Masks, Tiredness, and Oranges

So, long time no see right? Well I guess technically its still long time no see but now you can at least hear me, or see my words anyway. Okay, now that we’ve got that straightened out let us move on. I obviously never got my video update to post. Apparently it was to big size-wise for blogger (Pansy server) and it was too long time-wise for youtube (Fussy stickler server). So I’m going to boil it down and say that the first few weeks have been: tiring, amazing, irritating, hungry, stuffed, cramped, epic, lost, boring, and so on and so forth. I’ll go back and talk about a few things but if you really want to know everything about the first few weeks, you’re just going to actually have to talk to me at some point. (Crazy right? This is a call for all of you to get skype by the way) So where to start….how about a quick overview of my classes so far? Sound good? No? Well tough noogies, it’s where I’m starting.

I started off the semester taking Intensive Italian, La Cucina Italiana, Intro. to Digital Photography, and Shaping the Contemporary :Working with Artists in Milan. Sounds pretty awesome right? I thought so. Then classes started. While I knew La Cucina Italiana was listed as a conversation class, I was down with struggling along and having difficulty understanding the directions as long as I got to cook. Then on the first day our professor began outlining the syllabus, and as it turned out half our grade would be composed of a 4-5 page paper and an hour presentation. AN HOUR. IN ITALIAN. NOT GOOD. So I began to start thinking about dropping it. My mind was made up later when the professor came up and told me that she didn’t think I could pass the course. (A little blunt manybe? Cripes) But all in all I appreciated her candor, so I am no longer in La Cucina Italiana. Bummer.

As for my art classes, I’m afraid I’ve been spoiled at Maryville with awesome art teachers and now I’m forced into the real world. My digital photography teacher is this dude who really likes being a photographer and wants to let us all know how it can set us free. (I mean he REALLY likes being a photographer and gave us his entire resume to be impressed by. It was like 5 pages of “Look at me!!”) The first evening of class he went around and asked why we take pictures. I told him it was just another method of image-making. He followed up by asking me “But what makes you prefer photography to other mediums?” to which I had to respond that I didn’t, and enjoyed drawing or ceramics far more than photography. I think I kind of pissed him off. But I was honest, and was respectful in my answer (Like I didn’t say “Photography SUCKS. I would rather attend the Republican National Convention than take piscture”(No offense to my Republican readers)). So yeah, that class is off to a good start. Then my other art class, Shaping the Contemporary, isn’t exactly what I thought it was going to be either. Turns out we don’t actually work with artists until around the midterm. We have two professors for the first month or so who alternate b/w classes. One is an art historian who keeps trying to teach us to view artists as some type of ubermensch (It’s kind of weird and irritating), and the other is a gallery designer who spends half of class wondering about the roots of words like “display” and then making random jumps of logic to monsters and stuff. He also tries to teach that an exhibition designer is an artist. I don’t think I agree with him, but I don’t want to say it considering that is what he does and thinks of himself as an artist. Unfortunately, he just assigned a paper where I have to discuss whether or not I think a exhibition designer is an artist. Crap. No way out. Looks like I’m going to alienate another professor soon. :/

On the good side though, my Italian class is rockin and our professor is one chill dude. His name is Paolo Della Putta, and makes 4 hour Italian classes interesting for the entire time, and that takes mad skil. (Also, he is a Juventus fan. A man of good taste). My Italian has come a long way, by which I mean I have come from not speaking to almost equaling my Spanish speaking ability, which may not be saying much. But we went over past tense today, so I can start not sound as stupid when I trip through Italian on a daily basis. Now just to continue building a vocabulary and things might not be so bad. I will say though, being immersed completely in a language like this can be rough sometimes. Sometimes it feels like I’m going crazy and I think my English is getting progressively worse. Ugh, I just can’t win with languages. But anyways, that’s the majority of stuff about class.
So in other news, I went to Venice this weekend for Carnivale. We got up at about 7:30 on Saturday morning to give us plenty of time to catch our 9:00 train. We were kind of tired from the night before, but overall spirits were high in anticipation of Venice. Originally, this “we” I keep talking about was composed of myself, my roommate Arseniy, and our friend Carolyn. But that morning Carolyn texted us and told us she was sick so Arseniy and I were flying solo. (Not exactly because there were two of us. I couldn’t think of another phrase. Willickers) We got on the train and after much puzzling of our tickets, found our car and seat assignments. Unfortunately there were two old ladies in our seats. Whether or not this was a mistake or not, neither Arseniy nor I were confident enough in our Italian abilities to argue with these ladies and explain why they, two old ladies, should get up for us, two young men. (Italian culture is VERY big on respect of elders, especially giving seats to elderly ladies. But I caught one of their eyes, and she knew….oh she KNEW she had stolen my seat…) So I withheld a well desereved stank eye and we settled down in the floor for the three hour train ride to Venice. Weak. But you make do with what you can and don’t complain too much….that comes later. We got into Venice around 12:30, and after being dazzled with our first view of the city, we began winding our way through the throngs of people towards where we thought the main square, Piazza San Marco, was. On our way we purchased two essentials for the day… masks and tricorner hats. (Awwww yeah!) I guess this is a good point to describe what Venetian Carnivale is like. It isn’t as wild or bacchanalic as what the stereotype of Brazilian is. Its more like a kind of classy Halloween. Everyone dresses up and walks around all day. This isn’t to say there isn’t drinking, but there aren’t people staggering around piss-drunk or doing it in the road. (But why don’t they? Why don’t they do it in the road?) Its kind of calm for the most part…









The majority of our day was spent wandering around the city, just kind of enjoying the Carnivale atmosphere and every once in a while trying in vain to meet up with our Italian friend Francesco. It was a great day and Venice is an epically beautiful city. I would love to go back sometime later this semester when it won’t be as crowded and I can take it in more and go to the museums and visit the palace and the basilica and stuff. But I would totally recommend it, it truly is that beautiful. You might want to hurry before it sinks into the sea though… sad face. The day was amazing and once the sun had set there was this crazy awesome show where there was this lady floating through middle of the square attached to a balloon and was dancing. The best way I can describe it is….ephemeral. I know that sounds overdramatic but it was unbelievable. You can get a little taste in the video I seen here. After that, we finally found Francesco and hung out with him for a while, and asked around when the last train left for Milan. Some peeps said they were catching a train at 10:20, so considering it was only 6:00 we took our sweet time winding our way back to the train station. We got there about 8:00…only to find that the last train for Milan had left at about five minutes before.


Shit.



Turns out the girls we had gotten our information from had forgotten to tell us they weren’t going to Milan, but Verona. Awesome you guys… maybe should have mentioned that to us. So we hung our heads and resigned ourselves to the fact that it was going to be a long night. We started off by going back to San Marco and drinking three bottles of Bellini, the cocktail of Venice. This may sound like a lot of drinking for three dudes but it had a lower alcohol content than beer. We drank it in a toast and an ironic finger to the city we were about to spend the night in. We tried to stay around the ocean until 2 (or that was the plan at least) but we ended up getting back to the station around mezzanotte (midnight). Things grew progressively worse from there. Please enjoy the following documentation of the night. WARNING: STRONG LANGUAGE BY WHICH I MEAN USE OF THE F-BOMB TWICE AND ONE RATHER DUBIOUS RACIAL STATEMENT (note times were hard. Realizing I wanted to post these I withheld serious language, but you know I couldn’t control my companions, so I apologize and hence the warning for anyone who doesn’t want to be offended.)


(I HATE BLOGGER. IT WON'T LET ME UPLOAD ALL MY VIDEOS. I'm going to post a long sequence of videos on youtube (yes it will work this time) and you need to watch them chronologically to get the full effect of the Venitian night. Sorry for the let down, but just look at it like you get another surprise tomorrow! ALRIGHT!)






Thank all things good that we were able to get on the train a half hour before departure. Not only did we get seats, but it was warm too. Ah. Well considering I hadn’t slept at all during the night, I quickly lost consciousness. I don’t remember any of the train ride back to Milan, except one delirious moment when I think some lady sat down next to me. Luckily we woke up just as we pulled in Stazione Centrale. Then we stumbled blearily off the train and managed to find Carolyn, who was at least feeling good enough to join us for the next leg of the journey, which was to go to Ivrea for La Battaglia delle Arance, or Battle of the Oranges. Basically what happens is there are various squares around the city, and there are a couple hundred defenders with ridiculous amounts of oranges at their disposal. Then a horse drawn wagon with 8 or nine offenders makes a circuit of the square, during which the defenders try to beat the hell out of the offenders with as many oranges as fast and hard as possible. The offenders return fire of course, but they are by far on the receiving end of one hell of a beating. Which is why they get to wear armor and stuff while the defenders just have to man/woman up and take oranges straight to the face and stuff. It was epically brutal, awesome, and juicy. For a slightly better description of why they do this, look up Ivrea on Wikipedia. Oh yeah, at the entrance to the Carnivale they sell red hats, b/c it brands you as an outsider and not part of the juicebath within. I bought one but once the fights started I couldn’t help but participate a little bit. (I mean really, how could I not) I personally hit three dudes in the face, and a couple others in various body parts. I got beaned in the back of the head, and my hand got destroyed. I could try to go into details but… words fail me.













Later we squished our way out of the city through about 4 inches of orange sludge (Gross) and ate an awesome sausage sandwich from a roadside stand. We then made our (unbelievably) weary way to the train station to begin the 2 and a half hour journey home. (I’d only had maybe 5 hours of sleep since I woke up on Saturday. And that was all on-a-train-wake-up-every-five-minutes-because-my-head-fell-down sleep. Since there wasn’t orange carnage going on around me to distract me, at this point I hated life). Once again I can’t share any anecdotes about the train journey home b/c I don’t really remember what happened. I think I slept, but sure as hell not good.

And that is a short overview of what’s been going on…so yeah. Be glad I didn’t tell you all that happened or it would be far more than… where are we now…2173 words. So once again, congratulations to all of you that actually read it all, though hopefully pictures and videos helped break the monotony a little bit. Well, I’m going to try and work on that sleep debt I still have hanging around since this weekend. I miss you all and I’ll see you ‘round. Ciao.