I get the feeling that Wednesdays are going to be the coolest days of the school week. That will be when my Renaissance Art History class meets every week. Now this is not your typical art history class where you just look at slides and want to fall asleep the entire time (apologies to my mom, the art history major! haha). Ours is more of a field class, where pretty much every week will consist of traveling to a new location -- whether in Arezzo, Florence, or Rome -- to actually SEE the art while our professor lectures about it. Instead of just looking at a picture of the David, we will be standing in front of it while learning about it. So cool.
My only other class is called Getting to Know Arezzo, and we meet about once a month to do some sort of activity that shows us a little bit of what Arezzo is all about. We had a GTKA class this past Friday that was just so awful... we had a wine-tasting at a local vineyard!
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| View of the vines and the center of Arezzo in the distance |
Life here is so tough, right?
We met up at the OUA center first where Jason and Monica, the faculty-in-residence who teach the class, taught us a little bit about different kinds of wine here in Tuscany and the different standards they can be categorized into, from "Indicazione Geografica Tipica" (IGT), to "Denominazioni di Origine Controllata" (DOC), to "Denominazioni di Origine Controllata e Garantita" (DOCG) and what rules the winemakers have to follow in order to fit these categories. Then we made our way to the vineyard (its name is La Striscia) which was just a little while outside the city walls. Some of the class walked there (about a half hour walk) and some of us took the OUA van. I've been feeling a little sick this past week and it was pretty cold out, so I took the van. I definitely want to walk through that area at some point, though, because even driving through it was beautiful. Anyway, we toured the vineyard, saw the vines (not exactly in bloom, unfortunately... drawback of it being January), and where they make the wine itself. Then we headed into their cute little room where we tasted 3 of their wines and they made us antipasti and lunch. It was great! I even ended up purchasing one of their Chianti wines to share with my mom when she comes to visit -- Surprise Mom!! :)
When we got back from the wine-tasting, a few of my friends and I spontaneously decided to join some more people from our program on a train to Florence that left in about 2 hours from then! Yay for last minute decisions, haha! We stayed in a hostel there that was actually much nicer than I had ever heard about hostels being... I'm afraid that now I might be spoiled. It was pretty much like a hotel with bunk beds. Anyway, it was just a great weekend! We went out on Friday night to dinner, a few bars, and a discoteca, and then we woke up on Saturday to shop and walk around. It is just a beautiful city and I can't wait to go back about 5 more times for class!
Sorry I'm kind of shorting you on the details, but I need to go get ready to head to mass at the Duomo here in Arezzo. I'll post a few pictures here but I plan on uploading some to Facebook later tonight. I didn't take too many in Florence, sort of because I knew I would be back, and also because one of my friends, Amanda, took some great ones with a much better camera than mine, haha. But don't worry, there will be plenty more when I go back to visit Firenze again -- literally at least 4 times just from my Art History class.
So, for now, buona giornata! (have a good day!)
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| La Striscia |
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| Florence |
