Classes

Well I have officially been to all my classes. Studio is going to be so much fun! For our project we are reconstructing the exit of the Uffizi museum. So we get to redesign part of the museum and design the piazza that the visitors exit to. Its similar to our king cafe project from last semester, only this time we have some requirements of things that must be included, such as: restrooms, cafes, connection of levels, and a few more. Tomorrow we will have a site visit to the museum, I'm very excited considering this is the biggest museum in Florence and we are getting in for FREE!

My other class is an art history course! Im not kidding when I say all we do in this class is visit museums and churches. There are only 5 classes that we meet in the class room, the first two classes this week, a midterm review day, then the midterm and the final. Which she stressed to us are pretty easy and its just knowing the names of some of the works we see. We go a little more in depth to what the two tests will be like tomorrow, but this course will introduce me to all the things to see in Italy so even though I will be traveling out of the country on the weekend, I will continue to learn and explore Florence during the week.

My other course is Italian Cinema, let me tell you when I left this class I felt like I had just met a celebrity. Our professor went to school for film and spent most of her career editing films. She worked on movies such as: The Godfather, Terminator 3, The Dead Poets Society. So I was pretty impressed, but for this course we watch and analyze movies. Today we watched "The Last Kiss" Um it was a good movie but it left me feeling angry. Pretty much it was about marriage and having children and how that can change relationships, and there was a lot of cheating and divorce. It was kinda depressing. But as we watched the movie we had to find things in the movie that would've been done differently if it was made by the U.S. film Industry. So next class we will discuss all of our opinions and findings... then start another movie!

My last class is called Reading Cities but we never actually meet during the week. There are 3 weekends we travel with the school, we are going to Venice, Rome and Lucca. Just for going and exploring and learning whatever we will be taught in these cities allows us to get three credit hours!

I don't have to much homework besides doing some readings and i'm sure once we get further into the semester I will have to spend some extra time in studio, but from what we are told studio is suppose to be worked on mostly in-class (besides research) but building and what not sure be able to be down in class time since they are trying to give us the most time possible to travel.

Last night we went to a dinner we heard of through a company called smarttrip, they offer trips by bus at low prices for students to travel, but they also host some events around Florence that they post and tell us about throughout the week. So last night we went to dinner at Rubaconte. For 15 euros we got appetizers, 3 kinds of pasta, and bottomless wine, OH and some really good bread. BUT yes BOTTOMLESS wine! Red and White, and surprisingly it was pretty good wine. I was expecting something cheap since we were given all you can drink, but I was surprised how good it was. But let me say this dinner is something I will definitely be going to every Tuesday. The appetizer was amazing to say the least. It came on a HUGE plate for the table to share. It had tomato mozzarella, bruschetta, salami, prosciutto, some bread with this sausage like stuff on it ( no idea what it actually was), and these dough balls! Then on top of all of that we got three types of pasta. They were all really good, the first was penne with a spicy tomato sauce, second was a bowtie pastas with zucchini and some sort of red sauce, and the last was a fusilli with a cheese sauce. The cheese sauce was definitely my favorite but again they were all so good. It was a great night and we made some great friends. Our neighbors (in our apartment) are good friends with a girl we had met while flying to Florence, so everyone and their roommates got together to go to dinner and get some drinks after, and I think Tuesday nights at Rubaconte me now be a weekly tradition for the 7 of us!