i think i'll stay...

So I've been in Italy for a little over a week now and I'm already falling in love - with the villa, the mountains, the old cobblestone streets, the people, the sense of slowing time. I think I'm finally getting settled into the Villa Godiola and Arezzo. My and Christina's room looks out over the olive groves and vineyards on the hills up behind the villa and we leave the windows open whenever we can. The villa was apparently built in the 1500s as a summer home for a bishop who was in charge of educating some of the Medici family. It's been used so many different ways in the past 500 years, but now its a school for drama and music students. We all sleep, eat, have class, and practice here but it's so beautiful I don't mind the classes or the work. The villa is up on a hill so we can see the town of Arezzo, a couple miles away, sitting on top another hill. Its so easy to walk into town for gelato or dinner or just to get out and I'd love to try to get into town at least once a day. The first weekend we were here was the giostra, or joust. It took over the whole city, the four teams were the four corners of Arezzo, we were Porta Crucifera. Thousands of people turned out into the main piazza to watch the "flag-throwers" (for lack of a technical name), musicians, and "knights", all in traditional costumes. We didn't win unfortunately, our arch-rivals did, but it was so much fun to watch, I don't know that I've ever seen that much enthusiasm or passion from a group in the US. Classes started the next day and have been very interesting. First thing in the morning we have Italian, taught by Simone, who is from Arezzo. He doesn't speak much English, so our classes are almost entirely in Italian and I think I'm going to learn Italian so much faster this way. After Italian is music history, then conducting with Dr. Hicken, a professor from Furman. We had all our classes last week except on Friday, the music kids took a day trip into Florence. It's only about an hour's train ride from Arezzo so we were there in no time. We saw the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore, the main cathedral in the center of the city, it was so elaborate, so beautiful. We split up for lunch, I ended up with 5 others in this little hole-in-the-wall restaurant called Mario's Trattoria. It was so delicious, we'll definitely be going back. We saw the Ponte Vecchio and took so many pictures. We passed some street musicians playing some folk stuff, I had to be all but dragged away. We went by Ceccherini's, a huge music store where we all spent way too much money on sheet music and I'm sure we'll all go back. We had some mix-ups with the train trying to get back, but it all worked out and we got back eventually. Actually, while we were waiting for our train to come in, this old man came up to me, I think he was Italian. The top of his head came up probably up to my shoulder and he commented, "You are tall, no?" I laughed and agreed so he continued, "You are american, no?" I laughed again, agreed, and he walked away only to show up a couple minutes later with a camera, wanting a picture with the insanely tall American. I took a picture with him and he thanked me as he walked away. Kinda strange, but hey, he was happy. It was a good weekend, kinda rainy but I got caught up on work and I think I'm ready for this next week...