Week 8

This is eight blog that I am doing while in Italy, and will probably be my last. Due to that our last week in Italy is actually like half a week and its a lot more laid back that week. The eighth week was classes at the villa again. We did about 15 hours of Italian and around 20 hours of the painting class. To me, Italian is the same old and I don’t feel like elaborating on it anymore.

One thing that I do have to say, is that in the last week of our Italian class, we had our final that was written and also oral exam. I have to say that I think I didn’t do to well. Learning another language is pretty hard and after some research, I found that Italian is supposed to be one of the top 10 easiest languages to learn. That just make things a little discouraging because everybody in the class is struggling. It comes to some easier than others and harder for others. I think that I’m pretty average with my learning. But, the Italian class was fun and hard at times, but I was pretty glad that I had the experience.

Since I’m on the topic of languages, being in Italy and being around a different environment where the people are different, the language is different, and communication is key but you can still get by; I want to learn another language. After being exposed to the Italian language, I don’t really want to pursue in learning that language. I’m probably going to try and learn Spanish because I have a few friends that speak it, and it would be fun to be able to communicate with them. I also might actually use it to being in the States. One thing that I hate about the United States and like about Europe is that people are multilingual. Going to Europe, people speak their own native language plus english on top of it. I don’t know why, but I love it and wish the United States was a lot like that.

As for the painting class this week, our professor decided to pick an artist that we had to either replicate or do a piece that was inspired from that artist. My artist that Jim gave me goes by the name of Mario Merz. He was in the movement, Arte Povera, which is a movement that artists build their pieces by using what they find around them. Merz for example would have to set up a show, and he would go to  the location and use whatever he found around the area. It could of just been metal poles, glass, etc. He was known for building domes and had an obsession with The Golden Ratio and the fibonacci sequence of numbers.

The piece that I chose to do was a piece that was inspired by Merz. I spent a bit of time on it and just painted the golden ratio which is a giant swirl that starts on the paper and goes out to the edge. I painted that yellow and painted a pattern around it of red and blue. Then I wrote the fibonacci numbers in the ratio. That took a couple hours. But, in the end I ended up getting an A on it.

When it came to the end of the painting class, which was in the 9th short week, we had to do a piece that we could choose whatever it would be. We were also going to have an art showing and have people come in from the towns and show our pieces that we have been doing over the past few weeks. My piece that I did consisted of origami and a painted piece. I took a big piece of paper and painted it with different shades of blue to try and make it look like water that you would look at from the top. I splattered it with white paint. I would lay that flat for viewing instead of hanging it up. I took 10 piece of white paper and splattered it with different colors and folded them into cranes and set them on top of the water piece for viewing. It was pretty good and I was impressed with it.

As for the art showing, it was a blast. We had a thanksgiving dinner even though we were in Italy. The show was a day after Thanksgiving and we decided to have a little ‘Merica there. There was food, there was wine, there was people; it was fun.

Week 7

Its been a while since I got back on here and actually did a blog. But, this would be the seventh week within Italy, and this is also our return trip from the travel week that I discussed in the previous week. The entire trip was a blast, but, its time that we get back to the grind of school and classes back here at the villa.

For this week, we started our classes back up and did an Italian class again and we started our painting class. We were also supposed to be doing our Journal and Blogging class on the side and with our own time. The Italian class is the same and its really starting to more challenging. We’ve been learning a lot and there’s just so much to each word. One word could have 10 different forms depending on how you use it. But, the whole Italian class has basically been the same as it as before. The only thing that I wish is that, in the beginning, we spent that first week in Rome and the second week in Naples going to museums and local towns. I wished that we had saved those first 2 weeks for being the last 2 weeks because then we could spend our time at the villa, getting used to the country and all the travel, while learning Italian so that we would be able to communicate with people when we went on those trips. It probably would of made things a lot easier for people because I remember some people saying that had a bit of anxiety especially with all the travel around. So, things just would of been much easier had we saved those for being the last 2 weeks.

As for the painting class, the first week was really a blast. We learned some basics of what to do and a bit of color theory. For the first week, we had to replicate a piece that we liked. We first had to come up with a rough draft drawing of the piece that we were gonna do. Then we had to have a painted rough draft drawing and we had to come up with the final piece along with a piece of our own that we painted.

For me, it was a bit difficult because I’m not too much of an artist. So, my drawing and painting skills aren’t quite as good as everyone else’s. I tried to the best I could and I thought that my stuff came out pretty good. For the piece that I chose to do my replication of, it was Starry Night by Van Gogh. I was going to do the whole thing, but I’m not really someone that can scale down pieces that well. So, I decided to just do the top right corner of the piece. The drawing was alright, and my painted rough draft turned out really well. The painted final wasn’t quite as good as the rough draft, but that’s what you learn in painting.

As for my piece that I chose to do on my own, it was something I did quickly because I didn’t really know what to paint at first. This week in Italy was actually pretty cold and raining all week. So, I just thought of fire and painted a candle. It turned out alright, I wasn’t too impressed with it.

At the end of this week, on Friday, we have our day off of no classes, but, we still do things for class. We went to a town called Asisi that has a pretty important church there along with some other structures. We went there and look at some paintings that went in with the painting class and we also got to check out some architecture of the local buildings. One thing that I loved about the town was the view. It sits on top of a hilltop and we hiked further up in the town and got to check out the view even more.

Week 6-Break Week!!

Well, this is the 6th week and it was considered our break week. We were given a 10 day break and would pretty much do anything that we wanted. We were forced to leave the villa and go and find someplace else or some other people to bug for the next 10 days. Everyone else already had their lame trips planned; while Nick, Evan and I had our awesome trip planned out.

So, this was the basic layout of our plan. We were to get a ride to the biggest local city, Perugia, and we would take a flight to Brussels, Belgium. We would hang out there and check it out and stay for only one night. We would then take a train to Amsterdam and stay there for 2 nights. Take another train to Berlin and stay there for another 2 nights. Take a train to Prague, Czech and stay there for 2 nights. Fly to Milan, Italy and stay there for 2 nights, and then make our way back to the villa.

So, the beginning of the trip, we never really had any problems; or through the whole trip at all. We got a ride to the airport from one of people that work at the villas, husband. We left early, paid him and just waited around in the airport and checked it. The flight was good and we got into Brussels. As soon as we arrived, it was pretty damn cold and I was glad that I had brought a coat. The weather reminded me of home and I was a bit happy.

We got out of the airport and found a hot dog. It was pretty damn great to have some food like that! Just being in Italy, I’ve been getting tired of the food and it always being pasta! So, having some good old fashion hot dogs was great. We had to wait in a bunch of lines trying to figure out how the hell to get to intercity Brussels. Found out, there were buses, and a couple hour ride, we were there and walked to the hotel.

We left and went to this really nice restaurant, where the food was really good. I started out by getting this beer called kreik. Its a red beer that smells like licorice, and tastes like cherry. Its a cherry beer, and Brussels is well known for it. It was pretty damn good. We ordered some food, and got all meat. We all took great advantage of the fact that we could  get some pretty good food that wasn’t Italian.

After, we just kind of went back to the hotel, rested, and check out the church square, which was pretty cool.  We went to a couple bars and checked out the local places. Got food at this restaurant which turns into a club after 11. The food was good and a got a huge liter glass of beer. Then, we just went back to the hotel, slept, and went and caught the train to Amsterdam the next morning.

We got to Amsterdam and there were a lot of people. Its a really huge tourist spot because of things. But, we walked around and got to the hostel, which was supposed to be the best in the city. It was pretty nice. There are 8 bed rooms that you stay in and it has a bar with food in the lobby area. 

The first day, we just pretty much walked around all day and saw a lot of random things. They had a carnival that was going on for some reason and it was huge! The food they had there was good. But, we walked around and saw that and walked around for most of the day. That night, we walked around and got to see a zombie walk/parade that they had going on for Halloween. We got back to the hostel and they had a huge party going on in the bar that was black light and paint, which was a lot of fun. Then we went next door and saw a bunch of old guys, dressed up in suits and they were covering old western songs with their band. The first night there was a lot of fun.

Not much happened the second day. We walked around a lot and saw the basic things. We checked out the red light district, and saw some girls. Then we pretty much just went to the hostel and hung out there. We got up the next day and made our way to Berlin on the train...first class by the way! ;)

We got there pretty late on the first night and didn’t do too much. We just got some food and went back to the hostel. The hostel was a lot like the last one, it was the most popular in Berlin and had a cafe and bar at the bottom. It was a lot bigger and the 3 of us got a room to ourselves.

The next day, Nick went on a tour to a concentration camp, while me and Evan just kinda walked around the city and walked to Checkpoint Charlie. That is a point for checkpoints while the Berlin wall use to be up during WWII and caused a lot of problems with Russia. It was up for a really long time and taken down I think sometime in 80’s. 

My thoughts of Berlin after this walking around was that it had a very western feel to it. It felt a lot like the United States because the architecture was very similar and the streets were actually normal. Italy is a lot different in building style because they’re so old and what you think are ally’s are actually streets. So, I wasn’t too impressed with Berlin.

That night in Berlin, we were sitting at a table in the lobby getting on the internet, and there were other people around us. It was a circle of us and we were just kind of keeping to ourselves. Some of the people starting talking to each other because they knew one another, and they said something and I just kind of randomly jumped in the conversation with them. There were about 7 of us sitting around and we all got to talking with each other. We found out that we were all American and I met someone that was actually living in Billings. We started talking and ended up going to this pub crawl. The last night in Berlin was definitely one to remember because it was so much fun!

The next day, we got a train to Prague and checked that out. We just got a hotel this time, so, we weren’t really social with people. After the night in Berlin, I had really come to like hostels because of meeting new people and having fun with them.

But, we just walked around Prague and we hoped to do something for Halloween. But, we couldn’t find a single thing and ended up walking the whole night and checking out the scene.

The next day, Nick and I decided to do a 6 hour walking tour. It wasn’t too expensive, and we just walked around and the tour guide told us about the history of Czech and of some of the buildings. We walked around, got some food that was included in fee, got on a boat and a free drink for an hour. Then we Czeched out a huge gothic church. All that probably ended up being the highlight for Prague, because we didn’t to do much after that and ended up catching a flight to Milan the next day.

We didn’t nothing in Milan, almost. We got to the hostel, and it was supposed to the most popular...again. It was a bit sketchy though. It just seemed that it was dirty, but it was still kind of cool. We got there late and I just kind of sat out in the lobby on my phone and randomly started talking to people. I met a guy from the states and a girl that was from the Netherlands. Both were pretty interesting and fun to talk to. I also met a woman from Australia that travels for her job because she does photography for some charitable thing.

the next day, Nick didn’t really like the hostel and got his own hotel room; but, he was also getting sick and he slept all day I guess. Me and Evan walked around and checked out a huge gothic church. The outside had spires that went up really high while the inside had some nice paintings. We just sat around at the hostel the rest of the day and made our way back to Perugia.

The entire trip was really fun and I thought it would have been pretty intense because of checking out 5 different countries in only 10 days. But, it wasn’t really that bad and I got my backpacking through Europe experience done. I was gonna do it again after I got done with classes here in Italy, but, I really miss home and my friends and decided to put it off and just come home when I was supposed to. I do recommend that if it ever crosses someones mind to backpack through Europe; do it! Its a lot of fun and you don’t get too many opportunities in life like that. I do plan on doing it again sometime, but it would be longer. Its actually not that bad either if you’re by yourself. I met quite a few people that were doing it by themselves and they never had any problems. Any stories that you here about people hating Americans, or pickpocketing or things like that are bullshit. People have actually been very friendly to us and you just can’t put yourself in stupid situations where you might get pickpocketed. Communication with foreign people is not that hard either. Most people in Eastern Europe speak English, and even if they don’t, its still not hard to communicate. But, definitely backpack through Europe!!

Church in Brussels

Amsterdam!

Carnival in Amsterdam

Zombie walk in Amsterdam

Party at our Hostel in Amsterdam

Sign in Czech in the trainstation

Prague

Prague

Prague

Prague

Prague. 

Prague

Prague

The Gothic Church in Milan

A little break

So last blog had ended with the entire class going to Florence and just us enjoying ourselves when we were there. It was really a lot of fun.

This blog will only cover 4 days and won't be too long. It just covers from Monday, October 22nd, up to Thursday, October 25th.

The week didn't consist of much. We did our Italian class in the mornings which is  the same things as always. Another language that is difficult to learn for people that only know one. The rest consisted of us actually finishing up firing our clay pieces. Most of the week consisted of getting them out of the kiln and cleaning up the clay room to make it look like no one was there.

We did have critiques with the class and individually with the professor. We took pretty much a whole day and showed off our clay pieces to each other and see what people had to say. A lot of peoples pieces turned out pretty great. Some had the problem of them breaking, but, it was mostly the handles, which are pretty difficult in the first place. Their pieces were still great. The critiques with the professor went good to. She just talked about our strengths and weaknesses and what we could do to improve.

Another thing was that our clay class had us require 2 pieces to do. One was fired in the kiln that we built here at the villa. We were able to talk to the people where we painted on the plates and bowls and they fired the other piece for us. It costed some money, but they turned out great and both pieces will be shipped and hopefully be to Rocky sometime before Christmas.

This week was a lot shorter and more laid back than the other weeks because it kind of marks a transition in classes. We finished up our clay classes and half of the Italian. It was on Friday of this week, that everyone gets a 10 day break to do what they want and we are to return on Sunday, November 4th to continue the other half of the classes which would consist of Italian and Painting. Everyone is kind of doing their own thing and going to other places. Me, Evan, and Nick will be traveling a lot over the next 10 days to try and see as much as we can. The plan is to fly from Perugia, Italy to Brussels, Belgium and stay there a night. Take a train to Amsterdam and stay there for 2 nights. Then take a train to Berlin, Germany another 2 nights; train to Prague, Czech for 2 nights; fly to Milan, Italy for another 2 nights; then finally return to the villa.

The following blog will be about the whole travel week.

Week 4-Kilns and Clay...and stuff....!!

The 3rd week ended with us finishing up our Art History class and the Italian Bowl/Jeopardy style contest. A friend and I ended up spending the weekend in the town of Florence. It had already been talked about that we would be going there on Sunday and going to a museum called the Galleria Academia. Nick and I decided to leave on Saturday, spend the night and check out the town and just meet everyone at the museum on Sunday.

So, Nick and I left and we got to Florence and checked into our hostel. We got there no problem because the trains are pretty straightforward once you get used to them. We got to Florence, and the first thing we do is get Mcdonalds. I know it seems a little American to do that, but, you really get used to things and we just decided to go ahead and get it because we missed it.

We got that, and it was only a five minute walk to our hostel. The hostel ended up turning out to be really nice. The staff was super helpful, they spoke english and everything was pretty clean.

After, me and Nick just walked around Florence all day. We got to see one of the markets that sold nothing but expensive jewelry, I got a few clothes that were pretty nice and some nice shoes on top of that which was meant for a dress up type night if it were to ever come around. ;) We also got to check out some of the bridges and see the canal and got some pretty great pictures. After being in Florence for only an hour, it was already my favorite city in Italy. It just seemed that it had more history, it was much cleaner and everything seemed much more convenient than the other cities that we had been to.

The following day, which was the Sunday, we got up, checked out and went and met everybody at the museum. We probably waited in line for about an hour and got in. There was a no picture taking policy, so I do not remember much from the museum. There were a lot of unfinished sculptures and a lot of busts of some famous people. The thing that I do remember however, is the main reason that we had gone there, and also something that I had studied in a previous class. It was the statue of David by Michelangelo. Its a huge statue depicting a character from the bible from his fight with Goliath. Its very big, detailed and incredible because you look at it and you observe the expression on his face, wondering what is going through his mind and wondering, at which point in his fight is it depicting. It was very incredible. 

As for the rest of the day in Florence, I can’t really say much. It just spent a lot of time walking around. We did, however, find this really nice spot that overlooked the entire city. There were a lot of people, it had a nice breeze; it was nice to kick back and relax up there with a beer and just oversee everything. We were there for a few hours, and left for home to just fall right asleep when the time came. It ended up being a very enjoyable weekend.

The rest of the week was a back to the grind type of thing. We had class Monday-Thursday and it consisted of our Italian class and our clay class. We had finished up Art History the previous week and so we were done with that. But, classes kind of went the same as they usually do. Italian was the same. Basically just learning another language and dealing with the frustration of rules that you aren’t used to because its a different language. It’s quite weird. You have one verb, but, depending on who you’re talking to or how you’re talking to them, it completely changes the form of the verb and so you have to remember the 6-7 different forms of it. On top of that, you have male and female words, plurals, and articles that just keep changing. I’m sure with time I’ll get it down. :)

As for clay, we had to have our second project finished up which it could have been anything. It could be anything you want to make or something inspired by work that we’ve seen over the last few weeks. I spent quite a few hours frustrated because I didn’t really know what to do at all. I started out with a mask, scrapped the idea and just kind of played with clay, until reverting back to the original idea because I couldn’t think of anything at all. I came up with that idea because of previous sites that we visited, there were a lot of theatrical masks. Also, while in Naples, I walked by this shop almost everyday, and it had masks out in front that peaked my interest. So, in the end, I decided to just go with that.

For clay, we also had to build a kiln. A kiln is kind of like a giant oven that’s completely enclosed. We made it with bricks that the villa had. We tried to do it with everyone, but, there were just too many people and everybody kinda of just got in the way of each other. We did end up getting the kiln made and by the end of the week, we got the clay pieces that we made fired up.

For the firing of our pieces, we had to find a metal object that we could put our piece in. We then wrapped our piece in paper, put it in the metal object, put them at the bottom of the kiln, and filled it up completely with sawdust and burned it. We all took turns watching, as to make sure that it didn’t burn the countryside or something. it took around 12 or more hours I think, and the pieces came out black like they were supposed to. Its a type of firing that was done by the Etruscans when they did there stuff a few thousand years ago.

Something else that we did this week, which was on the Wednesday, was that we went to  town that has been doing pottery since around the 15th or 16th century. Its a business that has been in the same family since then, and they make pottery and paint it. We toured and it got to watch someone paint and make a vase in a matter of minutes! The skill that they had was incredible. But, the main reason that we went there was to paint a bowl and plate of our own. We had arranged for it to happen and come up with our own designs prior to it and do it on the plate and bowl.

Creating the design wasn’t really a problem at all because we were able to do it on paper. when we got to the actual bowls and plates, it was a lot harder because we couldn’t actually touch them or else the glaze on them would fall and crumble. So, trying to paint a line with a free floating hand was hard for me. I wasn’t too happy with the design because of the crooked lines, but, it was still a fun experience none the less.

The 4th week ended by everybody taking a trip and going to a chocolate festival in Perugia. Its called Eurochocolate and is supposed to be one of the biggest chocolate festivals in Europe and in the world. its a 9 day festival where the streets are just lined up with vendors and tents, each of them having something to do with chocolate. There were so many different types and things that had to do with chocolate that it was a bit overwhelming. There were different brands, to different chocolates, and even different types of liquid that had to do with chocolate. There were even alcohol based things that were being sold that had mostly chocolate in them.

We spent some time getting there, which wasn’t really too bad. Just a couple buses and some taxi’s with walking, and we were there. My and a friend of mine just kind of walked around all day. I didn’t really try too much. I had a couple chocolate bars that were pretty good, bought a hot chocolate that had rum in it, and bought a couple alcohol bottles of chocolate that were very good. In the end, it ended up being really fun.

We spent the rest of the weekend just kind of lounging around because we only went to the festival once.

Photo of Florence

 Before putting in the kiln

The pieces in there containers and about to put them in the kiln

In the kiln

Filling the kiln up with sawdust

Covering the kiln

Now, just to wait...

Week 3-Villa life and classes

For the third week that we were in Italy, I never really did get around to taking any pictures. It mostly has to do with the reason that we moved into a villa, where we'll be spending the next couple weeks doing classes and there's not much to take pictures of. I like to take pictures of scenery and other things like that. I'm not the type of person that just goes around taking pictures of random people in the middle of class.

We got into the villa Sunday evening and got a run down of the whole place. We were introduced to some of the staff and got a tour of the place. There are many patios scattered around the place for people to just sit back and relax. It has a student lounge area (which we don't really use), a little room where you can play pool (still have yet to find the balls and sticks), an exercise room that is very....nice...you could say. It has an eating area where breakfast, lunch and dinner is provided at certain times of the day. The entire villa is huge. Its been around for a couple centuries and has a ton of rooms for the family that owns it, and for any staff that may work here. Next to the villa is a pretty good sized castle that has been around for a couple centuries, but is not open to the public because its under renovation. So, it sounds like that is out of the question.

After we had gotten to the villa, we got our first meal, and it was pretty good. It was a normal Italian meal where you get bread in the beginning, followed by a first course, second course and dessert later. We get a bottle of wine per table for every dinner, so some people start to get feeling pretty good.

Over the week, we get breakfast at 8, lunch at 1, and dinner at 7. Breakfast is interesting. Its been the same everywhere that we've gone to, where it consists of small portions of dishing yourself up and having some coffee to go along with it. I'm not really a big fan of the breakfast because the meat just doesn't taste like home. I miss bacon and eggs and all the good, greasy American stuff. I do like the bread and coffee that we get.

Lunch is almost the same as dinner, except we don't get a first course or dessert for lunch. Most of the meals consist of a lot of pasta, some vegetables and a little meat on the side. I almost feel like I'm going vegetarian sometimes. Can't really complain about the bottle of wine that we get at dinner each time.

Its pretty much like that through the course of the whole week for meals. As for classes now...

We have a few classes over the week. This week is different because we have 3, when we're supposed to have 2. We usually have a class in the morning, a break and lunch, then a class in the evening. The classes for this week are Art History, Clay, and Italian.

Italian has gotten to be a bit frustrating. We had it twice this week and learned some basics in being able to communicate in Italian. It just gets frustrating because we're being taught and the instructor keeps talking to us in Italian. It's like, "I have no idea what you're saying!" I realize that its good in that it could help us, especially in being in Italy, but, communication could be a bit easier. There's a lot of memorization to be had with this class, but I guess any language class could be like that. Its not a walk in the park to learn a new language.

Before we even came to Italy, we were supposed to have read our Art History book and taken something of a pretest. The Art History class for this week was a few times and lasted around 3 hours each class. It mostly consisted of reviewing us for a competition that we were having at the end of the week to see how far along we had come and also acted as a test. We talked, we went over slides, we were put into groups. There were 4 groups and they were for the Italian Bowl, which was the competition/test in jeopardy style. Our groups met and somewhat studied with each other....in the end, my group won. We got cookies! ;)

Clay class is  something completely separate from the other classes. We started our first class with Rhett introducing us to clay and excercises to work on your clay and get bubbles out and what not; keeping it wet, rolling it, pinch pots, etc. We had to get started on our first project, which was to replicate a piece we had seen over the few weeks. This was what I had talked about in an earlier blog post. The bocoroo pieces; which was red clay turned black from the firing. I replicated a piece that had a pretty simple design, but not simple in creating. It took me all week and I probably put about 10-12 or more hours into it. It ended up being the largest piece in the class and I put a lot of work into it and was pretty proud. I don't have any pictures, but I do have a picture of the original. They look similar to each other, but its not perfectly replicated.

This project was time consuming in that I had to build it up slowly and slowly to the top. The hardest part was the handles. You have to do those just right, or they can break off pretty easy. A lot of the people had trouble because some of their pieces broke, they were too much of a perfectionist, or their handles mostly likely broke. Its not that they messed up, its just that handles are very hard in getting to stay, making sure they dry right and stay on. Some peoples broke after they were already dry because they picked it up by the handle and it just snapped. Mine was very heavy and sturdy.

That about wraps it up for this week. I am down with my first clay project and have to start my second one for the 4th week. I was still unsure what I was gonna do for it by the end of this week. But, the project could be anything we wanted, but it was encouraged to be something that you seen over the weeks that inspired you. Until the next post...probably tomorrow...

Week 2-Napoli

So, the last blog ended with the group of us in Rome. We left the next day for the town of Naples. Now, people told us that Naples was a very sketchy town in that it was ruled by Mafia and there were large amounts of crime around the city. It is the city in Italy where you are most likely to get pickpocketed and so you have to kind of be on your guard the whole time, especially on buses or anywhere that's crowded at all.

The Sunday of the week was spent just getting to Naples. We took a train that was only a few hours long and it wasn't too hard getting our way around or even finding every thing. The train station in Rome is very big and there are tons of people, but the trains are roomy enough. We arrived in Naples and took 4 taxis to the hotel. I have to tell you, the sight on the way to the hotel from the view of the taxi was not pretty.

Just driving through the city, you could see why it sounded so sketchy, and this was without the viewing or hearing of a crime. There was trash everywhere! I've been to some pretty big cities, Rome being one, Boston, New York City, Minneapolis; and none of them had the trash that even came close to this city. It was everywhere and it reeked getting out.

From just judging, I didn't really like Naples too much. But, we got to the hotel and it was really nice and clean with the rooms being pretty big. Later that night, me and Nick just walked around for a few miles and got to know the city that was around the hotel. After actually doing a little and seeing things, my opinion of the city changed immensely and it actually wasn't that bad. Still not as cool as Rome though. ;)

The first day in Naples, we went to a museum that was down the road from our hotel. It was the Archeological museum of Naples and it was awesome. It contained a lot of mozaic like murals that were recovered from the town of Pompeii. For some of you that dont know, Pompeii was a town on the coast of Italy and was completely smothered in ash and lava from the volcano, Mt. Vesuvius.  People were killed instantly and the preservation of some of the things was impressive. The museum contained something that we weren't really studying, but interested me a lot because it had paintings that are from the era that interests me. Which is around 1400-1850. It had around 8 highly detailed paintings that were huge, with a designed ceiling and a statue of Atlas holding the world on his back in the middle of the room.

The first day in Naples consisted of nothing. We were supposed to go to Pompeii, but transportation workers decided to boycott and so transportation was not running that day. So it just became a day of relaxation and sleeping in. Found a really cheap pizza place where the pizza is only about $4 though. :)

For the third day, we took a bus and went to the town of Pompeii...or...what's left of it anyways. Like I explained before, the place was completely buried in ash and it was uncovered and excavated. The place was huge and it housed a lot of people. The preservation that the ash did was incredible and so we got to see a lot of the murals that were still left over and visible. We were there the entire day and walked around checking out the ruins. The last stop was something almost like the colosseum, but on a much, much smaller scale. We then went home.

Ruins of Pompeii with Mt. Vesuvius in the back.

The fourth day was almost like the third. We took another train to a small town that I forgot the name of. Outside of the town are the ruins of Herculanem. It was another town that was almost like Pompeii. It met the same results, but was a bit further from the volcano and so, it was it a day or so later. It was much smaller than Pompeii and ruins are still being excavated to day. It had very well preserved art and scientists were able to dig up where bodies once were and made casts of them.

Casts of people from the volcano in Herculanem

Town outside of Herculanem

Preserved are in Herculanem

The fifth day, we went to another small town called Pasteum. It has some of the most preserved temples that are still around today. Most of the structures that are preserved are just the outside columns and some of the tops. But, the sheer size of the things was massive. The columns were built in pieces and they each weighed at least over 5 tons. The size of them and actually seeing them was awesome. There were about 3 of them and each one was supposed to be a temple to the gods. One being for Posidieon, Hera and Demeter.

Our last day, Saturday, was somewhat like a free day. It started out with our Professor talking about going to some island called Capri. He never really told us why were going there. We just walked over to the harbor and got on a big boat that was about an hour long trip. Some of the people didn't fare to well because they get motion sickness pretty easy. We landed on the island and it was gorgeous. The cliffs went high and you could see green from the trees everywhere. There were little beaches and a harbor that housed a ton of boats with a small town that was jutted into the cliffs.

Anyways, after we arrived, Mark just told us that we had a free day and that we could do whatever we wanted. So, me, Nick, Evan, Mark and his wife, Rhett rented a boat for 2 hours. It was pretty cheap when split between the five of us and we circled the entire island. We saw huge cliffs, swam around in the Mediterranean, and did some cliff jumping.

The breeze from the boat and the weather was so relaxing. It was just nice with the breeze going through and the sun hitting you. We stopped once and decided to jump in and swim around. The water was really blue and salty. But, the temperature was just perfect to swim in. We drove around on the boat more and got to some cliffs that people were jumping off of. They were around 30-40 feet high and Mark jumped off it without hesitation. I went on it after a while and it was quite an adrenaline rush and really fun. We finished around the island, I got something to eat and we went home, ready to head to the villa the next day. It was by far my most favorite day in Italy so far. :)

Banana Split in Capri

Cliffs!

Capri!