lazy to look it up. On another note, my room mate's shampoo says that it's for "CAPELLI CHIARI" or...clear hair. Clear? Like, transparent? Is this ghost shampoo?

Small Events in America and Illustration

I have found America!
In Florence!
Not really. It's an American diner. But god, it's amazing, I want to be there all the time.

I went first with my room mate Meghna last Sunday, when we both got up really late and wanted breakfast. And breakfast...means pancakes. PANCAKES, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN. I haven't had pancakes in ages. At Vassar (if I wake up early enough) I can just saunter over to the All Campus Dining Center and pick up a couple flapjacks but HERE there is no such option. Here I'd have to make them, and let's face it that's not happening.

The Diner (it's just called The Diner because its not like it has to differentiate between thousands of other such establishments in Florence) was packed, but we got our food remarkably fast after we got a table. Our food? Our food.

This is what they call "a mocha" in the mystical land of The Diner. That's Meghna!

BANANA. PANCAKES. with two flavors of jam! butter! and real maple syrup!

This is what the real maple syrup comes in, a tiny little pitcher that says "The Diner" on it. It's cute, no?

All right, so obviously I wasn't giving that place up any time soon. WEDNESDAY NIGHT was the occasion of my next visit. 

Banana milkshake. Banana milkshake.

ME AND A BANANA MILKSHAKE.

I didn't take a photo of my food, but it was chocolate chip pancakes and a little bowl of bacon*. I was in heaven. 

Now here's the part of the "and Illustration" part of the post. My friends and I, after going out to The Diner and enjoying ourselves thoroughly, decided that we were going to dress up and be really fancy for Illustration class the next morning. Why? Because. It was awesome.

Here we are posing in our Most Fancy Attire. Friends Jacob, Una, Me!, Jessica, and Meggie.

*The bacon comes in a little green bowl. I'm not sure why, but it's amazing bacon, which is impressive for a country that is not really familiar with bacon. They prefer to eat it with bread and olive oil without frying it. Our way is better.

Butterflies and Taxidermy

Moths in a case!

So, whenever we went to visit my grandparents in DC, I would force someone to take me to the "stuffed animal museum", ie. the Smithsonian. It didn't bother me that the animals were all dead and full of sand and wire! I mean, it still doesn't, but you'd think that that fact would scare a kid. NOPE NOT ME I JUST WANTED TO SEE AMINALS.
I had a revival of that experience this week, in illustration class. Camilla took us to La Specola, which is one of the largest collections of "stuffed animals" in the world. We're working on a children's book (or as Camilla says, children book) featuring an animal of our choosing. I picked black bear, because I like them! They are bumbling. I don't have any photos of them, unfortunately, although I do have sketches*. It was pretty difficult to sketch them for a few reasons: the American black bear that they had on display was probably just a little grizzly bear, I'm serious; the display cases were made out of beautiful wood, but there were big wooden bars separating the panes so the bears were all partially hidden by the cabinets; it was REALLY INCREDIBLY HORRIBLY COLD in that museum.
Also at the museum was a whole big collection of bugs, most of which I think are scary except for bees and moths. I like those ones! The rest of them are creepy and have too many legs. Plus, the word "chitinous" is just...ugh.

Here are some bees! A horrible picture of some bees.

BUNNY RABBITS.

Every case was labelled with the Latin taxonomy of the critter inside. Here you could walk into the cabinet labelled "Homo sapiens". Here's Camilla and my classmate Una posing.

And Ben being a caveman.

8<

*I'm not taking photos of my artwork with my phone anymore, because the horrible picture quality just makes it awful. But I will scan them with the beautiful scanners at SACI and post them! As well as my...FASHION COLLECTION DUN DUN DUN

A Combined Post of Bologna and Rome!

Unfortunately it's been too long since I actually went to Bologna and Rome to remember all of the things that happened and write a nice long post about them, but I'll do my best to highlight the best stuff.
SO here we go.

BOLOGNA!

Fresco from the pinacoteca -- painting gallery. It's not, surprisingly, a religious subject, but a chivalrous story that some person wrote in the 1500s. 

Another view of the fresco, with one of my classmate's heads in the way. Unicorn!

Samson painted by Guido Reni, a baroque painter who I like very much after seeing his work in the pinacoteca. He was an oddball though! He hated women and the only one he ever let see him was his mum.

A very fancy lovely altarpiece by...somebody.

Now I believe this was by one of the Caracci brothers, there were three of them who founded a new school of painting that combined "the drawing of central Italy with the colors of northern Italy". A very good plan, as the three of them and their students all did pretty fantastic work. Anyway, in this painting featuring Mary, Christ, and some lady Saint, people speculate that there's something creepy between the lady Saint and Christ. Honestly? I don't think so. But art historians look for creepiness wherever they can.

I believe that this is the tomb that Michelangelo worked on, in order to cover for an artist who had died before finishing it up. Two of the statue figures are his, but you can't see them very clearly from here.

Okay so, this is a view of a courtyard from the Jerusalem of Bologna. Back in the day when people wanted to take that lovely pilgrimage to the Holy Land but couldn't afford it because, let's face it, that was the equivalent to travelling to Mars and back, they came to Bologna, where a sort of mini-Jerusalem had been constructed. They had copies of all the important things. This is a view of a cloister in one of the buildings. An order of monks still works there, and they had a lovely gift shop full of monk-made things, including elixirs and tonics. I found those incredibly funny, because the descriptors were written in pretty creative English. Here's a sample:

• Calendula - friend of skin
• Echinacea - for lack of defense in the immuse system
• Extract of ortica and propolis - best remedy for the fallen hair
• Pediluvo - cures inflated foot

So there you have Bologna. I apologize that my coverage wasn't all that great -- I did have a good time there and many laughs were had, although this was back when my shoulder was still killing me. I had a horrible attack of intense pain while we were wandering Bologna, and this significantly dampened my spirits and my desire to take pictures.

ROME!

Right okay we'll start off in the wrong order! Here is my favorite Caravaggio painting, The Calling of St. Matthew. Ps. The young guy in the corner is totally Matthew not that old dude.

The Pantheon! It was full of people and announcements in several thousand different languages to be quiet!

The Colosseum! Rather cool but we had to wait like a year to get in.

Michelangelo's Moses for the tomb of Julius II. I delivered a rant to Aunt E and Mom about how much I dislike Michelangelo and how he always planned too big. This tomb? Was supposed to have 40 figures on it. Forty! And he only ended up doing 3! There are 9 on there and only 3 of them are his! Gosh. Sorry.

Another view of Il Colosseo. It's big, man.

Next we went to the Forum, which was rather awesome although the sun was pretty keen on blinding us whenever we wanted to look at one of the neat old ruins.

This was pretty cool -- I can't remember what church this was in, but an Italian who lived in Rome all his life made this wooden sculpture at the age of 90 or something like that. It's a giant fantastical church, surrounded by churches, temples, synagogues, and mosques from all over the world. It's a representation of the ideal religion that is made of all religions. I thought it was pretty awesome.

Oh the Trevi Fountain! Such a wonderful fountain. I loved it. You can see there's Neptune being a badass and coasting on some waves, while two of his squires are restraining hippocamps (which are one of my favorite mystical creatures). Not bad at all.

Look at that awesome hippocamp there!

Student discounts and Steelers fans? Count me in!

This is a scene of Psyche and Cupid's wedding in the pleasure villa of a cardinal whose name I forgot. He built it for his mistress, but when she died his second mistress went to live there. Romantic, huh? Anyway it's a beautiful ceiling.

A little graffito by a German soldier from some war in the long-ago. It basically says "we got in here and chased your Pope out, we win, haha!"

Il Vaticano! This is a view of the Dome of St. Peter's from a porch in the Vatican.

The original Laocoon!

The Belvedere Torso, which inspired Michelangelo to make hundreds of barrel-shaped men and become very famous. (I am rolling my eyes)

Raphael's School of Athens from the apartments he painted for Julius II. I love these rooms, they were my favorite thing in Rome. Raphael is probably my favorite High Renaissance artist.

Another view of some philosophers up in the school. 

The Ecstasy of St. Theresa by Bernini, who I like a lot. He's my favorite sculptor out of the High Renaissance / Baroque (I think he's more Baroque). Anyway this sculpture is really pretty amazing, but reading St. Theresa's description of her ecstasy makes one think it really was...sensual.

Here I am with my two friends Jessica and Ben at the Villa D'Este, which is a little ways outside of Rome. It's a gorgeous villa with a gorgeous garden, and I loved it a whole lot. The fountains were amazing, and they had a little hydraulic organ that played plunky tunes at different hours of the day. 

A beautiful fountain at the Villa D'Este -- I love the mossy overgrowth. 

Lion dog thing fountain! There was a row of about 40 of these, all with different animal faces. 

A nice view of the hydraulic organ fountain up there. 

Me!

Hadrian's Villa! This was a really long and exhausting trip, but worth it, because there was so much amazing ancient Roman stuff there. Blair aren't you so jealous?

It was late afternoon, so we had some gorgeous sunlight.

I believe this is one of the bath complexes. 

Inside one of the bath complexes (yes, there were 2.)

A beautiful pond that Hadrian had fashioned to look like his favorite Egyptian resort. 

Another view of the pond.

What is the Colosseum doing here? Uhhh okay this is the interior of the Colosseum!

Alice, Jessica and Ben posing in front of the Colosseum arena floor.

That's the end! I'm sorry it wasn't more comprehensive, but honestly that Rome trip was the longest 3 days of my life, and if I tried to write about everything we saw I would have no fingers left and you guys would be bored of reading about it. Now I'm going to go work on the homework I've put off until the last few days of break!