Day 56: Chigi All Dayyy

Monday - July 12, 2010:

The only time I saw the outside world today was the short, 20 step walk, from the door into the Palace leading to the door to the classroom part in the Chigi. Exciting, huh? A little different from our going-going-going weekend in Amsterdam!

We had class from 9:30 - 12:00. One was a conversational Italian class with Jessica (have I said I'm throwing in the towel with Italian?) and then the other was a guest lecture. It was this sweet, Italian man, who restores famous paintings. It was actually quite interesting! He gave us a Power Point lecture on the process and steps it takes to restore a painting, and then he surprised us by showing us the finished product he'd just been working on! We were all dying -- it takes such skill and concentration to do this tedious task... and he was talking to us! Little ole us. We all felt extremely lucky to have gotten the chance to hear him speak (well he actually spoke no English, so he spoke in Italian and Cinzia translated everything he said).

After that class we got a 15 minute break before the next thing on our schedule -- cooking class with Mary Lou! On today's menu -- pasta with meat sauce. It was delicious and very simple! Just celery, onion, carrots, some white wine, ground beef and pureed canned tomatoes. I can't wait to get back home and start cooking all these delicious pasta dishes!

So we got done cooking (and eating) and had a two hour break. Here I busied myself with the usual Monday tasks -- real exciting! And then we had on our schedule that our afternoon class was supposed to go from 3-5. I should've known we'd go over... but I wouldn't have thought 2 hours over!! I was about to pull out my hair. We all had Power Point presentations on Cultural Events and Social Issues (mine was on The Role of the Catholic Religion in Italian Family Life. Others had ones like Graffiti in Italy... The Garbage Crisis in Napels.... Soccer in Italy.... Italian Education System... and much more.. much much more...) and they were supposed to be divided up between Monday and Wednesday, but Peek decided for us to all do them today. AHHH. We were sitting in the classroom from 3-7:15 listening to everyone do their presentation. You can imagine how stir-crazy we all got.

When we finally ended, I didn't want to do anything but get dinner and lay in bed. And I did. While blogging. So this was my outlet -- thank you blog world!! Hope you all had good Monday's and they weren't filled with four hour lectures :)