Urbino

So I kinda forgot I had a blog for a bit there… or, rather, I forgot to update it. And by “forgot to update” I surely mean “too lazy to update.” Whatevs.

Nothing much exciting this past week—Giuliano moved out, which was kinda sad but not really. He had a dinner with his girlfriend/friends-with-benefits/I-have-no-idea-what-was-going-on-there, and he left me all of his dishes to do in the morning. That, and he left super abruptly. I saw him in the kitchen, we exchanged “good mornings” and then I proceeded to take a shower. When I get out of the shower 10 minutes later, Giuliano is nowhere to be seen and I have a text on my phone that says, “Hey, Lindsay… I left for Naples. Feel free to eat my food. See you in November.” Uh, bye?

Friday we had our “mock oral exam” for the pre-session. This basically means that you partnered up with someone (I partnered up with the lovely Kyle Frost), and then you “acted out” an oral exam, meaning one person plays the professor and the other plays the student. Each person had to talk for a total of 10 minutes as the “student”, then switch to the “professor” role of asking questions. We could choose our topics and prepared ahead of time, but it’s still super intimidating to get up in front of the class and ramble on about Boccaccio’s Decameron for 10 minutes. This was fun compared to sitting for the rest of the 3 ½-hour class listening to my classmates talk about stuff I didn’t care about (and I say this lovingly… I am sure they didn’t care about mine, either). SO PAINFUL. I am so glad that’s over.

Today I was up at 5:30 AM in order to be at Piazza Malpighi at 7:20 AM. The program took us on a day trip to Urbino, where Professor Benevolo gave us an in situ art history lesson. We had a coach bus, which was super nice, but the 2 ½ hour drive there was a nightmare: it was all rolling hills and curving roads. Everyone needed a dose of Dramamine to make it through without puking. When we finally got to Urbino, we stopped for a quick breakfast at a bar and then set off. Our first stop was the main palace in town, which was cool. When we finished touring the palace-turned-museum, we took a break in the palace garden’s, where Professor Ricci’s kid, Ray, proceeded to jump in bushes. Nick tried to wrangle him as best he could, but all attempts to tame this kid are totally in vain. He’s a little monster… but a cute monster, nonetheless.

Ray... in a bush.

Nick trying to pull Ray out of said bush.

Success!.. unless you count the fact that Ray jumped back into the bush about 5 times after this. 

We then went to lunch, where we spent 2 hours feasting on bruschetta, spinach and cheese ravioli, perfectly juicy veal, questionably fig-filled pastries, and espresso. Yummmmm.

Afterwards we trekked it up to the top of the city (which is built on a very steep hilltop), which had an AMAZING view. We stayed there for a good hour, taking lots of group pictures and doing lots of belly-bumps. Lindsay Carrerra even convinced Professor Ricci to do one. It was effing hilarious. 

The lovely Kelly and I in front of some huge castle thing.

On our way back down, we went to see Raphael’s house (yes, the Raphael… the one who painted… and became a Ninja Turtle). Thank goodness we just got to wander… we were all done with lessons for the day. The house was huge, maze-like, and had many marble busts of men with very impressive mustaches. Ironically enough, there were no authentic Raphael paintings. There’s actually only one in the whole city of Urbino, and we saw it at the first museum/palace thing.

IMPRESSIVE MUSTACHE, MAN!

DOUBLE IMPRESSIVE.

Before leaving, we had 45 minutes of free time. Most of us just bought a few post cards, got gelato, and watched as Ray ran around like a maniac and stick his head into garbage cans.  That kid is so strange. On the bus ride home, he spent about 30 minutes showing Dru and I the chewed cookie he had in his mouth, then proceeded to threaten to spit it on us. It was delightful.

Me: "Hey, Ray... you do know that's a garbage can, right?"
Ray: "I KNOW WHAT I'M DOING!"

carry on, little man... carry on.

Now I’m just chilling out in my “new” room (I swapped rooms with Sara, since she’s home now… and as fabulous as ever). I’m going to try and make it to midnight without falling asleep, but my attempts may be futile. It’s a good thing I didn’t go out last night… Monday marks the first day of class AND the two written exams for the BCSP pre-session. Considering that I copied all the answers to my homework out of the key in the back of the book, I now need to learn everything we talked about in the last 3 weeks. Tomorrow will be interesting. On the upside, on Tuesday there is a national holiday because it’s San Petronio’s birthday or something… apparently we get off school for every day dedicated to a saint. God bless Italians.