AHH!

I have tried so many times to find an internet connection fast enough to upload photos to this... it's NOT WORKING.

Rome & Feeling Blue

You may know that I had been planning to go hiking in Spain with my friend David this week. It was months in the works, with flights scheduled, gear in the mail, pilgrim passports, all sorts of preparation... I got myself all of the way to the airport in Rome, checked in, when I panicked. I've never done anything so abrupt like that, but I've also never felt so scared either. All I could think about was how ill I felt with this bronchial infection, how I didn't know a lick of Spanish, and how it could be days of trains, busses, and hotel rooms before I could meet up with David. David insists that I would have been fine, which I'm sure is true. But in that moment, I could not see myself boarding that plane. I cried. I was led back through security to get my bag... God, they probably thought I just found out that someone died or something. That's almost what it felt like. I was ashamed of the decision I was making, of how I was adding one more thing to my list of failures this semester, of how I was letting down David. But I could not get myself on that plane. 

So I'm in Florence for a week battling boredom. There is obviously plenty left to do, but it's sad doing it all alone. Yesterday I went to the Galleria Academia and saw Michelangelo's David, and then to the Bargello Museum. Today I took the bus to Volterra, which was absolutely amazing. I'll post pictures soon.

Right before I left Volterra today, I went to the edge of the piazza to get a view of that breathtaking  Tuscan countryside. A man came up to me and mumbled something I didn't understand. I got him to repeat what he said, but it was all just mumbles and hand gestures. He was mute. His hand gestures were those stereotypically Italian gestures... twisting a finger in his cheek, wiping his forehead, the "muah, bellissimo!" hand, you know. But this was all he had to communicate with me! I spoke to him in Italian, which he understood. I think he was trying to call me cute, ask where I was from, tell me where he was from, which by showing me his ID, I could see was a town called Crotone, which I ashamedly hadn't heard of. He kept making these gestures as if he were swimming and sunbathing, trying to communicate that Crotone was on the beach. I just Googled it, and sure enough, it's a beach town in Calabria. He seemed really grateful to talk to me, which feels sort of good. I'm glad I could make someone feel good... especially since I'm questioning whether it was the right decision to stay here or not. Blah.

I bought a guitar today too. It's a travel sized classical guitar. 40 euros. It feels so good to have a guitar.

I really need to post some pictures of Rome from last weekend. The internet is too slow to upload.. maybe I'll have some luck when SACI opens later in the week.

Pots

I know that you've been dying to know how in the world conservators fill in the missing pieces of archeological ceramics. Aren't you glad you know me.

First you have to take a mold of a part of the pot that is complete. We did this with a sheet of pink dental wax heated with a hair dryer. Once this has cooled and hardened, you slide it into place over the missing fragment.

 Then with the edges of the break protected with masking tape, you start to fill the area with a wet mixture of tinted dental plaster. 

Within just a few minutes the plaster gets very dry, and you finish filling with a spatula. When the filling is dry, you can smooth it and shape it to match the rest of the piece. I'll post pictures when I do this next week.

Weekend

The Siena Archeological Museum is in the underground tunnel system of a medieval hospital. Possibly the coolest museum I've ever been to. 

In the Siena museum: this is what I'm learning to do in my archeological conservation class. In the Italian style. In the States, those pots in the back would have been given complete rims. 

I won't be able to post photos of any pots I work on, because photographs of them are property of the state. I could get fined. This is as close as it's going to get.

After going all that way only to discover that the Museo delle Navi in Pisa was closed for restoration, I took this photo of a Roman bath and went home.

And this proves I went to the lovely Cortona museum

I just got back from the train station. I was helping some friends book tickets. It was the end of the day and the ticket guy didn't speak much English, so he was getting frustrated. In a wild frantic whirlwind, I spewed out more Italian than I have in my entire life. It was full of incorrect-ness, but it happened. And he said, "ho capito".

Then last night I went to the Irish pub place to get on the internet and this 30-something guy hit on me. He wanted me to guess where he was from. Speaking English with an American accent, I guessed several countries before Germany. He told me he was the Germanest-German I'd probably ever met, how could I not tell. I told him I was also quite a German-German. He asked me what my last name was. He was shocked. We were both Werners. He showed me I.D. to prove it. And he was from Frankfurt... which I believe is where the family is from. After he realized we were probably cousins, and that we both flared our nostrils while we talked, he backed off a little. Small world. 

RyanAir has charged me twice for the same flight and I lost 20 euro in the machine at the train station. Pray for me.

it leans

It's been a weird week. I haven't had internet in the apartment regularly and as a result, my entire schedule has changed. The blogging will continue, sporadically. 

This is the theatre where we saw Burn After Reading (which was awesome). Everything is old here. And, as I'm learning in Conservation Law, Business and Management, it's because no one is allowed to change anything that's more than 50 years old. Not even their underwear :)

I wasn't feeling very good, and I think that is evident in my inability to take a level photograph here. That is the leaning tower of Pisa. It's lean is only slightly exaggerated by my photo. 

A much more accurately angled, and probably more disconcerting, view of the tower. It really leans.

In Lucca. The city has a central piazza in the oval shape of a Roman amphitheatre that was once there and is surrounded by walls that you can ride bicycles on top of.  This is a photo of the Church of Ss. Giovanni e Reparata. You can see the floor level of the church where our group is standing, and beneath are archeological excavations of Roman baths and an Early Christian church. So much of Italy is layered like this. I'm hoping to get a tour of some of this sort of stuff next time I'm in Rome.