I have a larger update at my laptop back in my apartment, but I was here in the photography lab editing my pictures for our next assignment and, since I am extremely behind on updating my blog, I thought I would post about my experience at the questura yesterday. The questura is the Italian police station, don't worry, everyone has to go to get their fingerprints taken. This was the second time I had to go to the questura. The first time, which only took an hour and a half, for other people it took much longer, I waited in line for most of that time to simply get my fingerprints scanned into a computer. However, once that was done I was told that I would need to return to have my fringerprints taken again. Apparently the Italian police department isn't able to share my fingerprints between the two different departments. So I arrived at the questura at 9:00AM, which is when I was told to arrive. There was a pretty large group of people waiting there to also get their fingerprints taken and we waited for 25 minutes for a police officer to finally arrive. When he did, he came around and collected everyone's appointment papers and then told us to wait. He didn't return again for another 45 minutes and, when he did, he called me and two older ladies with him and took us into the police station. Once there, he had us sit in the hallway and disappeared into his empty office for another 25 minutes. He finally came out again and called the first and then second lady in with him to take their fingerprints and pictures. After they were finished, about an hour later, he called me into the office. When I handed him my passport he exclaimed "Ahhh, Stati Uniti!!! (United States)" and while taking my picture kept laughing and saying to himself "Americani, americani." Since I am used to Italians not particularly liking people from the United States, I wasn't too surprised at his reaction, but thought it was getting to be a bit much when he took me over to his desk and, looking at my passport exclaimed, "Stati Uniti, numero uno!" At first I just laughed along with him a little, but soon realized that he was being completely serious. He was enamoured with the United States. He proceeded to open up my passport and go through each page, pointing at the pictures of various American scenes and saying how beautiful they were. He also read several of the quotes from different presidents at the tops of the pages. He finally took my fingerprints and told me where to go next. As I was leaving, his partner walked and he called my back, asking if he could show my passport to his friend. He showed his friend all the pages and again said how beautiful all the pictures and quotes were. Unfortunately his friend didn't seem to share the same love of the U.S and simply grunted and walked away. I then walked back to one of the windows I was originally directed to and, after waiting another 40 minutes, found out that I would have to return, again, to the questura to actually pick up my permit of stay.

One of the pictures from my photography projects.

Paris Part II

The first night we walked around the city – from the Latin Quarter, up to the Notre Dame, over to the Louvre, and back to the Latin Quarter on the other side of the river. The next day we headed to Pere Lachaise, a famous and extremely large graveyard (it sounds much more morbid writing it out than actually visiting it). Many famous people including Chopin, Proust, and Jim Morrison, are buried there and it’s a pretty big tourist attraction. After Pere Lachaise, we went to the top of the Notre Dame where there are spectacular views of the entire city and you’re able to see inside one of the bell towers. After lingering at the top enjoying the view for a while, we headed back down and walked over to the Eiffel Tower area where we bought dinner which consisted, again, of bread and croissants. On our way back to the Latin Quarter, we happened to pick up a brochure for Disneyland Paris, so early the next morning we caught an early train and arrived at Disneyland in time for opening. We stayed in Disneyland for the whole day and, of course, went on many, many rides, I think around 15 in total, with the highlight of course being Buzz Lightyear, although it was not the same ride and unfortunately I didn’t max out, but got relatively close. After having lived in a foreign country for the past couple of months, it was nice to be somewhere where we understood things a bit more. Disneyland was set up in a very similar way to the Magic Kingdom in Florida, only some of the lands were switched around and had slightly different names (for instance, Tomorrowland became Discoveryland). We stayed until closing at 10:00PM and headed back to the center of Paris. Although it might seem strange that we decided to spend a whole day while in Paris at Disneyland, I'm very glad to have gone, it was a lot of fun! The next day, we had a few hours before we had to start heading to Barcelona, so we grabbed some breakfast, which was, yet again, bread and croissants, and went to a large park in the Latin Quarter.

At around noon, we headed onto the metro and found our way to the bus that would take us on the 90km journey to the airport, but more on that in a couple of days. I have to get to bed as I will be waking up early to catch a train to go to Florence! I apologize in advance if something in this doesn’t make sense or there are a vast amount of typos, as I did not get a chance to read it over yet.

I hope all is well back home.

Paris Part I

Last week was spring break here in Perugia. I went to Paris and Barcelona, but first I had to get through midterms. Luckily I only had three, as there was no midterm for my photography class, and I feel I did well them.

For spring break I went to Paris first. All my flights for spring break were booked with budget airlines, which usually means having to travel a bit outside of your destination city in return for much cheaper flights, but luckily my first flight flew out of Rome’s main airport and into Paris’s main airport, so that portion of the traveling experience was a bit easier. Unfortunately we missed one of our connecting trains on our way to Rome because the train we were on arrived quite a bit late, but luckily there was another train leaving a few minutes after we arrived. I had forgotten how enjoyable of a city Paris is to be in. The temperature was much more pleasant this time around. Instead of being 20 degrees with wind chill, it was a breezy 60. This made walking around the city much easier, and walking was definitely in order considering all we ate was bread and croissants (shockingly it’s rather hard to find a reasonable place to eat in Paris, but I’m not going to complain considering how magnificent the bread and pastries were).

All my midterms are finally over and I feel I did well on all of them. There were a few confusing questions on my Roman Empire one, but I'm sure it'll turn out well in the end. Now, however, is time for the projects. We have one paper that has to be a group paper, which I find annoying to be forced on me, but luckily Erin is in my class so I don't have to worry about the other person doing their own work for it. The school is also obsessed with presentations here, so we have a presentation in nearly every class to go along with our projects. I'm sure it's good practice and all, but it's frustrating being stuck inside when it's starting to get nicer out and we're in Italy!

Yesterday I had my first midterm (in Italian). I feel that it went well, but I still have a couple more coming up that I need to study for and papers that will be due soon, so it feels more like I'm going to school here, in Italy of all places. It still hasn't sunk in yet.

It's been rather cold here for the past few days - about 35 degrees. It's certainly a lot warmer than back home, but still surprising since I had gotten used to 45 degree weather. It actually snowed twice! The first time all I saw was about a 3 foot round area lightly dusted in snow in the piazza outside my window. The next time, which was actually just a couple of days ago, there was a little over a quarter inch of snow covering most of Perugia. It was funny to see all the native Perugians in their heavy winter gear in order to weather the deep snow while I was thinking about how it's probably 20 degrees plus wind chill back home and I'm sure it's snowed several times by now.

This morning we took another go at a tour of the Perugian chocolate factory. This time it was actually successful and we weren't thrown off the bus by the bus driver on the way there. I even came home with about 15 free samples of Baci and other assorted chocolates that I had stuffed in my jacket pockets before leaving. The tour was very interesting. They brought us along a raised walkway through the factory. Unfortunately much of the production line was closed for the season and we're not allowed to see the part where they make the chocolate before it gets poured into the moulds, however, we were able to see large amounts of chocolate riding along conveyor belts and being wrapped and boxed up and the entire factory smelled like a warm brownie, so it was fully worth the trek out there (plus all the free samples of course).

Chocolate

Classes are going well. Midterms and projects are starting to come in, though. I have my Italian midterm next week and a couple others soon after that. I'm not too worried about Italian. Most of the grammar is easy, so I'll just need to focus on memorizing more vocab. The other midterm in my history class should be interesting as he wants us to know a bunch of dates, but the material is interesting and the teacher is very nice. Yesterday I finished editing my pictures for my first photography project, so I'll have to see how she grades. Since we get to choose what our topics are for our future projects, hopefully it'll be more interesting than 200 pictures of the same object.

So today we decided to attempt to go on a tour of the Perugina chocolate factory, about a half hour from the city center. I called ahead a few days ago and made a reservation for a free English speaking tour today at 3:00. We found out that there's a bus, the R bus, that brings you relatively close to the factory and there was a bus that left at 2:10. We arrived at the bus station at 2:00 and waited for the bus to arrive. When it did, we got on and asked the driver politely in Italian if he knew which station we should get off at for the Perugina chocolate factory. He told us that we the bus doesn't go right to the factory, only near it, and he promptly left the bus. A little confused but assuming we'd figure things out, we went and took a seat. A few minutes later he came back on the bus and came over to us and angrily told us that if we were in a hurry we should take the H bus. We responded thank you, but we weren't in a hurry, so we'd just stay on this bus. He returned to the front of the bus and a few more minutes later, right before he was about to leave, he called me up to the front of the bus and started yelling that we should get off his bus and take the H bus. He wasn't leaving with us on it. Not knowing how to respond, we went over to the H bus stop and, right as the bus we were just on pulled away, we saw that the bus had left 10 minutes ago. I'm not sure if something was just lost in translation, but he seemed to be a very angry Italian man. I then went over to the small bus ticket booth and asked them if they knew which bus I should take to get to the Perugina chocolate factory, to which they responded the R bus, which is the one we were thrown off of. A bit distraught, I called the chocolate factory to try to explain and see if it would be all right if we were a few minutes late. It was not. We decided to try to go anyway since we had already swiped our bus ticket. Half an hour later, another R bus arrived, luckily with a different driver, and we headed off. About 20 minutes later, we realized that none of the stops were labeled and nothing was ever being announced, so I went over to the bus driver and asked him if he knew when we would arrive at the San Sista stop (the people on the phone had told me that would be the best stop). He said that we had passed it, but we would be looping around soon and would be back at that stop in about 15 minutes. He even said he would signal to us when to get off the bus. So we finally were able to get off at the San Sista stop and proceeded to walk, basically down a highway, in the direction of the Perugina factory. This was at 4:10. About 10 minute later, we arrived, 2 hours after we started our journey, at the factory. Right in front of the factory was an evidentally unknown bus stop, this one for the I buses. Inside we inquired if we were too late to catch a tour, in any language. Unfortunately, we were, the last tour was at 3:30, but the worker offered us some free chocolates and said we could watch a short movie in English about the factory. After eating our fill of free Baci and other assorted chocolates, we headed back out and caught the bus back to the city center 4 hours after we started. Now that we know what we're doing, we'll have to make a reservation for another weekend. Unfortunately no cameras are allowed in the factory.

Last Friday Erin, Liz, Krista and I went to Assisi, which is just a 20 minute train ride followed by a 5 minute bus ride from Perguia. It was a beautiful city, a bit cleaner than Perugia, and there were churches basically on every street. Everywhere we looked we saw a sign pointing in the direction of a different church. It was a bit more touristy than Perugia, but still had a very small city feel. I believe it actually is a good bit smaller than Perguia. While we were outside of the Basilica of St. Francis, a nun, who later told us that she lived near by, came up to us and offered to take our picture. After taking one, she decided to move us around in attempt to get better pictures. It was quite a funny experience. From the top of a wall near the Basilica there were beautiful vistas of the surrounding countryside. Perguia is somewhere in the distance there.

A view of the countryside.


Another view.


The Basilica of St. Francis.


There was also a castle/fortress on the top of the hill that we didn't quite make it to. Hopefully we'll have a chance to go back and see if we can make it up there.


Something was a bit lost in translation (porcini mushrooms have become porky mushrooms).

I also had my first project for photography class, which was to take 200 pictures of one object. I chose a water spigot in the piazza near my apartment. Last class we put the pictures on the photography lab computers and we'll start working on our six favorites next week. Unfortunately the pictures look a lot more dull and less sharp after I have uploaded them, but there are a couple attached below.

I have a few papers to work on this weekend. One, my photography paper on Henri Cartier-Bresson, I have started and hope to mostly finish by this weekend. We also have to present an in-class presentation on the photographer, so I will get working on that. Neither paper is due soon, but I want to make sure to get them done so I have other weekends free. Next Saturday, my Contemporary Italy class is actually going to Sienna for the day. I will update more regarding that once it has happened.