fake meat never tasted so sweet

man.. when they said italy is hot, they mean HOT. i have no idea what temperature it has been here the past week or so, but i know that the moment i get within about 20 feet of outside, i start sweating like a man. it's ridiculous. thankfully, the night has been pretty cool, so we still get a nice breeze through our bedroom window all night long.

the weekend was good... nice and relaxing. it prepared me with rest for the week ahead. it has been a loooong week. monday we got to the studio at 9 and went outside to draw for a good 2 hours. because we're working with light sensitive materials, and we were trying to expose them, we sat in the sun for at least an hour. in direct sunlight, in the middle of a piazza. it was SO HOT. i've never been so hot from just sitting. i was really sweaty. ew. then we taped paper around a column and started drawing a horse, and then we got yelled at and had to leave... haha. silly craig, always getting us into trouble. so we went back to the studio and worked. and worked. and worked. and worked. other than grabbing a quick sandwich for lunch and sitting at a restaurant for about 45 minutes for dinner, i was in the studio working my tail off all day long. i got there at 9 am, and left a little after 10 pm. me and andrea got back to our apartment a little before 11 and pretty much passed out.

tuesday morning we went to la specola, a museum nearby. all i have to say about the first 75% of that museum... really bad taxidermy. oh yes. taxidermy. we could see the stitches from the animals. and some of the skin didnt fit back on whatever the stuffing was, so there was like... a gap by the stitches. gross. but they had some pretty cool and pretty huge animals. the last few rooms of the museum were wax sculptures of the human body in all different forms. some of muscles, some of bones, some of organs, veins... all sorts of stuff. it was really cool. one of the statues looked like he had been castrated... eek! i went through that museum in about an hour (my shoes were killing me and i wanted to leave... haha) and afterwards headed to a fabric store with three other girls from my group. after that, me and andrea stopped at home and i took a mini nap. then i got the most delicious pistachio gelato EVER and headed to class. i decided to take a new way to campus and got a little lost, but it ended up being ok. i just found another place to shop. :)

tuesdays class was long and i was really tired and ended up leaving a little early. wednesday was an early class again and i was exhausted. oh and guess where i ate lunch. try and guess. you'll never figure it out.... dun dun dun... mc donalds!! oh yes. do i ever eat there at home?? thats a big negative. but here.. i just couldnt help myself! the mcdonalds are so fancy and they have artwork on the walls and i just had to try it. me and andrea both got big macs, fries, and milkshakes. man... it was delicious. im not even gonna lie.

then last night, me and andrea made dinner and then went to a world famous gelato shop with our roommates. it was soooo tasty! i got green apple (mele verde) and strawberry (fragole). mmmmm delicious!

today we went to the uffizi... a really famous renaissance art museum. it was WONDERFUL! i saw one of my favorite paintings... Venus of Urbina. look it up if you want, but keep in mind its renaissance art, which means the girl in the painting is nude. nude, not naked. it's art. and its beautiful! i also saw the shield with medusa's face on it by caravaggio. i got a postcard with that on it for sean... haha. it's great. i also saw a lot of stuff that i had studied in art history, which was really cool. some of the stuff was SO BIG and a lot of it was painted with tempera, which if you know anything about paint, is like... fingerpaint. its really cheap and not a very good quality. i dont know if their tempera paint back then was better or what, but yeah... it was really impressive. so many tiny details that you can only see when youre looking at the real painting up close. it was way cool.

this afternoon we had class again and i'm tired of working. we have monday for class and tuesday is our final critique. then class is over, but i still dont leave for another week and a half. crazy. i have a lot of work to do. a lot of my pieces are frustrating me and i dont know how to finish them. but hopefully i will be able to get that done this weekend... lottttts of time will be spent in the studio on saturday and sunday.

however... friday will not be a studio day. at least not the whole day. mine and andrea's roommates (erin and stephanie) invited us to go to the coast with them!! that pretty much means a beach!! i'm super excited!! i need a day to get away from working and chill out.

oh! i bought new shoes and two new dresses yesterday... it was swell. :) i love italian shopping!

ok... ive got more pictures online. again, i dont have all of them up, and a lot of what i just put on there is already on facebook, but there are a few different ones. one of my friends has her laptop here, so i'm going to get on that soon and try to put the rest of my pictures onto my harddrive, and then put the first ones from my harddrive onto my snapfish website. but in order to view someone elses pictures on snapfish, you have to make an account for yourself. i would suggest doing it, because one, you can see my pictures, and two if you ever need to put pictures online for some reason, its an easy way to do it. so click this link... http://www2.snapfish.com/share/p=82881183903703154/l=278303824/g=99942123/otsc=SYE/otsi=SALB ...and on the right side it says "wait! i don't have a snapfish account!" so click on that and make one real fast, and then go back and look at my pictures. if you want to wait, i am going to try to put captions on all the pictures so that you know what they are... haha. or if you are anxious, you can just look at them twice.

thats the bulk of whats happening... i have to go get some work done now so i can go to bed early tonight without worrying about all that i have to do. hopefully i will be able to update sometime again this weekend. i miss all you guys! talk to you soon!!