describing myself in one word: forgetful:-)

So my program took us to Urbino and it was competely amazing...literally unreal. We were dropped off at the bottom this hill (the whole time driving into the area it was amazing because the castles in the city were siloutted-i have no idea if that's spelled right...sound it out-against the sky) and we climbed up these stairs back in time to the late renaissance. Everything was beautiful...the small cobblestone streets, the little churches, the unbelievable architecture and especially the huge palace that was at the top of the hill. My only complaint was that I had to take notes during the whole thing. Ah well.
Sunday we didn't have anything to do and one of the guys in the program, Isaac, had to be in Florence monday morning so we decided to make a trip out of it and we took off by train sunday afternoon! It was sooo much fun! Krissy and I spent the whole afternoon wandering the markets...it was pretty exciting because we both wanted to buy something leather (apparently that's what Florence is for) so we started looking at jackets and ending up buying two for the original price of one! The guy that was selling them to us was so surprised and excited when we spoke to him in italian instead of english that he started knocking the price down right away! After a little hesitation and indecision on our part he dropped the price even lower so I couldn't pass up buying a Florentine jacket for just under 80euro:-) I'm a sucker, I know it:-) That night we had a mission though, we figured that as long as we were in a central tourist area we should find a pub to watch the sunday afternoon football games. There's no such thing here as a lazy sunday afternoon spent watching football and just relaxing so we set out to find something close. It took us awhile (every time we ask italians for directions they almost always say "something something, sempre in diritto" which means 'just go straight,' but in these old cities you can only go straight for so long...I don't get it, so we always end up walking on and on and on) but eventually we found a pub full of americans and we got to see some football...that may not sound that exciting but it was a little taste of home for us:-)
In the morning we set out to do some sight-seeing, we only had two things on the list: Santa Maria Novella and David. Doesn't sound too complicated, right? Santa Maria was no problem, we found that right away and it was one of the coolest churches i've seen so far. I think everybody in there stands in awe for at least 30seconds...at least:-) In my case, I could've stood in the middle staring at the art all day...luckily Krissy and Isaac were there to pull me away. It was like a mini renaissance hall of fame with Masaccio, Giotto, Brunelleschi, and Ghirlandaio (the guy Michaelangelo was first apprenticed to) just to name a few:-) For anyone remotely interested in art, check out this church! Then we set out to find David...this shouldn't have been that difficult because I was there last summer and Isaac knows his way around Florence pretty well. Right, well we ended up in line and entering the building with the fake David outside...if you haven't been to Florence, the real David is not inside the building with the fake David...I don't know whose idea that was. We ended taking a pretty cool tour of the Palazzo Vecchio though which was lucky because the actual Accademia with David in it was closed:-( Another excuse to visit I guess:-)
We got back into Bologna Mon. night...random note: we just learned this italian card game and we were playing on the train and I happened to sit next to this italian man who struck up a conversation with us. He drove me crazy cause he would take one look at my cards and know exactly what to play to win and I had no idea and he would just chuckle at me every time I played the wrong card...apparently it's an easy game so that's why he was laughing but I haven't discovered the strategy yet:-) Also, I had a minor panic attack on the train because I realized that one of my classes may have started monday evening, but I forgot to check my schedule before leaving. Sure enough when we got back I looked and I've officially skipped my first class in Italy...oops.
Wow, this is getting long...just a bit more. Last night we caught our first movie in Bologna, "Good Night, Good Luck"...dubbed of course. It was pretty good from what I caught:-) I haven't watched that many dubbed movies and I thought it was kinda hard to watch this one because a lot of the words are similar so I kept getting confused that the words didn't exactly match the lips so I ended up either just watching the characters or just listening to the script...i'm not very good at italian yet:-) And today I have a gazillion hours of homework to do! I already tried to start it once today but then I had another episode like the one with Silvia and the man who lives below me only this time I thought a guy at the library wanted to give me money to use my time on the computer (I thought this was a pretty sweet deal since he wanted to give me 15euro and I only paid 9) but in the end I found out he wanted to pay me to type up a bunch of papers for him...not as fun, I apologized and ran away...well walked away:-)
Oh well...enough procrastinating...:-)

week 5 already!

These weeks are going by way too fast! Well maybe not TOO fast because I'm really excited to get visitors, but still it's friday already! I had two more visitors though! Two friends from California came down from Austria on wednesday during their tour of Italy. It's amazing how exciting it really is to see familiar faces over here:-) We got to spend some good time together eating gelato (I think Bologna can claims some of the best!), returning to the creepy museum only to find out that there was a whole other creepy part that I didn't see the first time (it was a strange futuristic room with crazy sci-fi music playing and screens showing random things), and climbing the tower! There's this superstition with the tower that if you climb it before you are done with school you won't graduate...hopefully climbing 3+ times cancels the superstition!
We watched a GREAT movie in my language class today...if anyone is interested in foreign films, rent "I Cento Passi." It's about the mafia and it's based on a true story...I think that's all I need to say:-) My other class is going ok too, it's a lot harder to sit through, because it's all lecture, no participation. So for two hours italian is just spoken at me...zzzzzzz:-) We're heading out with that class to Urbino though tomorrow morning for a guided tour of the city, so that should be pretty awesome. And I did meet with my director about university classes...that was a little bit of a rude awakening to actually realize that I wouldn't survive in most classes here. I thought I'd be able to take some different art classes, poli sci classes...something like that, but when the director brought up the descriptions I was pretty sure I didn't want to try and explain, in italian, political/social/economic differences between countries or the difference/impact of dadoism or other art concepts...I don't think any professor would want to have to listen to me try either:-) Sooooo, i'll mostly be taking history courses and maybe a literature class:-)
My italian is getting a little better each day, some days are better than others...but little by little I'm picking up words or phrases or thinking faster. It's so much fun finding real bolognese (people born and bred in Bologna) because they teach us all the slang and jargon that the student population uses. And there are SO MANY students here...I can't remember if i've mentioned this already but, (and for those of you at madison, imagine this!) there are approximately 100,000 students at this university!!!!!!! Crazy! They make up like a third of the whole city!
Ok...my time is running out at the library. OH! I saw that the Badgers are winning!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

first exam...done

Classes are completely underway now, my first exam was yesterday and they have a huge pile of homework for us...so what should I really be doing right now?? I've realized though that it's a bit hard to study notes that i've taken in half english and half italian...I have to translate my own notes! Needless to say I bombed the test...yep. But hopefully I wasn't the only one, I need to convince the italians to curve the grades!
It was just Krissy and I in the apartment this weekend...one of our rommates still hasn't moved in, she's kind of MIA and our roommate Silvia went off for the weekend. OH...an example of my translating ablities: before Silvia left she and I were talking and she started explaining something to me and this is what I heard..."the man that lives below us is going to have a dinner party at 7:30 and he would really appreciate if we didn't walk on the kitchen floor at that time." Right, I thought that was a bit strange, but maybe our shoes are really loud or something. I was relaying this message to Krissy later and she said Silvia had talked to her too and here's what she heard..."the man that lives below is going to have a dinner party at 7:30 and he's going to stop by cause he needs to borrow a chair." We bet each other and needless to say at 7:30 I was tip-toeing around when the man below showed up to borrow a chair. Sigh.
It rained all weekend here which was a definite bummer cause there was a HUGE outdoor MTV concert with all the big italian artists! The music here is pretty hilarious...some of it's really good but they mostly listen to american artists...old american stuff. Artists or songs that have been in the states for the last 10yrs or so are really popular over here (like David Bowie, sting, U2, bon jovi...), all the huge pop hits they like, and for some reason Robbie Williams is really popular. We ate lunch at this really cute pizzeria the other day and they seriously had "tina turner's greatest hits" on repeat:-) But Joe came up for the weekend and I got a chance to hang out with some of the german-irish students from class some more so that was pretty fun!
Today we visited a semi-creepy, semi-cool museum in Bologna. The cool part: it was an old palace that was turned into a school so we were able to climb this huge tower and see all the old astronomy instruments and get a great view of the city, there were rooms full of huge model ships and nautical stuff that I knew nothing about, and there was a room full of old weapons and armor that looked pretty scary:-) The creepy part: they had a whole room dedicated to some guy who wanted to collect random things from nature so there were preserved fish and odd animals everywhere (I guess that doesn't sound so bad but the lights were dim in that room and it was just weird), there was a room with all these ancient surgical tools which just personally didn't appeal to me and then there were two rooms filled with all these wax depictions of the human body for medical study. It was an interesting tour.
Other than that, tonight a bunch of us from the program are just going to hang out and i'm going to be prepping for my meeting with the program director to decide classes tomorrow!

addresses!!!!

finally I've figured out where I live:-) Here they are!

For regular cards, letters, etc:

Jessica Gavic
Via Dell'Inferno, 10
40126 Bologna
Italy

and for packages and anything larger it's:

Jessica Gavic
c/o IU - Bologna Consortial Studies Program
via Val d’Aposa, 7 (interno 15)
40123 Bologna
Italy

this may take some time!!

Ok... catch up time! We don't have an internet connection in our apartment yet so hopefully in the future these can be posted more regularly, pics included...it may take awhile to get more up. Ummm...my CILTA (orientation class) class started today and its sooooo long. like 2 and half hours! it's not everyday but pretty random like everything else here:-) the italians get up late (coffee hour is around9!), spend hours eating lunch, close everything down at random times (always when I need something), eat late, and then start all over the next day...i don't know if anything is realy ever accomplished! sometimes 2days a week sometimes 4...its kinda pain with homework and everything but hopefully it'll go by fast. this is the class that brings together all the international students for improving there language skills, so we're meeting some pretty fun germans, english, irish, dutch, etc... and along with that class the BCSP program is having us participate in this parallel course that will teach us a lot about the history of italy and take us on excursions...that one's pretty boring too though:-) Well the excursions will hopefully be awesome:-)

This weekend was one fo the coolest weekends ever!! This is why I wanted to travel abroad...I think it was thursday night and Krissy and Isaac (this guy on the program who knows italian really well) and I decided we wanted to get some sun so, fri. morning we hopped on a train and rode for an hour to the adriatic coast (a town called Riccione) and layed in the sun all day!! It was like going from wisconsin to florida in an hour! it was sooooo awesome, we ate great sea food, got good tans, and I definitely saw more topless europeans than i wanted to:-) then we decided one day wasn't enough so the plan was to head over to the other side to cinque terre sat. morning and stay til sunday. well we got to the station and the train for CT was leaving a bit late, so we asked which train was leaving next and bought tickets for Perugia instead!!! It was soooo much fun!! and perugia is BEAUTIFUL! It's a unique feeling city tuked into and on top of these gorgeous hills and evertyhing but it was more city-like with big white buildings. Normally the italians tell us to take the bus everywhere even if its only 5ft so after gettnig off the train we started walking up the hill towards "centro" and of course this time centro is like 4miles away! by the time we got to the top we were so hungry and sweaty and tired and the first sight of restaurants was like a glimpse of heaven. We forget to watch our time though and we arrived just as tehy were shutting down or midday! ah well, we eventually found some food:-) then isaac gave his friend studying in florence a call so we decided to catch the early train and meet in florence! It was unbelievable...I guess I always expect that the cities most chosen by tourists won't be worth it but...wow, florence is amazing in every aspect!! it was unbelievable! and the guy luke was staying ni an apartment literally 2min from the duomo! wow! so we spent the night in florence and wandered around inthe morning walking thru the same markets as I did with the fam last last summer and the streets...it was pretty cool:-) we finally made it back to bologna though which was a definite relief cause we definitely hadn't gottena chance to shower since going to the sea:-)

the language is still pretty tough, its getting better slowly but surely. Its frustrating though cause there are so many things I want to express but they never come out right! I've embarrassed myself so many times already!! Just with little mistakes...we were talking to this italian who was on some track team and running a race soon so I wished him luck and asked him if they get ribbons for winning here too, but I forgot the word for ribbon and ended up asking him if he'd get a bomb at the end of the race! I've also kindly informed some shop workers that "I'd like to go on a walk today" instead of saying the right thing, they looked at me like I was crazy and said that'd be fine!

ah well! this is getting a bit long so I hope all's well in the states and EVERYONE send me your addresses!!!!!!!!!!