Ciao Italy, Gibberish Prague?

This past week flew by, and there's a lot of things I could type about.  I'll try and keep it short-ish.  On Tuesday, a group of us dragged our luggage down the hill to the train station, ran down stairs and up stairs to get to the right platform, got all our luggage on the train, and then went through the same process when we got to Arezzo where we mailed our extra luggage home.  I, unfortunately, still have 65 pounds of luggage in my rolling suitcase and a packed-to-the-brim backpack to carry around. 

On Wednesday, we went to Lucca, where there are tons of open and clean piazzas, adorable little shops and more bikes than I've ever seen.  That evening the Texas A&M and UTSA students packed up and headed back to the states, so the rest of the week was quiet and peaceful.

After school was all wrapped up, we had a couple nights in Castiglion Fiorentino to celebrate and have one last hoorah.  Instead of a going away party, we had a going away carnival.  I can't begin to describe how dangerous the rides were and how illegal they should be.  The bumper cars are the most fun when they turn on the smoke machines, disco balls and strobe lights.  You can't see but a couple feet in front of you and are completely disoriented.  Most of the times we did bumper cars there were Italians getting out of the cars running around and jumping from car to car.  I always aimed my car towards them.  As for the other people on the bumper cars, Americans are playful when they hit you, but the Italians are out for your blood.  The last time I played I think I chipped a bone in my knee from it hitting the steering wheel so hard.  Two huge Italians, pretty sure they were in their 40s, were packed into one little car, and they kept picking on Marissa and I, the only girls on the track.  They would come straight at us as we were passing the edge, and t-bone us into the barrier.  This caused our car, time after time, to fly into the air and Marissa was almost ejected from the vehicle on several accounts.

The ride I went on the last night I was in Castig. F.no is called the Super Dance.  It is basically a giant disc that has bench seating around the outside (no seatbelts or straps, with minimal railing to hold onto) and is a dance floor in the middle.  You're supposed to dance the whole time, standing up, on this spinning disc.  There is a man in a booth controlling in, and he has the power to make it go up and down and tilt different ways and at different speeds.  This was probably the most ridiculous ride I have ever and will ever see in my life.  We had about 15 of us riding on it at one time, but only a few were brave enough to get out of their seats and attempt to dance.  I had a blast holding on for my life, especially when the guy would tilt it at a really high angle, then shake it so people would literally be hanging from the top and start sliding across the "dance floor."  So unsafe, but so much fun.  This is one of the reasons I love Italy.  Completely ridiculous.

I packed my suitcases up, took about 50 pictures on my way out of town, and teared up a little when the train to Orvieto crossed from beautiful Tuscany to not-as-beautiful Umbria.  We spent the night in Orvieto and then rushed to the train station in the morning to catch our ride to Rome.  From Rome we flew to Prague, met up with Dan Rice who is studying here, and have had a personal tour guide all evening.  He took us to a brewery outside the tourist part of Prague and we all just pointed at something on the menu because the Czech language is a joke.  It's all gibberish and they throw accents on every other letter.  I think the creators of The Sims used the Czech language.  I'm really excited to start ordering things from just pointing at them and being surprised when I get my plate.  I was a little disappointed when I got chicken, potatoes and a salad.  I was expecting something as ridiculous as their language.  It's Slavic so I have absolutely no understanding of any of it, but Dan tried to explain to me it's like the phoenetic spelling of everything. 

Also, their money is Monopoly money.  One U.S. dollar is equivalent to SEVENTEEN Czech crowns.  This means that $100 is the same as around 1700 Czech crowns.  So, everything looks expensive and is really hard to put into perspective.  I'm walking around with a 2000 crown bill, and I keep thinking nobody will be able to break it, when really it's only a little over $100.  Fake money.

After dinner we saw a couple really cool pubs in town, and I'm excited to see Prague during the day tomorrow.

Happy Mother's Day to the best mom in the whole world!!!  And to my wonderful Grandma! And all the mommas reading this!

Love you all!

Cara Marie

Catching Up

I've been so busy with studio and being in Italy I haven't been able to write about what I've been doing!  After Easter, things got very hectic trying to get all our studio work done.  On Tuesday I finished my portion of a book we are making in our seminar class, and then we buckled down for studio presenations on Friday.

On Wednesday (despite the fact that our projects were due in 2 days) we had a field trip to Villa Lante and a Monster Park.  Villa Lante was smaller than other villas we've seen, but it was cool to see in person some of the places we studied in history class.  After Villa Lante, we had lunch at a small restaurant.  It was delicious as usual, and we prepped for the next stop with some endless wine.  After lunch we headed to a park about 30 minutes away, that was full of crazy sculptures of giant people, animals, faces and crooked buildings.  Most of us climbed on sculptures and got in trouble, but nobody was worse than Geoff Ekey.  In one of the giant faces, you can enter the mouth and find a table and seating build into the rock.  He climbed up the inside of the face, with the help of Andres, and he came out the eye of the giant.  He stood on the cheek of the face for a while, and then the security came over and gave him a dirty look, motioning for him to get down.  He turned around and attempted to climb back through the eye, but he couldn't quite maneuver correctly and got stuck for a good few minutes, his legs straddling either side of the eye socket.  The whole time he was struggling to get down, the security guard was standing and watching him, just waiting for him to figure it out.

After we all got past impulses to climb every sculpture we saw and jump every barrier we could, we laid under a shade tree until it was time to leave.  We got on the bus and headed back to reality.  Wednesday night we worked late, and then Thursday we finished things up that day.  We had a trip to La Pievuccia, the vineyard that is our project's site, scheduled with the whole school.  We tried to finish our book and get it printed in time to show Riccardo, but we were cutting it too close considering the group had already started walking.  We decided to have someone else print it for us so we could try and catch up with the group.  As we were walking out the front door, we happened to run into Garnett, one of the ladies in the office, and Maggie, the wife of one of our professors.  They just-so-happened to be driving to La Pievuccia, since Maggie has trouble walking that far.  We lucked out and they offered us a ride! As we pulled up we got dirty looks from everyone.

We toured the site, for the fourth time, and then had an amazing little meal of flower-shaped pizzas and cheese slices with marmelades, and of course lots of different wines.  We made orders at the end of the meal of all the products he makes and I got some treats for Eric and my dad.  Kelsey and I finished our drawings and process book the night before it was due, which is a first for me.

We presented on Friday to the KSU professors, a professor from Texas A&M, and a grad student from Texas A&M. Other people stopped in to check out how good all our presentations were.  We were 8th in line of the non-digital presentations.  We had ten minutes to present our proposal and five minutes of feedback.  When it was our turn, we pinned up our 12 sheets of drawings and text, handed out two process books of 61 pages each, and flew through our presentation.  I don't even remember what we talked about because before we knew it we were getting the 5 minute warning and then the boys in the back were waving at us trying to cut us off.  We didn't even cover all our design, and the professors were shocked at how much we developed in our project.  I don't know why they ever doubted us, we even told Chip not to worry about us!  Clearly they don't know how much b.s. an architecture student can pull out in a week and a half.  So basically we were the best project ever. 

Friday night was one of the best we've had in Castig F.no.  Our teachers planned a dinner for us at a local Argentinan restaurant, La Pompa.  It was delicious food, or maybe just food I've missed.  There was a sauce we put on bread with salt that tasted like chips and salsa.  There was a hot plate they brought out of sizzling meats, including chicken, pork, lamb and STEAK. I think I drooled while eating it.  There was an amazing dessert that was like a caramel crepe with ice cream.  After we finished dinner and cleaned out their wine cellar, Chip had a slideshow of pictures to show us.  They pinned up a sheet to project it onto, and it was a lot of fun seeing everything from the first couple of days to the night before our presentation.  We were worried about how long it would be though, because Chip has taken almost 11,000 pictures throughout the semester.  He's become the butt of many jokes, mostly from our other professor Jim, about how he hasn't gotten a picture of this rock or that leaf. 

They wrapped up the presentation and we all headed to the carnival in town.  We had a blast riding the bumper cars, which are extremely dangerous since kids jump in and out of cars and run around while people are driving like crazy.  We ran out of tokens and went to a punching bag where one of the boys broke the record, yay!  Then we ran into our professors who were looking for a beer garden in town.  We went to the other piazza, and found a huge group of Italians and a stage with singers on it.  The night couldn't get much better, or so I thought.  We slowly made our way in front of the stage where there had been a group of middle-aged women dancing, and completely took over when "Celebrate Good Times" came on.  It was pretty funny listening/watching Italians try to sing English songs without knowing the words or what they mean.  We were all going crazy, but by the time "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" came on we went completely ballistic and dragged all the boys and our professors out to dance. 

We needed hydration after a while, so we got water at Pirate Bar and then the night slowed down as they switched back to Italian songs.  On Saturday Kelsey made me go to Florence with her so she could use some of her birthday money, and I got an adorable skirt on sale so I guess it's okay.  On Sunday we had planned to go to Rome for the beaitfication, but the train schedules weren't working for us and it was getting too late to figure all the details out of getting to Vatican City.  So sad, but mom says we can go back when he becomes a saint and I'm holding her to it!  I'll start saving now.

So, today we went to Roggi's, got a pizza and went up to the Etruscan tower to eat it.  We walked around town, since there is SO much going on (market, antique stands, food stands, carnival, car show) and slowly made our way back to Santa Chiara.  We worked on our history presentation before dinner, and at dinner we heard stories from people that went to the Beatification this weekend, went rafting this weekend, and went to Cinque Terre and met Rick Steves this weekend.

Tonight we plan on going to the carnival to hit up the bumper cars and possible the "Super Dance" which is a round spinning ride where you try and stand in the middle and dance the whole time.  When I walked past it Friday night, there are kids stuck against the sides from the centrifugal force, while a few are falling all over the place in the middle.  Should be interesting.

Current Events/Breaking News:

Momma Cotter will be making her way to Europe on May 13, meeting Kelsey and I in Salzburg!  We will definitely be going on the Sound of Music tour, and then mom and I head to Paris for a few days.

I fly home Wednesday, May 18th, at 11:30am, and I arrive at the KCI Airport at 7:00pm, or something like that.

This week we're just cleaning up studio and our rooms, Tuesday I am shipping half my stuff home (mostly souvenirs) and Friday I move out of Castiglion Fiorentino forever. 

I've already packed up half my stuff, and it's still unreal that I'm almost done with the semester.  Can't wait to see Rome, Prague, Munich, Salzburg and Paris, and can't wait to be home, but I'm going to miss this place.

Cara Marie