espana!

i am back from spring break! well actually, i returned from spring break on sunday but alas, i am lazy and busy and that combination makes blogging rarely something that occurs on time.

anyway, i went to spain for spring break and had a fabulous time! i went to barcelona for the first four-ish days with four other ADA folksies. it rained for three of the days, but the second days was gorgeous and we went to the beach and touched the mediterranean. during the rest of the days, we wandered around the city seeing the many fabulous things - gaudi's architecture, las ramblas, some really awesome street performers, and such.

elena by the water in barcelona

my foot on the beach!

AND THEN WE HAD TAPAS ALL THE TIME! apologies for the capslock, but tapas and sangria meals make me extremely excited. so many little mini meals that you can just keep ordering and so many different delicious things! some of my favorites included ... 1) little piece of toasted bread with crabmeat, a shrimp, and a pickle. 2) mini cheeseburger with sweet onions 3) same little piece of toasted bread with 4 delicious cheeses melted onto it. 4) roasted peppers and vegetables with melted goat cheese. 5) little piece of homemade cake with creme brulee IN IT. essentially, tapas excite me like nothing else in the world. also, i saw my tufts friend dan richards in barcelona, which was an exciting touch of home while abroad.

the seville cathedral

after barcelona, i flew to seville for a whopping 7 euros (europe traveler tip: if you manage to put up with ryanair's ridiculous restrictions you can go all over really cheap. but be careful and do your research because they do things like flying you an hour from the actual city, etc or charging you 40 euros for a carryon that is the wrongs shape). seville was probably my favorite city in spain - it felt the most "spanish" despite being stuffed with american exchange students. we saw a flamenco performance in a local bar, went to the seville cathedral (i can't remember if there's a specific name but it's humungous and gorgeous), and rested in the parks/streets during the 70 degree weather. it was so amazingly therapeutic. also, more tapas and sangria. happiness. also also, i forgot this until i went to upload pictures, but we also so my favorite animal, peacocks, in the garden of a palace in seville.

i named this peacock francesco.

for the last two days i took the train up to madrid with one other ADA friend - we met up with a third actor there along with bunches of tufts people. it was great to see some tufts friends and how fabulously they were all doing. madrid was also great, much more laid back than i had expected. i also went to the reina sofia, spain's national museum of 20th century art. i have seen tons and tons of gorgeous cathedrals over the past month or so of europe, but after a while the million portrayals of jesus, mary and occasionally peter start to blend together. ergo, it was great to wander through picasso and such for a few hours. my last meal in spain was actually sushi. and it was so wonderful. the first asian food that i have eaten since january and i missed it lots and lots.

all in all, spain was fabulous.

spring break!

i leave for spring break tomorrow morning at 530am and i haven't packed at all! anyway, this post is mostly a warning that i'm not bringing my laptop on spring break (i'm going to spain), so i won't be able to post for probably a week and a half.

also, we had a contact improvisation intensive week and it was AWESOME. however, i have not packed yet and so i don't have time to talk about it. i'll let you know about it next time.

smooches!

carnevale!

i'm back at the villa right now after my favorite weekend yet - carnevale in venice! i made the great trek with five other fabulous actors from the program - morganna, emily, stuart, maggiejo, and elena. we left arezzo at almost 1am friday night and our train arrived in venice at 5:30am. about an hour and a half into the train ride, we finally attempted sleep by arranging ourselves into one giant knot of cuddle and in the process making most of our body parts either extremely sore or numb. 'twas fantastic.

arriving in venice just before sunrise, it was already gorgeous. we took a "water bus" to lido (kind of like urban sprawl, but not because it's an island) where our hotel was, and the really nice concierge lady transferred us to a different hotel so that we could check in and get breakfast despite it being (by then) 7am.  by this point we were rather awake and excited, so rather than taking our planned power nap we ate five croissants each, got into our carnevale makeup/costumes, and headed back towards venice.

side note - one of the most awesome parts of venice is that taking public transportation (these waterbuses) is basically an enjoyable event of its own. the whole city is beautiful, so their equivalent of hopping on a dirty subway is boarding a boat and floating past gorgeous buildings while the sun glints off of the ocean into your eyes. this made me very happy. end of side note.

i think one of my favorite parts of venice is that unlike other cities, i didn't feel that i needed to rush about to see fifteen million things. just being in venice during carnevale itself was the attraction, and everywhere around me was fabulousity. everything was hugely crowded, but it almost in a calm way because the crowds were full of amazingly dressed up people, the weather was beautiful, and no one was rushing towards any specific direction. we mostly wandered about piazza san marco, seeing the elaborate and gorgeous costumes of the venice elite.

carnevale, by the way, is a two week period leading up to fat tuesday during which (traditionally) masks and disguises are worn such that class and social structure are flipped on their head. it was originally the period in which the peasants could behave like nobility and vice versa, the designated time of year for the whole world to be flipped on its head and for craziness, basically, to rule. today it has much less of the original economic/social class implications, but remains a time when people don masks and elaborate costumes. some of the most elaborate and beautiful masks/costumes in the world are on display in venice during carnevale, and it was amazing just to walk about and see how people were dressed in the street. i included a few pictures below, along with a picture of our own carnevale costumes.

in the middle of the afternoon we also headed over murano, famous for its glass art. we saw a free glass demonstration (which was crazy impressive) and then explored the shops where glass was sold. afterwards we headed back towards san marco and the carnevale celebration, but we didn't make it too far into the night before we got exhausted and headed back to the hotel for the night. today we meandered our way to the train station, seeing more costumes and beautiful sights along the way, and returned in time for kebab in arezzo. all in all, it was a crazy fun yet relaxing (in a way) weekend. moral of the story - if you ever get the chance to go to carnevale in venice, jump at it. here's a few photos of the awesome environment where i spent the last weekend :

this guy's red purse wins him best carnevale costume of the weekend.

elena with the commedia characters!

our homemade versions of carnevale, many thanks to ben nye stage makeup.

awesome.

the mask stores were also stunning, as you can see.

commedia!

once again, i got lazy and busy and haven't posted in a long time! sorryyyyy!

first, weekend fun things - i travelled to Rome last weekend! it was actually somewhat overwhelming because there were so many amazing things to see and we hadn't really planned much beforehand about what our priorities were. as a result, we didn't have the right timing in order to get into the vatican or the colosseum, but we still saw lots of awesome old things. threw obligatory coins into the trevi fountain, wandered around exploring all the old things that are everywhere, and in general enjoyed ourselves. the highlight of the weekend, though, was probably seeing a piece of physical theatre on saturday night by a group called "peeping tom" from belgium (i think belgium - i might be remembering wrong). it was one of the most captivating performances i've seen, and was a huge inspiration to continue with the sometimes grueling work involved in physical theatre. here's a little clip with some highlights of the show - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlrXPVZG5Ho.

during the week, we've shifted focus in class the last two weeks such that we are spent half of each day on commedia training. it's been awesome - commedia itself has been a blast to learn, but the way that our teacher helped us connect the characters and conventions to larger broader work in all types of theatre has also been awesome. it has taught me much more about theatre as a whole than i would have expected, while still being a great realm of its own to explore.

anyway, here's some pictures from rome! and stay tuned, i'll try to start posting more often again and i go to venice this weekend for carnevale, which promises to be fantastic :)

arezzo from above

it's been a very very long time since my last post, and michael did his faithful duty of chastising me for this horrific deed, so rather than doing my philosophy homework i shall grace the internet with my tales of grandeur.

wooooah it's been a long time since my last post - i went to florence last weekend (as in like, 8 days ago)! 'twas fabulous! i didn't actually go into the uffizzi or the accademia, so i plan on returning to actually go into the museums. instead, i just wandered around the different piazzas. i saw the duomo (gorgeous), the statues outside of the uffizzi (stunning), strutted across the ponte vecchio and ate fantastic food. AND AND AND there was a chocolate fair going on! all of piazza santa croce was stuffed with chocolate things. there were shoes made of chocolate, tools made of chocolate, a chocolate kebab vendor, and anything dipped in melted chocolate that you can ever imagine. it was basically heaven. the only sad part about florence is that i brilliantly left my camera's memory card in my room in arezzo, so my camera was essentially useless. thus i have no pictures to show you of the chocolate or gorgeousness.  florence, although fantastic, also helped me appreciate how much we are almost the only americans in arezzo. florence was stuffed to the gills with tourists and that's not necessarily a bad thing, but it was nice to return to a place where we were the exceptions as americans and everyone gladly helped us practice italian.

last week was another fantastic week of classes, although i got pretty sick for the first half of it so i spent a good amount sitting in the corner in many layers of sweatshirts :( an italian doctor came to the villa though for all of us sick folk, and with the help of a translator he managed to diagnose me with something-or-other and i'm all better YAY! translating "post-nasal drip" was a challenge.

this most recent weekend i stayed around arezzo rather than trekking off to anywhere else in italy. saturday i strapped on my athletic self and went hiking with my friends stuart and maggiejo in the hills above arezzo. it was so so so gorgeous. beyond words gorgeous. i put some pictures below, but they don't really capture how fantastic it was. we were originally planning on hiking all the way to alghieri (spelling might be completely wrong) and then taking a bus back, but we got about 2 hours up the path that was supposedly leading us there, and it forked. not believing in things like maps, we had no clue which fork to take. we were, however, at a gorgeous mountaintop villa/gated estate, and so while we were half trying to figure out where we were and half gazing in awe at the gorgeous property, the owners drove up. of course we tried in our fluent (horribly broken) italian to ask them which fork to take. there was only one minor problem in that we couldn't remember the name of alghieri. oops. so we didn't even really know what we were asking for. despite our stupidity though, they took us through their gorgeous house so that their garden-keeper could attempt to tell us where to go. they were completely useless in showing us directions, but seeing their adorable and gorgeous property was fantastic nonetheless. and they were very enthusiastically useless.

we eventually made it back by way of an adorable town called san polo, from where we took a bus to arezzo. that was a very strangely constructed sentence. but regardless in san polo we stumbled upon a church that had sections dating back to the 4th century. so cool. once we got back to arezzo we ate lots of food, and this week we start intensive commedia classes! i promise to (try to) post more often!

<3
giovanni

gorgeousness from above arezzo

part of the estate thing on top of the hill.

stuart and me and pretty views

prosciutto break!

this was so pretty it looks fake.