Michelangelo\'s got nothin.
Dear faithful blog readers,
I\'m so sorry it has taken so long to write another post. Please rest assured that it wont happen again. I will try my best to catch you up on what\'s going on here in Italia.
Quickly on that note, Michelangelo was not a genius. It\'s true! All he did was look out his bedroom window(or balcony...er...whatever) and there was inspiration winking him in the face. Lucky for you all my faithful bloggers, you can now see that inspiration. I just set up a gmail account(brianpgauthier@gmail.com). I think that if you go to picasaweb.google.com, create a gmail account, you can view my pictures online. It takes about 5 minutes and is probably the best email provider out there. Enough about that though.
Much has happened since the last posting. I have learned a lot about Italy in the last few weeks, even things I didn\'t realize I learned. For example, Italians don\'t dip their bread in oil. They see us Americans doing it and shoot us very inquisitve looks. Despite the odd gestures, many of us continue this tradition and show no signs of giving up. Maccaroni Grill is good but I think they crossed some wires up.
Within the last two weeks I have been fortunate enough to see two of the most beautiful sights any person should have the right to behold. The Cinque Terre(Five Cities) and the town of Poppi.
Our trip to the Cinque Terre was lots of fun. I hung out with Jeff, Chelsea, Emily, and Allison. We had a great time going from town to town, snapping pictures, exploring the Italian coast and generally just raising kane. You know, that old chestnut. We hit all but the third town which, to our dismay, turned out to be the most beautiful of the 5. The towns were much smaller than I\'d imagined. Only one 1 and 1/2 car road through each city. And the paint jobs were out of this world. No two houses next to each other had the same paint color. Anywhere from red, to blue, to yellow and back again. It was pretty cool to see. And, *sneaky laugh*, I got to dip my feet into the Mediterrenean sea! Not swim. Too many jellyfish, not withstanding the temperature dropping to around 70 farenheit.
As luck would have it, it started to rain the very second we all stepped on the train to come home. On our way home, passed the quarries where Michelangelo used to get his marble. I\'m not joking when I say that the mountain looks snowcovered. There is still that much marble.
Our next trip was last weekend to a little SDA church near the town of Poppi, about 50km from Firenze. It was great to escape the urban setting of Firenze. The duomo and downtown are magnificent sites but the country trumps them like the Rook over an ace. It was wonderful. They had a foozeball table and ping pong and many hours were spent there while others decided that nature was more to their liking. We left Poppi SDA feeling rather refreshed.
Classes have been getting better. At the beginning, I thought they were rather childish. We learned vowels, the alphabet and sang songs. All the lectures were in English and I started thinking that we weren\'t going to be immersed like I\'d hoped. That changed today.
Until now, all the sermons at church had been translated so we could get the gist of the message. Erica, one of our teachers, still translated softly for those of the ACA people who didn\'t feel that comfortable with their Italian. A few brave souls, myself included, had only a dictionary and our wits to try to interpret the sermon. While I didn\'t have any idea even what books of the bible they were preaching from, I did recognize many words, enough that I counted today a success.
We watched Paycheck tonight. All dubbed in Italian. May the next time be a movie that doesn\'t have a very bad dub of Ben Affleck. Yikes
Well bloggers, it\'s late, I\'m tired, and the room is getting warmer.(we always, for some unexplainable reason, have our windows open) Ci vediamo e buona giornata, wherever you are.
Love,
Brian
I\'m so sorry it has taken so long to write another post. Please rest assured that it wont happen again. I will try my best to catch you up on what\'s going on here in Italia.
Quickly on that note, Michelangelo was not a genius. It\'s true! All he did was look out his bedroom window(or balcony...er...whatever) and there was inspiration winking him in the face. Lucky for you all my faithful bloggers, you can now see that inspiration. I just set up a gmail account(brianpgauthier@gmail.com). I think that if you go to picasaweb.google.com, create a gmail account, you can view my pictures online. It takes about 5 minutes and is probably the best email provider out there. Enough about that though.
Much has happened since the last posting. I have learned a lot about Italy in the last few weeks, even things I didn\'t realize I learned. For example, Italians don\'t dip their bread in oil. They see us Americans doing it and shoot us very inquisitve looks. Despite the odd gestures, many of us continue this tradition and show no signs of giving up. Maccaroni Grill is good but I think they crossed some wires up.
Within the last two weeks I have been fortunate enough to see two of the most beautiful sights any person should have the right to behold. The Cinque Terre(Five Cities) and the town of Poppi.
Our trip to the Cinque Terre was lots of fun. I hung out with Jeff, Chelsea, Emily, and Allison. We had a great time going from town to town, snapping pictures, exploring the Italian coast and generally just raising kane. You know, that old chestnut. We hit all but the third town which, to our dismay, turned out to be the most beautiful of the 5. The towns were much smaller than I\'d imagined. Only one 1 and 1/2 car road through each city. And the paint jobs were out of this world. No two houses next to each other had the same paint color. Anywhere from red, to blue, to yellow and back again. It was pretty cool to see. And, *sneaky laugh*, I got to dip my feet into the Mediterrenean sea! Not swim. Too many jellyfish, not withstanding the temperature dropping to around 70 farenheit.
As luck would have it, it started to rain the very second we all stepped on the train to come home. On our way home, passed the quarries where Michelangelo used to get his marble. I\'m not joking when I say that the mountain looks snowcovered. There is still that much marble.
Our next trip was last weekend to a little SDA church near the town of Poppi, about 50km from Firenze. It was great to escape the urban setting of Firenze. The duomo and downtown are magnificent sites but the country trumps them like the Rook over an ace. It was wonderful. They had a foozeball table and ping pong and many hours were spent there while others decided that nature was more to their liking. We left Poppi SDA feeling rather refreshed.
Classes have been getting better. At the beginning, I thought they were rather childish. We learned vowels, the alphabet and sang songs. All the lectures were in English and I started thinking that we weren\'t going to be immersed like I\'d hoped. That changed today.
Until now, all the sermons at church had been translated so we could get the gist of the message. Erica, one of our teachers, still translated softly for those of the ACA people who didn\'t feel that comfortable with their Italian. A few brave souls, myself included, had only a dictionary and our wits to try to interpret the sermon. While I didn\'t have any idea even what books of the bible they were preaching from, I did recognize many words, enough that I counted today a success.
We watched Paycheck tonight. All dubbed in Italian. May the next time be a movie that doesn\'t have a very bad dub of Ben Affleck. Yikes
Well bloggers, it\'s late, I\'m tired, and the room is getting warmer.(we always, for some unexplainable reason, have our windows open) Ci vediamo e buona giornata, wherever you are.
Love,
Brian
posted by Mr. G | 2:42 PM
2 Comments:
Awww. I can tell from your blog how hard your trying to immerse yourself. It makes me smile, especially when you included the part about bringing dictionaries to church.
Hey Brian, I agree about the Cinque Terra. We never made it to #5 but the first four were unbelievable.
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