Celebrations and Music

Ok, this one took a while to post because... well to be quite honest because I am lazy! :-) Ok, maybe it's more along the lines of exhausted, but either way. 

Things have been quiet lately. We are all feeling the effects of sleeping an average of 4-5 hours a night, so we decided to take things easy this past weekend. However, I still need to update you on my birthday stuff last week. 

On Wednesday the boys (Allan and Patrick) invited everyone to their terrace for dinner and drinks. We try to do this once a week as their terrace has the most amazing view (I promise to bring a camera next time). We all pick something yummy to bring and they supply the wine. This time they got Harasyn and I a birthday cake (complete with candles). Harasyn's birthday is the 23rd and mine is the 25th. Harasyn has pictures of this that I will steal soon. :-)

Here is lunch sometime last week. The Bar downstairs from me has these ham sandwiches that they then panini and make nice and warm. I had ham and cheese (turkey is unheard of here... very hard to find turkey or chicken). Those dog tags came in the bag of chips. :-) Fun!

My birthday celebration! My birthday fell on a Thursday, so the entire town was shut down (as it is every Thursday after 1pm). We have found that one pizza place and the Chalet (the outdoor bar I told you about before) are open on Thursdays, so we did that. To make it special we got the Nutella Calzone. Yep, it's as amazing as you think it would be! 

Prosecco (pink and normal) at Bar Leonardi (which was closed). I wanted to drink it "pirate style" sans glasses, but everyone didn't agree and I didn't want to use the "but it's my birthday" excuse. 

The sky was absolutely amazing! Look at the clouds rolling in.

Breathtaking! 

On Sunday these guys were outside of my window... we (Lindsey, Lauren, Tulip and I) found them amusing.

They are setting up for a concert. 

At the concert! The town organized a concert for the earthquake victims. This is Allan, Paige and Shannon. Paige and Shannon are two Americans that aren't in the program, but are lucky enough to head to Amelia for the summer. 

This is Monica's (my Italian teacher) brother's band. It turns out that Monica's family is very musical, her cousin also performed! They were amazing. They ended with Hey Jude. 

All day long they were warming up and that very much makes me think of my sister. I think it's funny how much I relate concerts to family, and seeing Monica's grandfather cheering his grandson on was one of the things that has made me most homesick since being here. You know, minus all the cats. :-)

Ciao ciao!

hmmm Blogger

My newest post got posted beneath the one I posted yesterday about the mail. I am not too sure why that happened, and I can't figure out how to change that. 

I started loading the photos yesterday, so maybe that confused the computer.

Who knows? Scroll down to see the Monster Mash blog, pretty neat photos. :-) I told you I would start taking more pictures of people. 

Long Overdue Contact Info

I forgot to send my address and phone info when I arrived. Sorry about that!

My phone number is: 39-377-315-4249. (you may need to add 011 to the front, but I don't think so, the place I ordered my phone from sent some confusing instructions).

My address is:

Katie Ogden

c/o Lucia Lucciarini

Biblioteca Comunale 

Piazzale Boccarini

Amelia, TR Italy 05022 

As far as care packages go, do not feel the need to send one. HOWEVER if you are going to ignore that request I have a request to ask of you. Be mindful of the value of objects you put into the box. Don't overstate the value for insurance purchases. Why? Well, I have to pay to get any packages, and this morning a girl in my class had to pay 92E in taxes and duties to get a package released. The tax is only supposed to be a certain percentage of what you are sending, so it should be a-ok. 

Ciao ciao! (the Italians say it twice, I am trying to pull it off without sounding like an idiot!)

Monster Mash!!

When I was little my parents had some fun records (such as actual vinyl records). Kelly and I would listen to The Four Seasons, the Pinocchio soundtrack, etc. One of my absolute favorite records was a compilation record that had Monster Mash (the good, old version). If I had the ability to, I would add that song to this post!

Monsters... well first Lindsey and I were eating lunch in my apartment with the windows open. One thing I don't quite understand about Italy is that they always have their windows open, but no screens on their windows. So you always have bugs in your apartment/house. Case in point, during lunch a wasp (well.. we think it was a wasp, you can see it here.) with an enormous stinger flew in. We may have freaked out a little bit, but we pulled ourselves together.

After assessing the situation we decided we needed to try to get the wasp (who had flown up to a sky light) out of my apartment. We tried throwing paper balls at him to see if we could get him to fly down, but that wasn't too successful. Finally, after a couple of minutes Lindsey picked up my table cloth and used it to "encourage" the wasp to fly out the window. This picture is right as Lindsey was shutting the window after he flew out.

After lunch we met the rest of our class and professors at Bar Leonardi to head to Bomarzo, also known as "The Park of Monsters." This park was created by Pirro Ligorio (the architect that took over the building of St. Peter's Basilica when Michelangelo died). The actual idea and planning was done by Pier Francesco Orsini, he created it after the death of his wife as a tribute of sorts.

It is a mannerist sculpture park. Mannerism basically caught the coat tails of the renaissance and aimed to depart from the renaissance forms. (as you will now see)

I am not going to go into details about the sculptures or anything, if you want to find out anything else you can go ahead and google Bomarzo. :-)

Above is a turtle sculpture, to the left is the whale sculpture.

Below is a close-up of the whale sculpture.

A crooked house. We went in the second story, and the floor is also tilted and it is FREAKY!

This is me getting eaten by a monster.

See the large legs, the vase on the head?? Mannerism.

At one point we decided to do "Harasyn Poses" with some of the sculptures. Harasyn is an amazingly fun girl in the program who happens to have won beauty pageants.

I have to confess to something... I bought a pair of crocs! I know, I can hear your gasps halfway around the world. Let me tell you though, normal shoes do not cut it here, my shoes are failing. For instance, after two weeks I have a pair of very nice sandals that I bought right before I came here that already need new heels. Crocs are a necessary item! (and I think these ones are pretty cute)

The only downside about these crocs is that sometimes when your feet get hot your foot will slide in them, thereby making walking an even bigger hazard for me. :-)

Lindsey, myself, and Harasyn and I doing a tribute to Home Alone.

Lindsey and I needed a rest.

Ok... so... I didn't look around the building before I did my little pose, but I sorta feel bad now because it is a mausoleum. It houses the remains of the owners that bought it in 1954 in order to fix it up for the public to come and see it. I apologize if I offended the dead. 

If only I had looked at the skull and crossbones first! :-)

No photoshop, this is just how the shot turned out. I get increasingly annoyed with how I cannot capture the actual beauty I am seeing, but this comes pretty close!

That's all for now!

Ciao Ciao!

Stormy Times

On Sunday we decided to have a nice relaxing day. I don't think we realized how hard it would be to go to class 6 days a week. More specifically I don't think we realized how hard it would be to go to class 6 days a week and then spend our day off fitting in as many day trips as possible.

We realized that we had yet to hike to the top of the town. (In all of the pictures I post, the top of the town is the building surrounded by scaffolding, the Duomo (church).) We had the brilliant idea to hike up because the weather was cool so we figured we wouldn't die of heat exhaustion. As we started making our way to the top we realized that the storm clouds that seemed to be safely in the distance were starting to close in... did we stop? Nope. We are troopers.

We met up with Patrick and Allan (two boys in our class) who decided to join us for our hike. We made it up there (not before I almost busted my bottom by slipping while going up the incline of the "short cut") just in time. Look at the views of the storm. I have a video, and I am going to go to a restaurant in town to try to load it, but it is amazing. These pictures are too calm, the wind was amazing up there, I thought my camera might get blown away.

We made it down, and to Lauren's apartment, just in time. The rain started pouring and did not stop until late at night. While waiting out the storm at Lauren's (Lindsey and I naively thought it would stop at some point... since we did not have umbrellas or anything and were still a little far from home) Lindsey and I decided to investigate this random door in her apartment. Where does it lead? What's behind it? 

The best way to describe it would be a Scooby Doo episode (Lindsey playing Daphne and me being Velma - Thanks to Kate for helping me spell those correctly!). It was a dark and stormy afternoon, thunder was clapping and our imaginations were running wild. 

After finally figuring out how to use something (we tried butter knives, string, other random tools and items found around the apartment) to slide the latch back we unlocked the door and ran back up the stairs (we had completely sensationalized what may/may not be behind the door so we had freaked ourselves out).

We got Lauren to come and then explained to her that we thought she should open the door because she has a criminal justice background. She tried to point out that she is not an officer, and therefore was not a better choice than either Lindsey or I, but we didn't buy it. So Lauren went down the stairs to the door, opened it and ran back up.

We were not nearly as entertained by what was behind the door. No stolen art, no bodies, just junk. Apparently it is a storage space with paint and other odd items. A fun adventure anyways! :-)

I realized the other day you hadn't met Tulip! Lauren was smart enough to bring her dog with her for the summer, so we all claim her as our own since we miss our animals so much. Tulip (or Tulipana as the Italians call her) is an adorable, sweet, happy little puppy. I love her mainly because she is cat sized. It helps me resist the urge to "borrow" one of the cats I find outside my apartment. :-)

In her adorable bag.

Final updates to this blog and then I am officially caught up:

1. It is COLD (well... cold to a Florida girl) here... high of 69 today. We are going to try to get to Rome this weekend to buy a jacket or something. The clothes in the stores in Amelia are CRAZY expensive.

2. There was an earthquake on Monday night. We were out and about and I didn't realize it, but apparently other people had things shaking, etc. Neat! I lived through an Earthquake. :-)

3. The kids outside my apartment at night have decided to start using high pitch sustained whistling instead of talking... grrr. 

4. In Italy you cannot buy conditioner in a normal sized bottle. A 4 ounce container costs 6E, I don't get it.

5. You can buy a huge container of freshly made ricotta for 4 E.

We are going to a creepy sculpture garden today (you'll understand when I post pictures) so you should have something fun tomorrow. 

Ciao! 

The Whole Shebang

Ok, get ready for the longest blog ever. I am going to lump last week into one. I will try to be brief and entertaining. :-)

We are going to start at the Chalet. The Chalet is an outdoor bar in the park. Some of the girls and I will go to Zio Zeb pizza, order some pizzas and then walk over to the Chalet to enjoy a bottle of vino and the outdoors. I can't get over the location of the Chalet just yet. Europe is very diffent, case in point, the Chalet is positioned between two playgrounds and there are some toys AT the Chalet so that the children (we have seen infants to 13) that stay later than we do (we tend to leave around midnight) have something to play with.

Here is the actual bar. :-) We have got I would like a bottle of white/red wine with ___ glasses in Italian down pat. That's Lauren in the corner of the photo.

I have met two absolutely amazing people that I adore, John and Jane. John is in the program with me and Jane is his wife. They are, without a doubt, two of the most entertaining and kind people I have ever met. For instance, they are staying at a very nice palazzo (palace in Italian) and invited the entire class over for dinner one night. Here is a view of the backyard.

The food... oh the food. Jane is one of those people you wish you could be, but more than likely you'll never quite get it right. She and John run a business of their own, but oh no, she doesn't stop there, she is an amazing cook. She and her friend made all of the food for the dinner and I can say that I have never enjoyed an ENTIRE spread before in my life. Usually I will find one or two things I like, but not all. Not the case here, it was all delectable. 

The Palazzo is in the city walls of Amelia, and this is a view from the backyard.

So, the people that live and own the house are direct decendants of the original owner who was a Pope... or a Bishop... hmm... I'm going to have to look into that. Not a Pope... maybe a Cardinal? Maybe I should have waited to have my first glass of Prosecco until AFTER the tour.

The Palazzo is used as a B&B. In order to get a bathroom in one of the rooms, without affecting the structure of the home, they purchased this swanky piece and built a bathroom in it. SO neat!!

The view. I never get sick of these views and I hope you don't mind. They are not likely to stop anytime soon.

The Palazzo at night. I want a Palazzo. :-)

Suffice it to say that was my favorite night thus far. 

Next,  we went back to Crazy Johnny's (the place where we got the HUGE appetizer). It was just Lindsey, Lauren and I (I promise, I will start taking pictures of people soon) and Isabel and Michelle (two other friends) were at another table. 

Crazy Johnny's (that's not the actual name of the bar, I don't know the real name, but Johnny is the owner and he is crazy) is an experience in and of itself. The menu changes daily, so they don't print one... so you have to try to translate while listening to the waitress (NOT EASY). We have started asking for her notepad so we can read it. So we have had octopus here before, and weren't particularly wanting to have it again so we made sure not to order anything with Popoli in it... or so we thought.

Lauren and I ordered gnocchi and Lindsey ordered pan fried fish with basil... or did she? When her meal came out this is what she got:

A heaping bowl of baby octopi. YUUMMM!! I mean, they really do not taste bad. If you like fried squid (calamari) you'll like fried octopus. It's just the visual you have to get around.

So dinner was lovely and as we were wrapping up a huge group of handsome young men came in and sat at a few tables near ours. As we were getting ready to ask for the check (and finishing our 2nd bottle of wine... I'll help you do the math, 3 girls, 2 bottles) the boys sent over another bottle in exchange for a picture with their birthday boy. This is another example of, Amelians just like Americans. I can't imagine doing this in the States, walking up to a tourist and asking to take a picture with them, but it is always sweet and endearing. 

We took the picture and then started chatting. Amelia is a small town, and you know you are in a small town when you, as the outsider, start to make connections. Such as, our Italian Language teacher is apparently married to one of the guys that had been in the group, but left a little early. Turns out the group is the Amelian football (that's soccer for you American's) team and Monica's husband is the coach. I think Amelia could institute 2 degrees of separation and succeed easily.

To keep it short, we drank the third bottle of wine (only after enticing Isabel and our waitress to help), got another plate of fried octopus (the boys sent it over) and then dessert (the boys sent it over) then we went home.

A few days later we tried a pizza place that is quite a hike away, but has a view that is worth it. This is a picture of a house that we all claim we will own at some point in our lives.

This is a field of sunflowers. I cannot wait for them all to bloom. My mind cannot comprehend how beautiful that will be. 

View

The columns leading to the house we will all own one day. :-)

THE view. That is Amelia. It was an overcast day, so the pictures aren't as great as I would like, but you get the idea.

Nighttime view.

That's all for now! Ciao!