Post-Blizzard Apocalypse Adventures

Well, dear online friends, long time no blog! Sorry about that. Of course, there's not much to blog about when Italy is determined to make you experience the biggest snowstorm in recent history. Blizzarding. All. The. Time. I feel like I've talked about the snow a lot, and I want to apologize, but I also recognize you guys didn't get as much snow as I did - so sorry I'm not sorry about complaining. A side note, the snow has made the already interesting traffic/pedestrian game more complicated. As you can see.... sidewalks have ceased to exist. So you just kind of... walk in the street and hope when cars come you have a nice little doorway to wait in. Otherwise you just kind of.... get in the snow. Not kidding.

It's less terrifying if you think of it as a game.

After a cancelled trip to Perugia, the storms are finally done. We've been able to do things as scheduled this week - so I'll catch you up!

On Tuesday, during our Cross-Cultural Comm class, we went to a local museum. It was located in an old palace of a really important (rich) family in Macerata. So, obviously, it was gorgeous. Lots of Greek heroes painted everywhere. In the basement was a Carriage Museum. Bet you didn't know there was so much information about carriages and their evolution to warrant an entire museum, did you? There is. It's in Macerata, Italy, if you're interested. There's also a simulated carriage ride. How awesome is that?

Seeing palaces makes me want to be obnoxiously wealthy. The doorways are made of marble. Also, the white walls would have been covered in red and yellow silks for insulation and showing off wealth. Which they had a lot of.

Remind you of the Sistine chapel? Me too! But no, just someone's house. That dude on the cloud in the middle is Zeus.

Carriages. Fake horses.

Last night I had my second cooking class - I learned how to make pasta all'carbonera (pasta with eggs and bacon) and these delicious Carnevale cookies called Frappe. Like an idiot, I forgot to take my camera to the cooking class and therefore have nothing to show for all the hours of work except for added poundage (seriously though, Frappe are so good). I promise to get a picture of Frappe at Carnevale this weekend and upload so you can appreciate how cool it is that I can make them. Also, when I was rolling out the dough, Angélica was like "Oh! You are so good at that! You could start a restaurant!" So, there's a new life plan in the works. Of course, it is generally known that she is the sweetest human alive, so I don't take her compliments at face value.

Today, our program took an excursion to Ascoli Piceno, a town about an hour and a half from Macerata. The snow was melting, the sun was out (first time in weeks, it feels like!) so everyone was in a great mood and it was so nice to be doing something. The main city is on a plain between two rivers, which is really unusual for a medieval town because they're usually on mountaintops, but the rivers made it easily defensible. Which meant no hills today! Also, what they call rivers look more like the creek in my backyard.


We hit all the architectural highlights of the city - churches are beautiful, as always. Had a fantastic lunch, as always (with some Ascoli Piceno staples, pictured below). Saw some more Roman ruins - those things are everywhere in Italy. Italians are even like, "we know there are Roman towns buried in that field, but digging it up is expensive and then we have to take care of it.... so let's just leave it there." Such a foreign (haha) mindset to an American!

Fritto something.... Basically little fried balls of olives, some meat and other deliciousness.

Proof Roman ruins are everywhere. Bathroom of a café.

Macaronicino noodles - super thin, almost like angel hair pasta, specialty of the region.

The ceiling over the nave in the Cattedrale di Sant'Emidio - gorgeous!

The crypt below the Cattedrale. Fun fact: Napolean decreed that all people had to be buried outside of the city walls for health reasons, so no one is allowed to be buried in or below churches anymore. But before that crypts below the church was the norm.

I never really appreciated mosaics before - but the lower part of the Cattedrale was covered in them and they were stunning. My favorite was the peacocks!

But the highlight of the day was the Carnevale atmosphere! Carnevale is the celebration before Lent begins - where basically you give into all "carne" (of the flesh) desires and go a little wild before you try and give up eating sweets (for like four days, if you are being honest with yourself). The city was totally alive! Today was mostly the children's stuff -- so there were kids dressed up and running around all over (I'm not entirely sure if Italians work or go to school at all.... since it was a Thursday, but whatever). The town was decorated, people were just walking around, loud music (Lady Gaga, what else) was playing, and friends were just talking and having a great time. And this was a smaller Carnevale celebration (it's celebrated everywhere), so it was just a preview of what Venice will be like! Four of us are going to Venice tomorrow for the weekend - it's the biggest Carnevale celebration in the world! So. Excited.

The big piazza all decked out and crowed with Carnevale goers! Can you find the kids in their costumes? There was a Zorro - so cute.