April 8, 2009

went to the Uffizi Gallery with Izzy and Kelly. The museum usually has a crazy long line so we got there right when it opened and only had to wait about 45 minutes to an hour to get in (which is considered really good). I'm not a big museum person but it's more interesting when we've already learned about a lot of the paintings in class and know what they're about.

After Studio, Emily, Hardy, Nadia, Kelly, and I had to sprint off to a meeting. Since we're all juniors in the honors program, we have to complete a service project by the end of the year. The fact that we're studying abroad during the time we're supposed to do it makes it a little harder, but Hardy had set up a meeting with a woman who organizes activities to bring study abroad students and Italians together. She had told him that we could help out with one of the activities in order to fulfill our service requirement. Originally we had thought that it would just be something fairly easy (we only have to have four hours of service between the five of us), but during the course of the meeting, we realized we're actually going to have to do a LOT of work. Because of the recent earthquake, Bari (the woman we met with) suggested we organize a silent auction to benefit the victims. We're going to collect donations of artwork from study abroad students who can't take it all home and auction it off to people living in the area. We're also organizing performances (music and poetry and that kind of thing) to take place during the night. It's going to be a really neat event, and it's pretty amazing to be doing something like this for our host country, but at the same time, it adds a whole heck of a lot of work at an extremely busy part of our semester. Nadia and I are handling most of the publicity, so hopefully we'll be successful in recruiting artists and performers, as well as a good mix of Italians and foreigners to attend.

After our meeting, we rushed home to get ready for the "Gallery" down in the boys' room. Someone had the idea to set up a night where some of the paintings and photos that our friends have done for class could be showcased. The downstairs boys (the ones that live in my building) hosted the event. We all had our doubts as to how well they would organize the night and set up their room, but they exceeded all of our expectations by far. Their room looked AMAZING. They moved all their beds and dressers and desks into one bedroom, so the other one could be used for the gallery. Artwork was displayed in the now empty bedroom as well as in their tiny living room. They borrowed easels from the painting teacher and printed up little placards with the title, artist, and short description for each piece. They used sheets as tablecloths so everything looked super classy. All of our architecture and Italian teachers were invited.

The dress code for the night was formal attire, and everyone went all out. Our teachers were so impressed not only by the display but also by how well everyone could clean up. We (the students, not the teachers) were all assigned food to bring. It was supposed to be a sort of wine and cheese party, so there was plenty of wine and cheese of course, but also bread, crackers, dip, grapes. There was so much food, and it was all displayed really nicely, too.

When the night started to wind down, Stefano played guitar for us. He's not an amazing player, but we all really enjoyed hearing him play Italian songs. Then Phil, who is an amazing guitar player, also played a few songs for us. Before Carlo left he invited us all out to some really fancy club later. Unfortunately when we met him there later, none of us (Carlo included) could get in, because it was a Cavalli Club and Roberto Cavalli himself was there. It didn't really matter, though, because we were all pretty worn out and just happy about what a success the Gallery had been.