Day #32 in Orvieto

March 26, 2013 – Tuesday

It was hard to get up this morning because I was so tired! Even with my long nap yesterday, I was still exhausted and it took for forever to wake up… Today was our second day of Renaissance Narrative and halfway through the class, we took a field trip to the duomo! There was just a huge concert at the duomo yesterday so there are still a bunch of cameras and sound equipment throughout the whole main section of the duomo. We went to one of the side chapels (usually it costs money but they have a list of our names so thankfully we get to go in for free!).  We spent some time looking at the smaller, side chapel and talked about the frescoes that cover most of the chapel. We probably talked for an hour or so, but I felt like there were still so many questions I had about the paintings and you could spend forever in there, just trying to make connections from one sie of the room to another. Pretty much the paintings are a sequence of the last judgment but then there’s so many other aspects of the paintings that are confusing until Dr. Skillen explained it to us. Anyways, that took up the majority of class and we soon travelled back to the monastery for chapter meeting. It was so sunny outside during chapter meeting – even my Italian man sweater was getting to be a little bit warm in the sunshine. But soon enough, it became chilly again so I kept it on for the whole day. Then we went to lunch which was normal and then…

I WENT TO THE POST OFFICE! Okay, I actually went to the post office after I took a nap but I went. I had all of my postcards ready to go, put them in my purse along with $10 (because I assumed that would be sufficient) and then I marched downstairs where I ran into Hannah, the RA. I asked her what I should say at the post office and she told me to say “Posso mandare cuesti?” (actually I'm not even 100% sure if this is what she said, but that's what it sounded like) when I got up to the counter – after taking my specific ticket and waiting in line, of course. So I took off to the post office, speed walking, because I didn’t want to forgot what phrase I was supposed to say. So with every step, I was thinking posso mandare cuesti…posso mandare costi… posse… mandari… cuesto…? Anyways, on the walk over to the post office, I had already butched the phrase that I was going to use. But thankfully, when my ticket number was called I was able to squeak out a “Posso mandare… uhhh?” with a smile (just in case the woman was annoyed at my awful Italian). She knew what I wanted and she weighed my two very heavy envelopes and then suddenly I was handing over $9. So it’s a good thing I brought my $10! So I’m definitely not going to mail any more postcards because it was too stressful and I had to hand over my whole $10 bill. If I see any more good postcards, they’ll just come home in my suitcase.

Anyways… overall, it was a good experience at the post office and I was pretty much skipping back to the monastery because I had been trying to mail those postcards for a week. The painting class (not my class) had to watch The Passion because it had something to do with their assignment this week and plus it’s almost Easter, so everyone ended up watching it on the projector in the sala, living room area. So we ended up watching that for over 2 ½ hours and we didn’t even finish it. It was a different version of the Passion – not as well known as the one with Mel Gibson I think. So that consumed most of the afternoon and it was pretty intense. I think we’re going to finish the rest of it tomorrow.

This is our first night at the monastery WITH WIFI!!! Well I’m actually typing this before the wifi has turned on… so who knows if it will actually work. But I guess you’ll know if it works, depending on whether I post this or not. Hopefully it works though because it’ll be so nice to just be able to walk downstairs and use it in the classroom (because I’m lazy now) instead of walking all the way to the palazzo.

P.S. I still haven’t taken a pictures of Laura’s sweater and my sweater yet but don’t worry, it’ll happen soon. But here’s a random picture of the clouds today! It went from being super sunny to randomly raining, as you can see.