Day 57 - Ciao ciao once more!

Ciao ciao to dearest friends and family! Be back in two weeks!


That's me at Pompeii, taken by Khairul.

As with last time, I'm tempted to post this exhaustive list of places where I will be, online:

29 Feb to 2 March - Bologna (visiting Gabri, my generous and funny Bolognaise friend who I met at Cornell last year)

4 March - Modena and Torino (on a 7 hours bus ride)

5 March - Torino (Gerrymandering the first capital city of Italy)

6-7 March - Back to Bologna! (to study the Italian communist's greatest success: Bologna city planning)

8 March - Vicenza and Marcellise (to see whatever... probably churches again. Cornell in Rome make us visit churches like pilgrims)

9 March - Vicenza, Maser, Asolo, San Vito d' Altivole and Venice (they are promising us a stunning ferry ride on the grand
canal of Venice at the end of this deadly looking day)

10-11 March - VENICE!!! WOHOOOOO!!! Water water water!!!

12 March -Padova (getting used to the idea that we won't be staying in Venice *sniffels*)

13 March - Back to school in Roma!

Day 54 - Storytelling Portraiture

Our assignment today for photo class is to take 60 portrait of a person. I worked with Mike, but I failed to tease him out, and you can tell from the photographs: he looks cute, but you don't get a sense of his personality. Who is Mike?



In the end, I still didn't know him.
Oh well! So I ended up stalking the teacher instead...


Which was a lot of fun.
Can you tell? Open the image large... feel the difference!

She's out there teaching, with her face and her hand. She has a sense of purpose of being in there, and she does not mind the prying lens. Now tell me, is it my clouded opinion about the persons, or is it really the portraits?

(Liana hates sepia, because she thinks its forced. So I'll switch. Earlier above is the CYMK grayscale, noticably warmer than the RGB grayscale which you are seeing now). Look, look. This is what she thinks of it...


She curls up her lips and looked to the sky.
She grins and looked sideways,
And laughed.


She thinks it has a potential,
But she's not sure,
Naaah. She withdraws her thoughts.


Bwahahaah. I'm a stalker!


Enough of this joke. I'm tired...


Calm down, Sephiee... take a deep breath.


Now, should I submit this as homework?


YES!

Day 43-48 - Southern Trip (Part III: Sicilia)

Sicily is full of sunlight to the brim...


... and in Sephanié-talk sunlight means happiness. Look at this beautiful town called Monreale, it sits at the foot of two gentley bluey hills, facing the sea, in full sun: what more could you want?


Ah, they're also blessed with grand golden churches...


...but frankly, I'm more inspired by cute petite neighborhoods rather than old golden churches, and am ever so tempted to just copy and paste this neighborhood somewhere else, for I'd love to live in one of these cute lil' houseys!

Day 43-48 - Southern Trip (Part II: Napoli)

This beautiful black labrador followed us for hours from dusk to night, from the sea and through the city. It treated us like a herd of sheep, ran around us to keep us together and barked at any incoming people, motorcycles and cars. At times we thought that he would disappear into the streets, but we were wrong! It followed us ever so faithfully until he couldn't anymore.

Resilient and weathered. Our Neapolitan tour guide has a severe look to her that seems to say that she has seen the darker stories of Napoli. Ah, if only I knew enough Italian to ask "Tell me..."


Boy with the expression of an old man.


Local Neapolitan boys who approached us in fascination with the camera.


I wish I could forget about this photo. This boy ran around the street with a plastic pistol air gun. He looks, aims, and shoots at you. You can hear the air bullets firing *Tor!!! Torr!!* You know it's fake, but you can't help but feel unsettled: anyone, everyone... he wants them all dead.

Day 43-48 - Southern Trip (Part I: Portraits)

The serious photographs will have to wait for later, because beyond beautiful, Sicily was a lot of fun!


Me, Libby and Francis atop Monreale Cathedral complex. The view of Palermo that sits between the foot of two hills, facing the sea, was splendid... but being tourists as we are all we care about is taking pictures of ourselves!


Isa and Summer.

A lot of things were explained to us by the knowledgeable and well-connected Marco... although I feel that much of the time, we hear them without absorbing much... like gaping at the wind... like Aaron's face right there (I think this is what Americans call 'Deer at the headlights'? ahahaha).

Mira was playing with a piece of rag that was covering a window on a house in Pompeii. Who knows what is she imagining... but the fun with this rag on the wind was so fun that she has to be coaxed to walk away from it. Travelling with Prof. Neema's children makes us really happy, because they are so energetic, bubbly and... cute! (They say that traveling with these prof's kids has inspired us to have childrens ourselves. Ah. Perhaps).


Emma (looking like a shocked supermodel), and Kirin (Neema's other tireless child)

Maria... no, wait, that's not her...It's Marvin!

Ale fresh & Ale tired. It's one scary murderous look there.

*snore*

Peek-a-Boo Andrew

Kate sporting a mafia look. It scared me for a while... before,

Prof. Neema and her students at what was Gibellina. (The most common response to this picture is "Neema's going to kill you!")


We run through most of the cities we visited and usually we don't have the time to explore to our heart's content. But Gibellina Nuova was such a ghastly empty modernist town that we finally have time to get bored and just perch around (and that's got to be the sweetest pic of Patrick).


Family picture! This is so sweet, no? except I was missing behind the lens!

Day 43 - Snailing to the South!

I love how Cornell arranges us on these tours around Italy (like the one above, which is a photo of Rosie, our teaching assistant, taken on the tour of Rome). I just wish that the tours are longer in duration so that I can linger and savor the place better. As you can see in our itenerary, it's a pretty fast tour of the south! Way too fast for this snail!

Feb 16 - Pompeii (to see lots and lots of ruins)
Feb 17-18 - Napoli (to see lots and lots of garbages -literally!-)
Feb 19 -20 - Palermo (to see lots of mafias at work, and not recognize any them... and be a 'fesso' -more on that when I get back)

I'm going to miss blogging. I hope you guys are doing well. Take care.
As always, e-mail me and I will e-mail back! =)

Day 40 - What Rome is not...

Have a guess. What is this?
Clean, organized and modern. This is certainly not Rome-like (even though it is taken around Rome). Having been photographically documenting on what Rome is, I thought I might spend a moment on contemplating on what Rome is not. Rome is not clean: cigarette butts and confetti litters clog up the creases its cobblestone roads, and ghastly graffiti scribbles wreck every available space of wall that is not peeling off already. Rome is not organized: the roads are not perpendicular and seem to be whimsically drawn up from the eras when map was not invented yet; Pedestrian crossing is like game of dare, and there is a beggar at every corner (they beg for pennies, even though they have such cute little pooch dog?!). Rome is not modern either. Dubbed as 'The Eternal City,' Roman civic spaces and buildings are old and contain layers and layers of history. Most of the buildings at the ancient heart of Rome where we live at goes back to more than three hundred years with its paints peeling off from decades of renovation neglect. Beautiful as they are, they're not your shiny white Calatrava masterpieces. For those of you who have not been in Rome... does this revelation come at a surprise?

Now... this is more like contemporary Rome:


Funky, eh? Transcient. Colorful. Third-worldly. (and not high-quality either). Anyhow. This chain of thought came to me after dinner, upon hearing how some of my American colleagues complaining over how dirty and disorganized the city is. Ah. I guess its one of those moments of disenchantment with the postcard Rome ;-)

Day 37 - San Giovanni di Dio II

Sweet girl (doesn't she look mature and well behaved? ahahaha). My guess is that she is a Filipino. I found her on the only exotic food stall which sells asian-indian spices and nuts, thai and basmati rice, terong bulet, kacang panjang, and banana flower (of all places!!!).


This is Stefania, the friendliest Italian market vendor I've ever met in the quest for the perfect open air market experience. The vendors here don't speak English at all (unless they're Bangladeshi, of which there were few), most of them are not aggressive, but they don't care about you either. They look at you think that you're a strange sight: a lost tourist, perhaps? I managed to exchange a short conversation with her though, up to a point where we introduce ourselves. I think she is what they call here simpatico (easy to get along with, friendly). I wonder if she remembers me from the other day, because I have her photographs (she doesn't look that happy there!) Her tomatoes are a little old and mushy, but her blood oranges are extra dolci. Definitely coming back there!


These girls laughed at me for some reason =D?
Whatever. You're happy, I'm happy!


Dangling baby joey on a kangaroo mommy, hihihi.

Day 35 - San Giovanni di Dio

Nothing in Rome makes me happier than the sight and smell of open air markets. Here's my personal smellseeing hitlist of the day:
-Bright blood oranges stacked like christmas ornaments.
-The logarithmic symmetry of Romano 'spaceship' cabbages.
-Pools of black/purple/green/pitted/fresh/stuffed/spiced olives.
-Tanks and tanks and tanks of wholesale wine (at 1.30euro/liter!)
-Gargantuan meat knives (watch them glide through calf bones!)
-Staring at old Italians staring back at you.

Day 33 - Waiting for my only pair of shoes to dry...

It has been wet since Sunday, and I am giving her a "lamp therapy" to warm her up so she will dry!

Day 31 - Sogni d'Oro

In Italy if you want your coffee sweet, you say "zuccherato, per favora!" So I once translated "Sweet dreams!" to my Italian friend, Gabriella, as "Sogni Zuccherato!" She laughed out loud because that literally mean "Sugary dreams!" Instead, she suggested that here in Italy, they say "Sogni d'oro!" which means, "Golden dream!" Hence the title of this photograph. This old man was found sweetly asleep under the precious first rays of the sun that appeared after a long day of gray rain... like a gentile of Renaissance he was asleep in verandas of Villa d'Este, no less!

Day 30 - Palestrina, Villa d'Este and Villa Hadrian

An old, cranky, but funny bedevil of a man led our tour today. He called us wuss for pulling out umbrellas when it rains, threatened execution for sitting down after a tired walk, and gleefully announced that latecomers be stoned publicly. He made all fifty of us ran up the (at least!) 20 meters (60 feet/6 floors) worth of stairs and slopes to the Temple of Fortune at Palestrina. When we got up, to the temple we it was foggy, and all we could see is white.


This is the guy. Jan Gadeyne lectures with his eyes closed. He imagines the reconstruction of the ruins in his mind, and illustrates it with his animated hands. Only when he closes his eyes for his 10-20 second stretches, would dare snap a picture of him. He is an intimidating teacher, my favorite kind actually. Still, I don't want him to remember my name for fear of public shaming.


The sky later clears out to reveal an amazing, breathtaking view of the town of Tivoli. Now... what should I say about Francy? He's hungry.


Joy the architect, envisioning a new Villa to rival d'Este.


Villa d'Este is the Disneyland of the renaissance. It was built in 1550, and even now it is still full of its original giochi d' aqua (water games). Splashes of water amusement beauties is played out in this filthy rich villa... giant water fountains that smells of moss, hundred fountain wall, fanning out water fountains, drinkable Pandora's fountain and so on. The list is exhaustive. We had to run through this place in an hour though! And so we only got to skim it. I really should take my time to come back there and describe the villa in better detail.


Maritime theatre at the Hadrian's Villa is thought to be a retreat room for the emperor Hadrian himself. This circular room consist of a circular island is built within the room... think of it as the best spa boutique you could find in the 2nd century.


Me and Alejandra, and Francy outside of Villa d'Este


Libby and Alejandra, my roomates! (To your right is the gorgeous ass of a marble Hadrian's)

It has been a breathtaking day... I'm honestly too lazy to edit and post the rest of the scenic pictures. Maybe another day.