oops

my computer is really broken so this blog may have to take a long break. its raining too much in rome. my parents are here! i went to naples, ate pizza, and came back. schools over soon. im going to travel lots of places for the two weeks after school is over. im also going to london again for 5 days. aaaaand im coming home on dec 25!

la cena americana

Here are some pictures of the grilled cheese and tomato soup dinner we made for the french boys.

abbey, kristin, phillippe, me, meg, patrick and Thomas after dinner

the same, with Matteus ( a nice italian!)

washing dishes

ive basically just been doing schoolwork and sleeping. not too many exciting things to report. its been raining a lot and my shoes are all really wet and smelly.  This weekend I went dancing again which was really fun and went to Porta Portese and bought a really colorful sweater that sort of looks like my paintings. My parents and brother are coming to visit in one week and i'm super excited!

balliamo molto!

MOST IMPORTANT: I'M SO HAPPY THAT OBAMA WON! THE ENTIRE WORLD IS SO HAPPY THAT OBAMA WON. I no longer feel slightly ashamed claiming my nationality while abroad. 

This weekend was really really fun. I still, in general, don't love Rome that much but meeting other foreigners here makes everything  more exciting.  On Saturday Meg and Patrick and I met up with Phillippe and Thomas, 2 french guys from Provence, that I was in touch with through couchsurfing. Phillippe and Thomas are so much fun and they made fun of our wine and we went to a really great bar and met some people dancing to Oasis outside the Vatican at 4 am. 

Last night we met up with Thomas and Phillippe again and some of the people who danced in front of the Vatican. We went to the same really great bar and then went to a dance club called Rialosantambrogio. It was a huge warehouse-type building with good electronic music and video installations of people putting hot peppers in butts  and it was advertised as "amica della queer" or "friend of the queer."  We danced until 4am then went to the 24 hour bakery and got Pizza Rossa for breakfast and went to bed. 

Today the opera singer Andrea Bocelli  performed for free in Piazza del Popolo so Meg and I went and it was packed with people and was sooooo Italian but I really liked it. Seeing Andrea Bocelli in ROME!!  wonderful. 

my italian is getting a little better. 

probably other exciting stuff happened as well but i forget and now this weekend has made me really tired and happier.

Io sono malata per 2 giorni

blegh. i'm sick and it's raining and Rome is depressing lately. 

On sunday i tried to go to a mall with some friends in attempts to buy cheap clothes but some trenitalia employee misinformed us and we ended up going to Tivoli instead where Hadrian's villa is. Tivoli was a stupid town. Everything was closed and there weren't very many things there. We did see a place where lots of homeless people hang out and an otter and a footbridge and some people that looked like they were trashy philadelphians. then we went back to Rome. 

I'm getting anxious to leave this city! The people all seem so miserable here. I think my general decision about Rome is that it is a good city to visit but not to live in. I spent a lot of time during my sick day re-reading some Rome guidebooks trying to find some places that i haven't walked around yet and I'm going to to try to go to those places by myself when I feel better.

My parents and brother are coming to visit soon and I'm excited. and i hope everyone voted for obama! my roommates and i have been watching msnbc.com all day and crossing our fingers!

qual que volta mi piace Roma un peu

Being back in Rome is slightly depressing because it has been raining a lot everyday and the people are still unfriendly and Rome is not Istanbul.  Right now there is some political unrest in italy because the government is trying to privatize public education and cut lots and lots of funding to public schools. There have been massive protests or manifestazioni but most of the people at them sit on the ground in nice clothes and smoke cigarettes. Walking around piazza del popolo and down via del corso the other day was nearly impossible because of all the protesters. 

Last night I braved the rain and went out dancing with some friends at Circolo degli Artisti (circle of artists) it was lots of fun and some people dressed up for halloween. They played weirdo american music but there were not too many americans there. Today is a holiday (all souls day) so everything is closed. 

I'm a little sad to be away from the United States now after watching youtube videos of what Philly looked like after the Phillies won. I don't even care about sports really but I feel like I missed something important. Plus it would have been exciting to see a bonfire in the middle of broad street. 

Also being abroad for the election is kind of odd. The whole world is obsessed with who is going to win this election. Everytime I admit to being American while I'm here I am immediately asked if I voted for Obama or McCain. Sometimes I get extra apples from the apple vendor for answering Obama. 

ISTANBUL NOT CONSTANTINOPLE

I got back from Istanbul recently and I believe it is my favorite city that I have ever been to. I LOVE IT!!! The people there are so friendly and hospitable and fun and honest and I wish I would have studied abroad there instead of stupid Roma.

Some things I saw/did:
Hagia Sophia
The Blue Mosque
Rode the ferry from the european side of Istanbul to the Asian side lots of times
walked everywhere
took off my shoes when I went inside
ate lots of dried fruit and nuts
ate doner (!) and durum and drank fresh squeezed pomegranite juice
made lots of turkish friends
made lots of austrian friends
made lots of german friends
saw the sistern basillica (and undergroud basillica)
drank Raki (traditional turkish liquor that tastes like death)
went to the spice bazaar
went to the grand bazaar
went dancing
couchsurfed with Emre, Emre, and Samil.

Why Turks are nice than Romans:
one time a family squished onto a bench with me and didn't speak any english but kept smiling at me and then they got up and bought some sesame rolls from a cart nearby and specifically bought an extra one for me

anytime adam and I looked a little bit lost some turkish person would run up and ask if we needed help and where we were going and always pointed us in the right direction

another time i was sitting on a bench outside of the spice bazaar and a turkish man sat down next to me and we talked for almost an hour about lots of stuff and I found out he was vegetarian also (and I think he may have been the only one in the entire city!) and realizing how much trouble i had avoiding meat in Istanbul proceded to feed me dinner that he has just bought at the market!

there are a lot of blind people in Istanbul and every time one of them looked like they were having navigational trouble or headed for a deadly set of stairs one or many people would grab the blind persons arm and take him/her wherever she needed to go.


Istanbul was everything all at once: asian and european, modern and traditional, enormous but tiny. Walking around in Taksim felt almost like 5th Ave in New York but I could hear prayers being chanted in Arabic from all the mosques nearby next to the clicking of fashionable women's high heels on cobblestone.

And here are some pictures:

this is Zurich, not Istanbul... i went there for a few hours on my way home and it was kind of a ghost town but there were these people playing horns. very swiss.

This is outside the spice bazaar in Eminonou

also outside the spice bazaar

people preparing doner in Taksim square near Emre's house


Lots of spices inside the spice bazaar

dried fruit and "turkish delights" in the spice bazaar
view of the city from the european shore of the bosphorus


some lady selling pigeon feed in Eminonou

Fish market near Sirkeci

taken from the Ferry to the Asian side.

stray cat inside Hagia Sophia. stray cats were everywhere in istanbul.

byzantine mosaic from Hagia Sophia when Istnabul was Constantinople

Inside Hagia Sophia (Ayasofya)

inside the Basillica Cistern (medusa beheaded)

Asia

Turkish couple in the park

the outside of Hagia Sophia

a rooster and some other fowl at an outdoor pet market

a man selling pigeon feed in Eminonou

fishermen on the golden horn

view from Karakoy
Islamic cemetary at some Camii (mosque)
the fountain and courtyard at a mosque in Eminonou
lady selling pigeon feed in Sulkhametet and a man carrying a cart of stuff.
Istanbul Unversity!

inside the Grand Bazaar

I guess I didn't really take that many pictues. And what I enjoyed most about this city was meeting lots of people. I don't have any pictures of them unfortunately.

Ok write me emails please I want to know how your life is!!!!

non amo roma oggi

Today made me dislike Rome, or mostly Romans, a lot.

I think people here are far more rude than any other city i've been to. I think someone has smashed into me at least 4 times today with no apologies. 

Recently my friend fell of his bike and all of his belongings spilled everywhere in the middle of a busy street and no one stopped to help him.

The general public seems so angry here all the time. I feel like Romans hate their lives.

Also our landlord shows up unannounced during the week and proceeds to yell at us for having unmade beds and leaves us mean notes in Italian calling us animals and is generally disrespectful. 

People who are friendly here are difficult to find and hold on to!

Viaggo a firenze!

This weekend I went to Firenze (Florence) with my art history class. I accidentally slept through my alarm and missed the bus ( and our visit to Siena) but took the train with my roommate/bedmate Meg to Firenze and spent the day wandering around and then met up with our class in the evening. Florence was a nice break from Rome. It is really small, maybe the size of Lancaster city, and smelled like leather all over. Despite the hoards of Duane Hansen-esque tourists Florence was really beautiful. I saw most of the important stuff there... Michaelangelo's David, a bunch of stuff by Donatello, the Uffizi Gallery, the Academia, Ponte Vecchio, etc etc. If you want to see pictures of the aformentioned you can look on google because i didn't really take any.

I had really awesome pizza and gelato but things were sort of expensive so we abandoned Tuscan eating after the first day and switched to falafel.  This week is midterms and then on Friday my friend Adam and I are going to ISTANBUL for 10 days. I'm really excited because i've wanted to go there forever. We are couchsurfing and in exchange for staying on Emre's couch he asked us to make a painting of a headboard for him to hang over his bed. I probably won't update this until I get back from Turchia! Here are three pictures from Firenze:

 

I really liked this stencil near Ponte Vecchio. "I'm Dead."

Really bright sun over the jewelery shops at Ponte Vecchio

paint

This is one of the first paintings I finished when I got to Rome... its kind of small about 24x32

Here is a poor quality image of some sketches.

I finished this one today... its about 5 ft x 3 1/2 ft

Vino Rosso

For some reason... I can't really figure out how to get my cut/copy function to work on this post so just pretend that the text after all the photos come before it.

Here is the crowd in the streets of Marino

View from some place in marino

the fountain full of wine

pouring wine into cups from the fountain

lots of meats

  Today I went to a wine festival in Marino. It was awesome and made me feel really Italian. There we speakers all over the town playing Italian folk songs and people singing along and dancing in the streets and eating lots of panini. The fountains in the city were filled with wine and at 530 they were turned on and the town was packed with people trying to get free wine. People fed us grapes and shared their wine and everyone was really friendly and happy and it was sort of how I had imagined/wanted Italy to be . The train ride back to Roma was so so so packed. Every seat was filled and there were tons of people in the aisles and sitting on others laps and some sitting on top of the seats and clinging to the luggage racks.


I'm starting to understand what people are saying when they speak in Italian... at least in Rome.

From what I've heard, Florentine Italian is different than Venetian Italian which is different than Sicilian Italian...

Here are some pictures from the wine festival:

not italian at all

this is in no way related to Italy. But it's very important.

ciao belli

buongiorno...

Roma still is not my favorite city but I am trying to find more ways to have fun here.

The other night, after unsuccessfully going to a Basquiat opening on Via del Corso,  some friends and I sat at the Piazza del Santa Maria in Trastevere at a fountain. It seems to be a meeting place comparable to Rittenhouse Square. A drunk toothless man told us stories of his life in Italian (and I understood him!). There was some street performers juggling fire and a bride-to-be having her bachelorette party which included making and selling crepes on a small burner and riding around on a rose covered razor scooter. We ended up meeting two italian college students named Marco and Antonio. We stayed up talked to them at the fountain until 3 am and then they helped us take the really slow night bus home. 

It made me happy to finally connect with people who I don't go to school with. 

Last night I tried to go to Circolo Degli Artisti ( a co-op just outside the walls) to go dancing but we got really lost and wandered around and met lots of people which ended up being just as fun as dancing would have been.

Tomorrow I'm going to a wine festival in Murino where there are allegedly fountains of wine for free. 

I am still painting a lot and still really happy to have a studio. I'll post some pictures of stuff I've been making in the very near future.

staying places.

here is a picture of rain coming through the occulus in the pantheon! 

this is the view from my bedroom window
this is where i bought my neon bicycle

I think all major cities can feel the same. Similar routines can be established anywhere. The Vatican has replaced Rittenhouse square as the meeting place for friends. Young people line up outside the only 24 hour bakery in Rome rather than the Pretzel factory at 4am. Public transit still leaves residents stranded after midnight.

I only notice how spectacular my surroundings are when I look at pictures. I keep having to remind myself where I am.

My friend Matt, who I met on couchsurfing in May, is here visiting this week. We have lots of adventures planned, including attending a Roman hardcore show tomorrow!

The other night I saw a bunch of contemporary art exhibits. Some were really boring and some were fun and one was really great. I got to meet Franko B. who is this crazy performance artist who uses his own body and his own blood to make art. This specific show was toned down and was a blood-free installation. Above is a picture of Franko B. in his performing days but now he has an underbite and a grill on his lower teeth. He is great. 

I saw a Baselitz show at Gagosian that was a little disappointing.

I also saw this show by Pierre Louis (I think thats his name) that was really great also but not worth explaining. It was kind of like first friday but it was the 3rd thursday of the month.

all my clothes smell bad because our washer doesn't work. I'm going to go buy some pants now!

We have discovered this lady at the market that has about ten huge vats of wine that she sells for 1.50 euro or less per liter and it tastes really good! We go there most mornings.

Going places.

I'll try to update this weekly? maybe???? Please don't stop sending me e-mails and stuff because I like that better than this stupid blog.

I went to London and it was the first time I've travelled completely alone. I felt a little lonely at times but it forced me to meet people and explore on my own and rely on myself a lot. It was really nice to not have to compromise or worry about how my decisions affected everyone around me. I couchsurfed with this house full of brazilians and they were so so so nice and hospitable. I hope to stay in touch with them.

I spent most of my time in London riding the tube and getting lost then finding my way home.

I went to the Tate Modern of course and fell in love and i wish I could go there everyday.
Here is a picure of the wall facing the river at the Tate.

London had really great street art and most of the pictures I took there were of the street art. Here is one in the East End... near Brick lane... my favorite neighborhood in London.
Here is a Banksy piece on a wall in camdentown, very close to the house i stayed at.
A blurry picture of this huge park on top of a hill nearby. You can see all of London from the top of the hill.

After a week in London I had to spend the night in the Heathrow airport in order to catch a really early flight to Rome. I ended up meeting this Syrian guy named Akhmed who was about my age and I spent most of my time talking to him about how different our cultures are and about gender roles in our respective societies. After he found out that I painted he asked to see my sketchbook. I showed him and he quickly replied "I don't like this at all!" which made me laugh. He also told me painting was a hobby and not a career. He plans on being married within the year and having tons of children but we exchanged e-mails and perhaps if I ever go to Syria we will be in touch again.


I've been in Rome for 3 weeks now and I feel like I've settled into a routine. Classes are going well I have a studio which is fabulous! Here is a picture of it with some unfinished paintings ( that you should probably ignore) hanging up.


Rome is beautiful but it is my least favorite European city that I've been to. Perhaps I don't love it because it is not very progressive. Not much is happening in the contemporary art scene here. The "kids" here are really into dressing like Hot Topic shoppers and people love europop and house music. All fine things, but not my style. Most Italians don't really speak English so it is difficult to make friends with them so I spend a lot of time with people I go to school with.

My apartment is really nice and I live right next door to the biggest open air market in Rome. The produce is so fresh and cheap! There is a coffee roaster downstairs so I can have really good coffee all the time. Although there are no vietnamese hoagies or indian food place, the food tastes so much better here than in the US.

The other day I saw it rain through the oculus in the Pantheon and it was really amazing and made me really happy.

I'm sure there are plenty of cool things that I'm leaving out but this is a really really long post and your attention span has probably run out by now.

ciao!