Saturday May 31th.. Arezzo Antique market..

So the fun of the antique market is finding the oddest things you can find..

The Arezzo Antique market.. was crazy.. the booths went all the way down the Corso Italia, through the Piazza Grande, through the San Francesco Piazza, and even up the hill to all around the Duomo and the historic center.  Wow..


I got myself a few small acid burned prints of the area that walk by each morning.   I also got a small mary print that is in the Florence style.

I got a few postcards to add to my collection and a few gifts for others, that I will not mention here.


There was so much stuff.. here are some highlights.

a wooden bathtub

a face totem

a painting with hands coming out. 

ducks with boots on

a dress made with a potato sack.. from Oklahoma City. 

WARNING: INAPPROPRIATE.. THE ODDEST THING I FOUND AT THE FLEA MARKET. 

There was a lot of pornography (vintage) at the fair, but this took the cake.. One woman had a collection of metal signs where prostitutes listed their prices during the 30's.. 

So what is funny here.  is the note:  "Please wash with soap and water before our meeting."  First military service for free.  (now that is nationalism. 

Friday May 30th..

Today is a good day because I slept lots.. 

I taught class but instead of staying in the classroom we walked up the hill by the Duomo and had class in Prato Park by the Duomo http://www.panoramio.com/photo/20911308

after class I decided to do a little grocery shopping and show Amy Gardner around a little.. we also went to the yarn store. As I waited for her to come down the hill, I got to play with my most friendly neighbor..  gato. 

This is the picture of my street and a link again to the holiday house where I stay http://www.viapescaia.it/en/

Its a Friday, but with the Antique Festival about to start many people had clothing out to try.. it will be busy on Saturday and Sunday..  

Each night I am starting to recognize neighbors and love to hear the babies being put to bed or fighting their baths from the windows up above. 

Piazza grande is starting to be st up for the antique market.  there are all kinds of things. I took a picture of this booth because the mannequins reminded me of miss charity.  

After walking around the Piazza I came over to Corso Italia and decided why not to view the Bruschi Museum which is the man who founded the antiques market.  

http://www.fondazionebruschi.it/sito/ITA/museo/home.html

It was a strange mix of things.. and reminded me of the Lightner Museum in St Augustine http://www.lightnermuseum.org/    I suspect he was a bit of a hoarder like Lightner but with good taste.

this house was owned by the guy that started the Arezzo Antique fair and since I was walking around the set up of the antique fair, I thought lets stop in the museum.  It was only $1 euro after having gone to the San Franscesco church to view the Frescas.  

The halls were poorly marked and I thought it was an Italian English problem but I talked with an Italian visitor and she was just as confused as me.  So its a museum to go and look around and don't be afraid if you cannot identify or say where the stuff came from, just admit its cool.   

a more ethnicly appropriate Jesus.. don't see many of those here.  

this is a nativity. 

pretty sure a real skull

galileon telescope

the view from the roof. 

after the museum, I met the Gardners for apertivo.  http://www.emikodavies.com/blog/italian-table-talk-the-aperitivo/.  Basically this is small snacks served with drinks before dinner.  We like to go to Bar Stefano because its close, offers great olives, and the drinks are inexpensive. So you meet and unwind and have a few snacks before dinner. 

Then for dinner we went to Ciao which the students say is great. It was fine but we had some serving problems.. meals came before antipasto etc..  I ordered Eggplant parmigiana and this is what I got..  

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After dinner I walked down the Corso and ran into our students ready to karaoke for the night and Charlotte and Kirk getting ready to go to a Jazz concert. Jazz is not my thing, so I turned in.. and slept more.. I think I am have been really tired, or its the carbs.. 

This is tomorrow.. I am so excited.

http://www.slowtrav.com/colleen/arezzo_antiques.htm

Thursday: Meeting with the Councilwoman about Schooling

Lots going on today.

Jim's wife has arrived in Rome but there is a train strike so might be a while before they get up there..(she is now traveling together with Bridget's sister). The train strike is messing up some of student plans, but they should be working on the weekend.. but its today and Friday. .Train strikes are common in Italy in summer and tend to occur on week days.

Here is more information on Train Strikes
http://www.slowtrav.com/blog/italy_transport_strikes/

Jim is taking both class periods to talk about Assistive technology. I also showed iPad and Mac built in assistive technology. I love teaching about this topic, but hopefully it helped Jim with time constraints.

I have decided to do a quiz or something about the book they read on Monday because basically I am realizing they are not all doing their assignments, and their grade is individual not collective.

Jim broke for lunch before we went to meet the councilwoman Bennati.  I decided to go and try to order at the Gastronomic on the corner by Bar Stephano.  I asked Bridget (who was lunching at Bar Stephano) how to order and she offered to go with me.

I got a great gargonzola and priscutto cotto (thin cooked ham) sandwich on Foccacia with a small farrow salad for $5.50 Euro.  It was very good..  and Bridget was great about encouraging me to order. I will do it again..

The tough thing for me, is that I feel more able to do stuff after I was lead through it once..  so I know I will order again..

more later after we meet with the councilwoman.

Wednesday another good day..

I think it takes a week to get used to living abroad.. I am feeling more comfortable and more willing to try new things..

Today,  I did not teach in the morning because we split the group in two to visit the Aliotti school.. so Jim taught the class in the morning and I took the group.

So as we were leaving Lee Williams, Grad Dean at OU,  came by with his wife, he is on a whirlwind tour of Europe and our advanced program military base sites.  He came with us on the visit.

The visit was quite cute.. Many of the children ages 3 to 5th graders - had been learning english so they were excited to say hello and goodbye and also sing us songs in English.

The school is a private Catholic school where parents pay about 250E a month for tuition, which is considered very inexpensive by local standards but private school is not a high priority.  They are a Catholic institution founded in 1800 by the Aliotti sisters who are not quite aged and now its run by an organization. .

Our guide was Pavlina who is an english teacher and the principal Donata who is very passionate about new pedagogy.  They feel they have a revolution as they try new things like grouping students (ie.. not sitting in rows etc..) which is quite new for Italy.

Our students got to see an inquisition.. which is the way in which students are orally tested in class.   Its a big thing here.. Its funny I looked for references on the technique, and all I got was about the Spanish Inquistion.. (no one expects the Spanish Inquisition.. right?? ) Which surprised them..

Also the classrooms were quite small with the chalkboards the size of a bulletin board in a home.  No technology except for a technology lab that still had some CRT's.

The school was vibrant with learning and caring for the kids. Being the month of May, there was a lot of Mary statues and such.

The school was such a wonderful host, and they hosted us both days. It was great!  I found it interesting how even though we are in a foreign country, the kids are much the same.  One big difference is the quality of art.  Art is a national standard here, or expectation.. so there is no art teacher, but each teacher is pretty well skilled at teaching art, as its something that is stressed in their own education from a young age.

After we finished the tour, I offered to take Lee and his wife to see the view from Proti Park, and of course it really started to rain.  We returned to OUA and had lunch at Osteria.  I had eggs with wild asparagus.  The eggs were fried over easy and I was really wanting that for days.

After that they went on their way and I went to relax until meeting Jim and some other professors at a restaurant outside of San Francesco.  Lee was there when we arrived and he joined us and Sean Churchman from Musical Theater.  We had a few drinks and then Sean JIm and I went to Trattoria Divino for dinner.  I had steak with peppercorns (ordered with rosemary).. it was cooked very well. (a bit expensive $15 Euro)

After dinner,  we each returned to our homes, I had some ferraro roche gelato from Crima.. yum.. but the sugar put me right to sleep!!!  

I woke at 3am, and skyped with Brian..  Somewhat of a mistake because I was up for hours because I got my mind going again.. but its never a mistake to connect with those back home.

Tuesday May 27 - A good day connecting with teachers.

Today was a good but relaxed day..

I taught my class from 8:30 to 10:30 and then Jim went with the first half of the students to Alliotti school.   I stopped at Coffee O Clock to get a chai tea latte..  its an odd place around here that have American specialities.  I ran into a student there who went with me to get snacks for our teacher social later in the night.

Everyone is getting sick around here,  so I took the opportunity to take an afternoon nap to keep away from it.

I worked some, and I went back to OUA at 5:30 to be ready for the teacher social.  Charlotte arranged for us to have 5 teachers come and talk to our students about teaching in Italy.  They were great and our students are on game!!!

I spent time talking to the two teachers from Alliotti and we decided I would do a workshop for their teachers about technology and host it OUA.. I hope it works out.. but it sure was fun to talk to them..

That evening I fell asleep early after making the rest of the gnocchi and having some of the best gargonzola cheese on toast I have ever had..

Hopefully I have beat the sick..   so that I can enjoy the rest of the time here.. Taking lots of vitamin C.

Monday May 26..

Today was one of my student's birthday. so I was able to buy two pies/cakes at the local street fair. 

Nutella and hazelnut tart. 

Apple cake. 

Lots of apples in this cake, it was very very good. 

after class, I went to the store to get some supplies for later in the week but after having a good gnocchi with butter and sage.  So i bought some at the store and walked it back to Pescaia street. 

So I went about making gnocchi. 

I first boiled it, (for like 2 minutes) and then cooked it in butter,  with basil and fresh Tuscan tomatoes.   So this is how it looked. 

At 3:00 pm..  We took a tour of the Frescas at San Francesco Church. We were not allowed to take pictures but you can you see the pictures. Our guide was British and explained the story of the Frescas and the true cross depicted in the Frescas.  She was very informed and explained a lot to us. 

To see pictures, go here.   http://www.pierodellafrancesca.it/  or here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francesco,_Arezzo

One of the questions I asked was was this church harmed in the bombing in World War 2.. She said not really, she said that the townspeople covered the frescas in comics to protect them.. How lucky are we that they did..   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arezzo


After the tour,  I sat and talked to students for a while and then decided to go find gelato. The place I know where it is was closed so I walked down all of Corso Italia.  At the end, I got by the train stations and saw another part of the wall.

I walked back had Dinner with Jim.. I was jonesing for some polenta. 

Sunday in Arezzo and the unintentional long walk

Exploring a new city, its a good idea to walk around.. but with no sense of direction, its easy to get lost.. so it became the Sunday of my unintentional long walk.


According to Google Pedometer I walked about 4.5 miles.. I don't doubt it because I walked from 10 to 12, and then 12:45 to about 2:15. strongly possible.   Arezzo is very hilly,  so you can also see the elevation chart to show how I walked up and down steep hills.. a good workout.

First I walked to the grocery store, but never made it. they were having a street fair around a 10K that they were having, and they had vendors and such selling things.  I wanted to buy a cake for tomorrow's birthday, and I found two ladies selling homemade cakes for 10 Euro so I got 2.. I also bought a thing of cookies.. (before I found the second cake)..   

after I bought these items, I decided to walk back home so I would not need to carry them around. 

When I started out again, I thought I would go check out the park that everyone says is so nice.. its up a very steep hill and sits near the cathedral (Duomo) 

as in all things Tuscan, the cathedral is quite ornate, with stories depicted in every nook and cranny.  (I will link to more pictures later) .. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arezzo_Cathedral  

These are the views from the park next to the Duomo.. I think as I get stressed, I need to come up here and look at the tuscan sun some more.  The park is called prato park which means "the meadow".

 even just the clouds are beautiful.

Arezzo sits on a hill and was a fortified town with a wall,  and here at the park next to the duomo is the first time that I saw that wall up close and personal.

This is the statue in the park.  

after I walked around the park, I ran into the RA from OUA who was about to go to church at noon. I figured, why not.. I lit a candle for a special intention and sat through the mass in Italian.. everything but the words were easy to follow. 

The tourists were being total a-holes during an active mass.. ie.. walking up the center aisle to take pictures and talking and wandering around during mass!!!!!!!  So I did not take any pictures at all.. but I did a quick search on flickr and you can see its was really ornate inside..(nothing yet in Tuscany is not)..  https://www.flickr.com/search/?q=arezzo+cathedral

it was very cool. 

After mass,  i ventured down the hill a little toward the tourist center.   The nice thing is that this part of town has a lot of historical landmark signs.  

Something that our tour guide in Florence taught us to look for on old buildings,  horse ties.  

I continued to walk down the hill, where I got lost.. I got to this roundabout that has the symbol of the town, the chimera on in it.  I am learned from our Florence Guide to look at things all the way around.. and this proved interesting on the Chimera too. 

This is where the chimera sits - as you leave the fortification of the town.  

after I left the fortified part of town.. I got a little lost. and realized I needed to be back inside the city walls..   so I went around until i figured that out looking for the train station..    Here is one section you can get really close to,  from both "inside: and outside.

I was thinking .. wow this has sustained a long time..  I love how the grass grows in it but it still stands.

Eventually I found my way back down to the city center and then back to my apartment.. it was a long walk but I got to see a lot..  

Now I am back at OUA giving students some wifi study time. 

Enjoy your Sunday.