san miniato and the marcato

so im back tracking here to friday...

...shirene and i decided that we would like to take a walk around florence to the 'other side of the river' (from where the center is where we live) we decided to walk up to piazza michelangelo, where you can look over the entire city center as well as walk up to san miniato, which is a beautiful church built in 1301 by the monks that live there. its amazing, and one of my favorite places to see. the church yard in the back is massive, and filled with mausoleums and graves from the 1300's to today. everything is scrambled every which way, and nothing is in a uniform design, which i love. most times i am very uncomfortable in grave yards, but for some reason, this particular one is so beautiful and full of light (being on the top of a mountain) that is so peaceful and calming.

then on saturday, yesterday (valentines day!) i woke up to a frantic phone call from shirene telling me to meet her at once at the park with the fountain by the old prison walls. when i questioned why she informed me that there is the most incredible antique market there and that i HAD to come down. so i dragged myself out of bed, got dressed, ate some pancakes with my flat mate nicole and her boyfriend leo, and headed down. i am SO glad that i did because it is to cute there and there are so many things to just look at! it was a great spot to sit and watch people as well. anywhooo hope everyone had a lovely valentines day yesterday =] xoxox pat and i skyped as a date, which was very fun, but i miss him terribly.

love you all so much! and enjoy the photos!



here are a few of my apt, flat mates and some from the train when we went to san marino:

street veiw (the little windows on the top of the building straight ahead are my kitchen and nicoles bedroom

the cat that lives on my street

i always think this is so cute =] its by my house

my favotrie delivery truck for the bakery next to my flat

cute sign on the train, reminded me of earnie =]


florence train:




drawing i did for art class:


flat mates (nicole standing, mirabella sitting at the table hiding from the camera)

silly face haha

me and shirene walking up to piazza michelangelo:














bronze copy of the david

hello hello


(shirene has more photos of us at the top that i will post when she send them to me)




san miniato:



view from there(the church sits on the mountain right above piazza michelangelo)


church yard and inside the church photos:






























all of these angels were making me think of jake, and as i stepped around the corner at a moment when i was really wishing i could see him, i saw these instead. the pink tulips...anyone who knows this story will completely understand, but if not i wont go into detail here, but they are my symbol of jake...and i didnt see them anywhere else in the church yard.



back to the church yard...











i thought she was so beautiful:









soldier from WW2 and his bride(they died 3 months apart):




no matter how close you got to this cat, it didnt move form its spot. it was protecting the grave of a newborn baby:





nooooowwwww.....onto the marcato =]

its held in a park by the autostrad (highway)

cute little dress form



i have always really like skeleton keys



this man was playing italian circus songs on this type of piano, pretty cool:


very pretty



SO many chandeliers!!





lady and the tramp =]


this seemed out of place, but i thought it was very interesting

a chandelier made from camera parts (i dont know if you can see it perfectly..)

operation =]

the old prison and the wall, along side where the market is




i love you all and miss you so much, but now i have to go wander around aimlessly to find something to do =]


xoxoxo

~fated to pretend~

soo, i have been SO busy in my own little world here that i have not written in a long time!

lets see here...

well, classes started last monday. they are amazing! on mondays i have Drawing for Conservators which is amazing! my teacher is from Bologna and shes so sweet. she teaches us about how to draw when you are restoring something. so you must learn how to think like the artist whose art you are trying to restore. (hope that makes sense) so we learn how to copy the artists sketches first, to learn how to draw like them. what lines they use, what tools (all renaissance tools like a quill pen or a silver point) its very interesting and i feel like im learning a lot! its also a 5 1/2 hour class...which is incredibly long!

on tuesdays, i have italian philosophy, which is also very interesting. we get to talk about and discuss everything that makes italy think the way it does. its a very education class. although sometimes tempers are a flyin' when we hit issues that are pretty controversial. and me being the san franciscan that i am, i usually stand alone, but i like it =] after that class i have italian, which is great! i love playing the games in class and reading all the books. my teacher is named frederica and shes very very funny. she always laughs at us and jokes with us when we say something wrong. shes only 25 and its fun to have her just hang out while teaching us. we have an odd number of students in the class, so she is my partner for things which is SO helpful because she really pushes me and i can learn and study with an actual italian! then, later that night i have drawing and composition. its very helpful to know the form of the body, and learn to draw what i see. we do a LOT of training exercises which are great for training your brain.

then wednesday is free!!! i took the day to sit and draw in the Duomo. it was lovely! i sat there for almost 3 hours just looking around. then i went to the old fish market which is now a row of glass shops that are antique markets. they are so cute!




thursdays i have italian philosophy and then italian and then after that i have thory of conservation. its an incredible class and probably my favorite! my teacher is a very well known and established, brittish art restorer. she is amazing! her name is nicoletta and she has so much planned for us! we learn how to look at something and we are going to restore and plan out how to go about doing it. morally and physically. we have to think about each step and each idea we think about we discuss why we would do it that way. if we want to stay true and honor the original artist, or if we are going to change something. how we alter it; if we put just enough to see the painting as it was before and intended, or if we clean it and reserve it how it is now. each painting and sculpture is different. it is honestly an amazing class! she is going to take us to a TON of different restoration sites all over florence that you can only get into if you are with a conservator working on that project. and she is working on a LOT of them!


fridays i have off as well, and this particular friday, michele came to visit =] it was so much fun! we went to the boboli gardens and to dinner and really bonded a lot more than we ever have gotten the chance to =] it was really nice. he is like family to me. all those boys are. they are my home away from home, family. on saturday night we went to the irish pub (the lions fountain) where my good friend Luca works, and watched the Milan soccer game. it is so funny to watch the italian men get SO passionate about the game and all the girlfriends and wives are not even paying any attention. michele and i were both very into the game and i had so much fun watching him get to hysterical when beckham wouldnt score or would do something stupid. its always silly. =]





anywho...its monday, so i came home from my class today with a new drawing under my belt. when it is done, i will post a photo =] so you can see what im up to as far as art goes.
i got my 'friends of the uffizi' card this weekend as well, which is a card that you can use to
get into any museum; or state park or something of that sort, in florence for free. its amazing. i go to museums everyday. you can also jump the line and bring whoever youre with along with you. so its great when i have a friend visiting and they want to see something. we dont have to wait in the lines =]

no i am just listening to music, doing laundry and writing this long overdue blog. tomorrow after class im going to lunch with Luca (my friend from the pub) which will be really nice. he speaks perfect english, but really helps me with my italian cuz he knows what im trying to say and can help me. he i also helping me look for a good apartment for next semester which will be a lot of help. im hoping to find something a little ways away from the center so that i can get a bike and ride to class and be away from all the commotion in the center. i love it, but im just looking. if there is a nice apt in the center that i love then i def will do that. but we will see =]


well, i love you all. please write! i LOVE getting letters!!

alexandra thrapp
c/o scuola lorenzo de medici
via del melarancio,6r
firenze 50123 italia


xoxoxoxoxoxoxxoxoxoxoxoxo


ps - happy birthday big brother =] i love you

and
i really cant belive today is one year since jake passed away. i love you always angel...im glad youre with me wherever i go

my late update...

i just walked in my door and jumped in bed from taking Shirene to her hotel. she arrived on Friday, but i suppose i am going to have to back up a bit here...

...lets start on Wednesday where we left off at...

...i woke up and went on a little walk around town and then came home to take a nap. when i arrived, my new flat mate was here. her name is Nicole and she is from New Jersey. shes so sweet and really fun =] that night we went out. we stopped at the Lions Fountain(our favorite irish pub in florence) to see my friend Luca who works there that i know from last time i was here. he is so much fun and it was so nice to see him! then we went out with nicole's boyfriend, Leo, who lives here and his friends who are really sweet. they speak english totally fine, so it was helpful for me, because my italian was not back yet.

then on thursday, we woke up, went on a food shopping trip and had some technical issues with my phone that i cleared up. then my second flat mate arrived. she is also from New Jersey. her name is lisa. shes a very nice lady that lives above in the tower =] shes very fun and she is also a BA student here for art conservation!!

sooo friday....i woke up around 10 and went on a tour of the school buildings, which are all either on my street or the one backing up my apartment building =] very easy to get to! then i had student orientation, which lasted honestly all day...

Shirene called me at around 3 to say she had arrived in the train station so i ran the 4 blocks and picked her up during the 15 min break in orientation, and then ran her bags up the 8 flights to my apt, got her situated, and ran back down the stairs and across the street to sit back in at orientation. it was quite the 15 min break i must say!

when i got back, we went to dinner at open bar which is a beautiful restaurant on the Arno river here in florence that looks over the uffizi and the ponte vecchio. then we walked around the city for a bit and then went home. we passed out tired because we woke up very early on saturday.



we got up, showered and packed and we were on a train for Rimini by 10:30 in the morning. my friend Michele, who i have known since my first trip here in italy in 06, had invited shirene and i to his house where he studies industrial design in San Marino. it is its own country, within italy, like vatican city. its amazingly beautiful, and when shirene gets me the photos she took on her camera (because mine died on our little tour) i will post more of them. anywho...so we arrived at the station in rimini where michele met us with a HUGE hug! i was So happy to see him that i ran at him =] its always nice to see a familiar face and he is one of my very close friends here in italy. he took us on a tour of san marino, which sits on top of a huge mountain called Titain. its like olypmus! you feel like youre where the gods live! its a medieval town and its very much the same as its always been, you can tell. after that, we went back to his flat, and met with Mattia and his girlfriend Michela, Alberto C, and Emanuele (Ast for short). i have not seen them in over a year and i cant tell you how happy i was when i finally saw them there! they are all so sweet and kind and are such dear friends. some people could not come, but they were missed =[ they all speak italian from the region of Veneto, which is up north. my italian came swooping back into my head the second i was with them! thank goodness! i can speak with them totally fine. (florentines speak very differently, and its sometimes very difficult for me to understand them)





birds eye view


we then got all changed and went to a disco. it was about 30 min away from san marino, and was BEAUTIFUL! again, my camera died, so shirene will get me the photos and i can post them then. anywho though....after much fussing with hair and makeup, trying to pick the right shoes, we finally were all ready and jumped into the car to go to the disco. it is one of the top 5 in italy =] it was beautiful! all black and white with amazing chandeliers everywhere. there were a lot of famous italian 'VIPs' there, but i could not recognize them. they were pointed out to me by the boys. we had so much fun dancing and being with each other and by the time we got back to michele's flat, it was 7 in the morning! i can not even believe that because it felt so early for us. but as everyone can tell you, time flys when youre out having a blast!

mattia and michele getting ready:

shirene and i waiting to go to the disco:

me and alberto c, waiting for everyone to get in the car:

ast, alberto, mattia, michele, michele,shiene and my:

le raggaze! michela, shirene and me:

shirene, alberto c and me:

mattia and michela:

grupo:

shot of the disco (more to come):

alessandra,celia and tania (some university friends of michele, who came to the dico with us!) :

me and shirene:

grupo due:

alberto c with the publicity disco camera:

michele, shirene, me and alberto c =]

michela and michele..also known as...micky micky e micky micky



we got back to the flat, changed for bed and stayed up talking a bit which was nice. the next time we saw each other was that afternoon at around noon. we woke up, showered and dressed again (which seems like consumed most of our time in that flat haha) and then we said our 'see you laters' and piled in our cars. me, shirene and michele went off to the train station to come home, and the others went back up north to their homes. michele is coming for a visit to florence with mattia this weekend which will be SO nice! they wil stay here in my flat, so it will be fun to have the joke-sters here for the weekend. =] we are all planning on getting together again soon. its so wonderful to be with them all. they are my family here.

anyways, now i am i bed, like i said, so i will say good night to you all! i have class tomorrow at 9 and i m ust get to bed. 9-230 drawing for conservators. its a long class, with breaks, but i am going to have to learn a lot, because i can not draw very well free hand. sooo we will see! also, my final flatmate came tonight. her name is mirabella and shes very sweet. shes from new york (all east coasters here but me!) and she went to bed, so ill get to talk to her tomorrow more =]

love you all, and ill get those other photos up as soon as i can! i miss you guys all so much and cant wait to talk to you and see you!

xoxoxo all my love

ale