gnocchi night!

Just a shout-out to the fantaaastic cooks here at the Accademia - gnocchi night was a few nights ago and MMMM it was delicious. Here's a picture of my bliss :D

barbara streisand

I had a big breakthrough during open studio time tonight - one of the headstands we were working on in movement class was giving me trouble, and I can hold it now basically as long as I want! WOOHOO! It took me a little while to teach myself the right way to arch my back and balance my core instead of just kicking myself up - I had to overcome my instincts and trust my own ability to balance in a new way. I suppose that's some deep analogy for life, but for now it's just how I managed to stand on my head :)

ALSO this song, "barbara streisand" by duck sauce is ridiculously popular here, and I think it's hilarious: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uu_zwdmz0hE

il mio primo fine settimana!

I'm nearing the end of my first weekend in Arezzo, and it has been a blast! During the first weekend of each month, Arezzo holds an antique fair. Now every antique fair I've been to and/or seen and/or driven by and/or sprinted away from in America has been a rickety collection of ugly chairs. In Arezzo, antique fair means that the whole city - literally countless streets and piazzas - are all filled with vendor after vendor of awesome stuff. Beautiful jewelry, awesome leather bags, gorgeous old furniture and paintings, artwork, some clothing. I posted a couple pictures below of some of the awesome stuff lining the streets. Plus, everyone in Italy dresses beautifully, so going into town is kind of like living on a runway of a fashion show. And everybody has BEAUTIFUL dogs.

A huge success also occurred yesterday in that I found a hair dryer that won't explode the European sockets!! I can now coif without exploding the villa, which is a positive step. We went into salons for about two hours asking directions, and they kept telling us (to the best of our Italian knowledge, at least) that if we went to a certain piazza (which we couldn't find) we would see "tutto per capelli!" We were a little confused how sitting in a piazza would suddenly reveal to us "everything for hair," but we trudged on and eventually found the store named "tutto per capelli." I suppose that explains why we could never figure out the name of the place we were being sent to...

Saturday night we went to dinner at a delicious amazing place of which I can't remember the name, and then went to "la discoteca" for the night, where I attempted practicing Italian with bunches of locals. The people from Arezzo love when we practice Italian with them - it seems to amuse them just as if we were hilarious 5 year olds.

After a busy start to the weekend, we took a little bit lazier of a Sunday, playing a pick-up soccer game at a nearby park. And tonight we are taking our first step into an exciting yet terrifying realm : we're going to get non-Italian food in Italy, specifically Chinese delivery. Should be fabulous.

antique bidet. fabulous.

lunch in arezzo!

Dinner saturday night!

Teatro!

I've finished my first week of classes, and they've been fantastic! Each day we have a movement class, a voice class, an italian class, and a philosophy class (each for 2 hours). As the semester progresses, our schedule morphs to have different focuses each week (one week of extra commedia training, a clowning week, a more intensive voice week, etc). For the first week though, we had a more even schedule to lay the groundwork. The teachers are all fantastic, have adorable accents, and I'm learning loads. ALSO, I'm ridiculously sore, so hopefully this implies that I won't have to worry about the Italian freshman fifteen!

There's an MFA program here at the same time, and two of the MFA guys are awesome jugglers, so if I return to America unable to do tons of crazy juggling tricks, please chastise me.

Last night was the first of multiple cabarets, when anyone at the villa (teachers, students, mfa people, whoever) can perform whatever they want. It was awesome to see how much amazing talent, humor, and variety is here. There's an open air market in Arezzo today and another fair here for the weekend, so I'm excited to explore a little on my weekend off from class.

Villa time

I've made it to Arezzo! Well actually, I made it to Arezzo on Monday, but whatever. We were all bussed from Florence on Monday night to the (gorgeous) villa, and spent the last day and a half doing orientation things, eating fantastic food, and meeting everybody. Today is the first day of classes, so I'm really excited to get going onto that! Here's a few pictures of my beautiful new home :)

My room in "la casina."

View of Arezzo from the roof of one of the villa buildings.

The villa!

Again!

Arezzo is beautifulllll.

AND DELICIOUS.