A trip to Pisa and Siena ramblings

Ciao everyone!
I know it's been a while since my last blog update so I apologize. First, I want to say how excited I am about Sarah and David's engagement! I'm having a wonderful time here but I would love to be home to be with everybody right now.
Anyways, I've been pretty busy during the week with classes almost all day. Italian gives me a headache almost every day, but I feel like I am improving. Strangely, Italians watch TV almost 24/7, including at dinner, which could be annoying but actually is very educational. One show in particular, in which contestants match guests to their professions, is especially fun, and Krissy and I have taken to bringing our dictionaries to dinner to figure out what's going on.
Friday I got food poisoning, I think, which was no fun at all. My host mom took really good care of me, made me tea and even kissed me three times on the cheek! She was convinced I was sick because I ate a gelato in town (which I didn't) and it made my stomach cold, which made me sick in the cold weather. I'm pretty sure it was food poisoning, but I let her think that. I guess Italians have weird superstitions about illness.
Luckily, I was feeling better by Saturday morning and was able to go to Pisa with a big group of mostly Lewis and Clark students. I opted not to go up into the tower since I was still feeling pretty weak, but I did make it into the Duomo, Baptistry, Camposanto, Museo Sinopie and Museo Dello Opera Duomo. My favorite was the Camposanto, a gorgeous frescoed cloister that was, sadly, bombed during WWII, but is in the process of being refurbished. When the frescoes came off in the bombing it revealed the sketches underneath, called the cartoons, which are now housed in the Museo Sinopie.

The trip to Pisa itself was interesting. We caught a 7 am bus to the airport and had to figure out our way from the suburbs into the city, which was a challenge. We opted to take the train back to Siena. Back in Siena we went for a pretty nice dinner (I might suggest the restaurant to my parents), and then went home. I slept for over 12 hours, woke up to a huge Sunday lunch (another Italian thing), took a shower, a 2 hour nap, had dinner, and went back to bed. It was a good day, and now I feel great!
I don't have the pictures from Pisa on my computer just yet, but will update this as soon as I do.

Much love,

Megan

A brief history of Siena (with pictures!)

Yesterday we had a historical walking tour of the city. It was molto freddo and I was wearing the wrong shoes but I tried really hard to pay attention everything that was being said so that I could impress my friends and family with my knowledge. This is a picture of me and my roommate Krissy, also a Lewis & Clark student. We live with a couple of cute Italian emptynesters about ten minutes (by bus) outside of the city walls. Our host mom, Luciana, is a very good cook, and makes chicken of all kinds, but all Roberto (our host dad) wants to eat is this sweet, yellowish bread that he keeps in a cabinet next to his chair. I don’t know too much about them yet since I’ve been too nervous to ask direct questions, as I was unsure until today if I should address them in the formal or informal manner (informal, it turns out).

Siena is seriously picturesque. I don’t know if any of you have seen Ambroggio Lorenzetti’s Allegory of Good and Bad Government (it’s located in the Palazzo Pubblico Museum), but I studied it in an art history class, and the rolling hills in the painting, which seem to be so naturalistic, are actually perfectly representative of the hills in Tuscany.

The three most important buildings in Siena (pictured in order) are probably the Duomo, or the main northern-Gothic style cathedral, the Basilica (which houses the mummified head of St. Catherine di Siena), and the Palazzo Pubblico, which was the main civic building back in the day.

Other defining features of Siena include the oldest functioning bank in the world, and, of course the Palio. The Palio is a horse race run twice every summer, consisting of three laps around the outside of the Campo. It is an inexplicably huge deal to the city’s residents, who are divided into contrada, which are essentially rival neighborhoods represented by an animal. In Siena, you only hang out with people from your contrada, and during the emotionally-charged Palio season, massive brawls between enemy contrade is not uncommon. The most recent champion of the Palio was the Rhinoceros contrada, which happens to be the contrada that my host mom belongs to. Sadly for her husband, who belongs to the Wolf contrada, contrada membership follows the maternal bloodline, so he is essentially excluded from the family during Palio season.

So there is a brief overview of Siena and its history and culture. From now on I will try to talk more about what I do on a day to day basis, which for me means taking more photos of things other than building and scenery.

A domani!

Megan

I was planning on writing my first blog tonight...

...But I'm way too tired. So here's a photo of me so everyone can see that I am alive and well: