Pictures, pictures, pictures! (and more)

I have wonderful friends. With the combination of Nicole's laptop and Hallie's camera cable, I was able to finally upload some pictures from the past month. I only picked the highlights, and of course I didn't get the order exactly right (uploading pictures of Blogger is slightly more confusing than it should be), but here they are:

One of the towers in the harbor of La Rochelle

The façade of La Sagrada Familia Cathedral in Barcelona

In front of La Sagrada Familia

Four of the cathedral's spires, viewed from another of the spires

The Bay of Naples

A vat of cows' milk being heated to become Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese

One of Bernini's angels on the Ponte Sant'Angelo in Rome

Mount Vesuvius viewed from Sorrento

The bay in which we swam in Positano. (I kid you not.)

Pompeii and Mount Vesuvius

Rows of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese

Views of the countryside in Reggio-Emilia

Leather jackets and the Arno River

A view of Florence from the top of the Duomo

In other news, I had a full week of classes, which were more or less enjoyable. My class at the University of Bologna, "Semiotics of Art," is amazing. The teacher is half French and half Italian, and just looks like a classy art history professor. She wrote or contributed to at least half of the books on our reading list for the class. Plus, it's not that difficult to follow since there are so many images up on the screen. I've decided to take it for the full 12 credits instead of just 6, which means I'll take only one other class. Unfortunately I didn't like the program's art history class, and the program's theater class was cancelled this week, but hopefully the theater class will start up again soon. I'm hoping I like it. Otherwise, I might try a Roman art class at the University, with Nicole. 

Two nights ago Emily and I went to see a theater performance a little bit outside Bologna called "I Semafori Rossi Non Sono Dio," which means, "Red Stoplights Are Not God." Yeah...it was an interesting experience. We had a bit of trouble finding the theater, and were a few minutes late, but I don't think it would have made any more sense if we'd caught the beginning. It probably wouldn't have even been that great in English, unfortunately. There was a large stoplight in the middle of the stage that kept changing colors, and the protagonist was a woman who believed that you need to always stop at a red stoplight, as in freeze and stop doing everything. So she talked normally during the green light, rapidly during the yellow light, and froze during the red light. There was also a stoplight repair man, who reminded me of Joey from Friends, and a chain-smoking woman who was looking for her lazy husband. Luckily it was only an hour long. But I was very glad we went because it was interesting to hear Italian spoken on stage; their diction was very clear, and it wasn't quite as hard to understand as I thought it might be. (Except during the yellow stoplights...then it was impossible.)

I also met my language exchange partner a few days ago, who is a friend of an UniBo graduate who works in our program office. Her name is Alessandra and she's 29 years old, she graduated with a degree in law and is now in Bologna writing her thesis. She's very fun and energetic and talkative, but she's from Bari in the south, so sometimes she's hard to understand. But I didn't feel too bad about my level of Italian because once we switched to English, she was really nervous, so I spoke for a while until she got up more confidence to speak in English. We were planning to meet again yesterday, and meet some of each other's friends, but I cancelled on her because I decided to try an Afro-Brazilian dance class with another girl from the program, Adeneiki. She had found out about this dance class that is twice a week, and since I haven't taken a dance class in a while, I decided to check it out with her. It was actually really good. It's in the gym of a middle school, and the teacher is great. The other women in the class seemed very nice too. I've never done Afro-Brazilian dance before but I think I'm going to like it a lot. While Nicole and I do enjoy our runs in the park, especially with all of the beautiful fall foliage, it's wonderful to take dance classes again!

Another very exciting part of my week was finding The Little Prince in Latin - Regulus. I went into the international bookstore intending to buy Gone with the Wind, which Nicole has been telling me to read for weeks, and saw The Little Prince in Latin, so I grabbed that as well. Then Nicole realized that they had it in every language - I mean Arabic, Polish, Yiddish, Japanese, you name it, they had it. If you've been keeping up with the blog so far, you know about my slight obsession with collecting The Little Prince in different languages, so you can imagine that I kind of freaked out when I saw this bookshelf. But once I got over my initial shock, I reasoned that it would be absurd (and cheating) to buy it in any other languages. The rule is that either I have to buy it in a foreign country, or a friend has to buy it for me. Buying copies in an international bookstore would be one step away from ordering them online. But I figured that Bologna is the perfect place in which to buy the Latin version, it being the home of the oldest university in Europe and all...whose official name is "Alma Mater Studiorum." So that was copy #11 to add to my collection - it's growing fast!