Carnivale Ancora!

Here are some more pictures of Carnivale--what can I say? It deserves some extra space.

Washing machine kid: window was filled with actual soapy water.

David Bowie blowing bubbles. Bacchus' hand trying to pop them.

Dead cows. What more do I need to say?

Italian drag queens! They were FABULOUS.

And some more political floats. Yes, the Joker is frying politicians, Obama is a blacksmith, and (at the very top because the pictures are impossible to reorganize on blogspot) a politician has been squewered and is being roasted. I can't describe how many children were crying by the end of this parade.

Carnivale!

I've begun to do actual work with the Count on my independent research project. There are approximately 200 pages of documents that I'm supposed to be looking at; this is a picture of the first letter. It's better conserved than most of the rest. The ink has eaten through the parchment on a lot of the pages, it's blackened with age--all of those classic primary document problems. The hand writing ranges from nice and neat to completely hurried and messy (the first page is an example of the nice and neat version.)

I think my process is going to be basically transcribing the writing to the computer, and then attempting to translate from there. Unfortunately, there are a good number of abbreviations that were very common in the 1500's but which I can't make out for the life of me. There's also a tendency to use German letters every once in a while, but their use is definitely not standardized. Fun!

I'm not going to end up using this project for any class-conference, however. Last week I showed up to work with him and instead of bringing me down to his library he took me out to a wine tasting, which was incredibly fun but ever so slightly unproductive.

Last weekend I went down to Sicilia to visit a good friend of mine. She studies in Ortygia, the tiniest little island town connected to Syracuse. Her school (consisting of 30 people) represents nearly the entirety of American presence there, and it's a shock to travel from Florence, where even if you speak in Italian the Italians respond in English, to Ortygia, where if you don't know the Italian word for something, there's basically no hope of getting your point across. Of course I had no idea what was going on half of the time because they were speaking Sicilian (drastically different from Florentine) but it was great fun. They also have some of the best food I've ever tasted there, and I still miss the freshness of everything they made.

Unfortunately, I have no photos of my trip because I ran out of batteries, but just imagine the bluest water you've ever seen surrounding the quaintest little Italian town with winding streets and marble alleyways and you've basically got it. Also, imagine having no heat in your apartment at night and you'll REALLY have it. I don't know if I've ever been so cold or enjoyed myself so much.

Yesterday the school took us to celebrate Carnivale in Viareggio. There was a gorgeous beach (although I got sand in my trainers, which is never fun) and I rode a Ferris Wheel and ate cotton candy and all of that typical carnival sort of thing.

The floats for the Carnivale parade are generally political (i.e. Obama, pictured above), and whenever you see pictures in newspapers or tour books, they also look light and fun. I thought it was basically going to be an Italian Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. But it turned out that a good number of the floats (see below) were completely terrifying.

There were devils and angry clowns (I've never understood coulrophobia before) and squewered, roasting people and nudes in a frying pan and I don't even know what. I've never been quite so scared or quite so entertained before. All in all, I had a wonderful time.

Capponi

I have another page of translation to do for Italian tomorrow, but as a reward for having finished the first four, I'm taking a break to update the blog.

Unfortunately, the Italian Sign Language class is not going to happen. I have the Italian way of life to blame for that. Last semester, they told me to wait a semester to acquire the Italian spoken language before I started learning the sign. So I waited the semester, worked hard to learn Italian, and asked about the classes again this semester. Well, of course, it's great that I want to learn and that I've got the spoken language to start with, but (silly me, why didn't I know this?) I had to start learning sign last semester to be eligible to enter any classes this semester. Oh, the wonder of the Italian system. I feel like throttling someone.

Ma meno male. I probably wouldn't have had time to do another class this semester anyway. My getting bumped up in Italian class has doubled my work (as I have a one-on-one class every week to catch up to the other students) and Art History is entirely in Italian and monopolizing my time with trips. (I just got back from a daytrip to Rome, and I believe I have some form of trip planned every weekend I'm here.)

And then there's the Count.

I may have mentioned that the school introduced the students to the Count first semester through a wine tasting, and that I met him again at Thanksgiving dinner where we sat and talked all night, and that we met again the next day so he could show me his house along the Arno. At that third meeting, he offered me use of his library in research this semester. And I took him up on it.

I am about to begin an independent archival research project with our dear friend the Count. Last semester in the tour of his home, he showed me a stained glass window from 154-. In his archives, he has the letters and journals surrounding its creation, as well as other documents concerning the patron--his great great great grandfather or uncle or something of that sort. The Count and I will be meeting on Wednesdays to read these documents, and he will compile an additional bibliography for me to read, so that I can write more or less a history of the window's creation and its patron. He suggests this paper to be twenty pages long, which I can easily do if I get through the research. (I only hope he meant twenty pages double spaced, because single spaced will be a good deal more difficult in the time that I have.)

I recognize this as an amazing opportunity, and I'll throw myself into it as well as I can, but I'm still terrified. (And thrilled.)

Next weekend I will be going to Ortygia, where a dear friend of mine is studying. I consider this my calm, relaxing vacation before the tempest of work I'll have to get to this semester. Of course whether it proves to be at all calm (nota bene: I needlessly stress when I travel) only time will tell, but at the very least I'll be with a good friend.

I hope to get pictures posted soon, but that would first entail me getting the pictures off of my camera onto my computer. This hasn't happened in months, and probably never would but for the fact that a friend needs some of my pictures to use as support in her thesis. So hopefully pictures will be soon to follow!