the week in review

Ciao!

Sorry I was so slack about posting this week! It has been like 92 degrees with no breeze so I've been laaaaazyyyyy! This house is great but would be a million times better if it had some air conditioning! Or if I had a working fan in my room!!! Also, the mosquitos have been terrible this week (thanks to the lack of a breeze), so I officially have bug bites on my bug bites!

Anyways, here's a glipse of the past week...

Monday:

Jill, Russ, Tiffani, and I went over to Murano (I'm sure my sisters will be happy to hear that!!). Mostly it's just shopping but we did get to go into a glass factory to watch the guys blowing glass (it was dark in there and bright outside so forgive the picture quality)


Glass factory was fun for about 30 seconds

Around Murano they just have these beautiful glass sculptures randomly strewn on the streets

This sculpture is a bale of hay made with individual glass shards!

I think this one was called Cosmic or Comet or something... Maybe Cosmic Comet (that actually sounds about right)

besides all the glass stores, Murano basically just looks like a quaint part of Venice

Tuesday: I have no idea what we did! I think that was the day of truely sweltering heat so we just hung out at the house, went out for gelato and made dinner here to be honest!


Wednesday:

Wake Dinner! The professors, their families, our Italian and French students, and all of us went out to dinner. Wake picked up the tab too... had we known they were going to do that we definitely would have ordered a lot more wine.

Didier, the French guy, got an egg on his pizza. Obviously we thought this was interesting. He thought it was interesting that we DIDN'T put egg on our pizza and thought it was even more interesting that we eat eggs for breakfast almost exclusively.

After dinner, the Italian students (and the French guy) took us out to Plaza Santa Margharita to drink. They taught us one of their drinking games, which we've grown to love. So expect us to bring that back to America with us!

Thursday:

After class, we went on a tour of 'Cosmopolitan Venice'.

taking the tragetto
(which is like a gondola but wayyy wayy cheaper and it only buses you back and forth from one side of the canal to the other)

a statue of a lawyer!
(he was also a friar) and is credited with starting the idea of seperation of church and state. Bottom left is the Italian professor giving us the tour

Then we went to the Ghetto. This is the original Ghetto (and where the word comes from). Our tour guide/the Italian professor is an expert on the Ghetto and Jewish-Venetian history so this was the best part of the tour. He pointed out a ton of things that none of us would have noticed.

the synagogue (looking pretty nondiscript amongst the other buildings)

That night we went over to Harry's where Hemmingway invented the Bellini! They are like 17 Euro each but we figured who cares, we're only going to be here once. Too bad Russ was wearing seersucker shorts (since it was still well over 90 degrees at night) and there's a men-in-pants dress code so we couldn't stay! Attempt #2 coming soon


Friday:

A few of the Wake kids from the Vienna program came for the weekend! First order of business was hitting up Lido Beach

yes, we are so in Europe

We all went out to dinner after the beach. We tried to ignore the lightening.... then the thunder... then the rain.... then the torrential downpours

umbrellas at the table

But once it starting hailing golfball sized hail, and it looked like the awning was about to collapse on us, we ran inside

soaking wet but having fun

wayyy too many people trying to fit inside

little kids looked like they were having a blast jumping in puddles, we were wet anyways, why not have some fun too

We made it back to Casa Artom, dried off, and starting drinking. The professors and their families had left for the night, so we figured we could just party in the house

dance party

we drank the house dry, which is a feat

After killing all the wine in the house we went to Santa Margharita again, hung out there for a while and a few of us headed back around 1. Others stayed out another hour... others went to "club piccolo"- the only dance club in Venice until 4 am (apparently it looks like a strip club and smells like a strip club, only no strippers)

Saturday:

Redentore! There is a big festival in Venice, celebrating I don't know what! All I know is that everyone comes here for the weekend to party. We watched the parade of boats heading over the lagoon from our deck.



Then we had our dinner in the house with everyone! Brette made about 30 pounds of pasta for everyone and I made the garlic bread, Jill helped with everything (and Russ did lots of dishes).

then obviously we needed to get gelato

For the Redentore they actually build a bridge from our side of the lagoon to the other. It's pretty ridiculous. We took a walk over there to check it out

that bridge will be there for less than 24 hours

boats lining up to party and wait for fireworks

crossing the bridge

We came back to the house to get our wine before the fireworks started and I left my camera to charge :( We tried to watch the fireworks from our upstairs porch but when we thought we heard the fireworks going off, we panicked and tried to go find a better spot to see them. Meanwhile it wasn't the actual fireworks (they were supposed to start at 11:30, but it's on Italian time so they didn't actually get rolling until 20 minutes later). We ended up on a bridge with our professor and his family but the view was pretty obstructed so we all split up looking for a good viewing spot. This kid Stephen and I ran over to the Salute Domo at the end of the penisula and had the absolute greatest view. We stood on the bridge and had a historical monument on the left, a pretty old building on the right, gondolas under us, and the fireworks between the two buildings. It was exactly what you would think of if you said "yeah, I watched fireworks in Italy".

Alrighty so that was the week!

We're off to Geneva on Tuesday and then Florence on Friday so I'll do my best to post in between!

Miss you all--- Wish you were here!