Living in Firenze

Alright, where to begin?
I suppose I will begin by adding things to this blog that I left out of the last one... The first was my first trip to the Uffizi gallery. It was AMAZING! The best part was that it was homework... the worst part was that I only had time to look at the required works, so I will be back again sometime soon. We looked at three paintings of the Madonna Enthroned. They are three very similar works done in oil on wood panels by Duccio, Cimabue, and Giotto. They are masterworks overwhelmed in gold leaf and bright blues, reds and greens. Then we went to the Botticelli room and got to see 15 or 20 of his works including his Madonna Enthroned, a beautiful Annunciation, The Birth of Venus and the Allegory of Spring. It was fantastic. It might be my favorite homework assignment ever... maybe. The other thing I left out last time was that in the Duomo in Sienna, we got to go into this little room full of frescoes and giant old illuminated manuscripts. There was literature and music. Very old sheet music. I didn't have my camera, but I do have pictures from the San Marco museum here where I found another collection of illuminated manuscripts. I could spend hours looking at them! They are so beautiful!

Alright, so since my last post, we went to church again and it was wonderful, just like last week. Almost all of our lessons and the talks in sacrament meeting were about forgiveness. We met some new people including some girls who are with another group here at Santa Reparata in Florence. We also met some interesting people from Denver Colorado who said they had recently run into an Elder Beck. They were really funny. They tried to help us (this girl Morgan and I) find our way to the train station, but led us to the bus station thinking we should take the bus to the train station by our apartment. We explained that we didn't have bus passes, but that we were trying to get to a train that would take us to that train station. Anyways, lucky for us I remembered the way once we were back on the main road and we didn't have anymore trouble. I talked to Seth (Brian's 12 year old son) at the train station. He and I are buds now and he tells me all about his adventures from previous trips and study abroads he has taken with his family. He is SO lucky! He's been to New Zealand, Australia, Spain, now Italy and some other places as well and he thinks they might go to Hawaii sometime soon. I got 8 years on him and he's traveled about 100 times as much as I have!
After church on Sunday, we went to the Boboli Gardens and spent the afternoon reading and sleeping under the trees and walking through the grounds. We also went into a museum at the Pitti Palace where there is modern art and a little contemporary art as well. It was pretty much awesome.Classes have been really fun. In sculpture we have moved from figure gestures to specific body parts. Right now we are doing heads and I'm about to try a replica of Michelangelo's David... the head at any rate. My first head copy turned out pretty good, so I'm excited to try this one. In painting, we are working on our first painting and I'm so excited. I'm just doing a copy of this picture I have from Pompeii... or at least, mostly a copy. And we also had another assignment this week... it was to go to the San Marco museum and look at the Fra Angelico frescoes there and to go to the Brancacci chapel and look at the fresco there. Pretty much most painting classes don't get assignments to go see some of the most famous frescoes in the world, so that was exciting. (The pictures aren't very good quality... you can't use flash and technically, I wasn't even supposed to take one of them...I also apologize for the nakedness, but since it is one of the most famous and most innovative paintings of all time, I decided to put it up after a brief but intense inner struggle.)

After classes on Wednesday a bunch of us met for dinner and Jane's friends Matt and Pete from BYU came with us. It was nice to have a little civilized male company near our age (and by that I mean any male company that weren't cat calling and whistling any time they were in our company) and we ate pizza and gelato and listened to a street band performing (they were amazing!).






I spent a little time just sitting around my apartment reading, cleaning and such things on Thursday, and that was nice. I just read A Room With a View for the first time, and it was really good. A lot of it is set in Florence, very near my own apartment as far as I can tell. My roommate Morgan and I went to the Supermarket that morning as well, it's really far away from our apartment. We bought tons of groceries and carried them all the way home on foot. It was bad. I was afraid for a while that I had permanently lost feeling in one of my fingers, but when I woke up the next morning, I could feel it again, so it was okay. I'm glad 'cause that would be a super-lame reason to loose feeling in your finger. Carrying home your groceries.
To make up for the day I spent just sitting around, we spent Friday running around everywhere. We saw the Brancacci chaple that morning, then we were going to go see the David at the Academia, but the line was crazy long and someone had forgotten their museum card, so we moved to the Duomo. We went into the Duomo and looked around and we also went into the Baptistery which has a giant dome covered in gold-leaf dominated frescoes of the entire bible. It is amazing!
We finished our adventurous day by going to the Cezanne di Firenze exhibit. That was fantastic too. Cezanne's work is much better in person. But I'm finding that to be true of most artworks...
The next day we had another adventure. We went first thing to see the David that we hadn't seen the previous day and all I can say is that there is a reason that it is considered to be one of the best sculptures of all time. It's such a different experience than you would expect. It's kind of funny too because the David is probably about the size and build of Goliath as opposed to David, but it's such an interesting piece to look at. After that, we went to the Bargello which is mostly a sculpture museum and we saw the David again, only this was Donatello's David. The one that sat in front of the Medici palace during the Renaissance years. There were also tons of ivory carvings and metal workings. I saw the most amazing chess board I have ever seen in my life covered in ivory carvings. There were also tons of amazing works by Robbia. They are relief sculptures depicting mostly Mary and Christ, and they are so beautiful and full of feeling! Oh! And I almost forgot the ceramics room! I loved it! They were all these teapots, washbasins, cups, bowls, pitchers, and all sorts of amazing things glazed so beautifully with the most amazing pictures, many of them done in glossy, metalic lusters. It was awesome!
After we visited the Bargello, we went to this little market where there is a sculpture of a boar that if you rub the nose and drop pennies from it's mouth, it is supposed to bring you good luck. It also is supposed to bring you back here to Florence someday.
Then as we were leaving, I heard someone call my name and there was Ava standing in front of me! I couldn't believe it. She was only in Florence for a couple of days and we managed to run into each other totally out of the blue! It was great.
Anyways, yesterday we went to church again and I found out that there is a deaf woman at church here and the Relief Society president translates for her in what I can only assume is Italian sign language! It reminded me of Ashleigh. It was great. Then that night, we all got together and had a potluck and it was fantastic. Sooo much good food. It made me really happy.
Today I have mostly been in class. We are starting plaster molds and still life paintings. Life is pretty much really good! I miss you all and I'm sorry I don't have as much time as I would like for keeping in touch! There is so much to see and so much homework to do and so much craziness trying to plan our schedules together so that no one is alone that it is just really hard. I'm doing my best though. Love you!