My first month....

I have been here for almost a month now. And the time is going by pretty fast. The weeks go by really fast because of school which is good but the weekends seem to drag on. Normally I would love this except most of my weekends I am constantly painting and drawing. This weekend though I am going to Pompeii and Sorrento with the school, which will be awesome…minus the 8 hour bus rides there and back! Sara and I have decided that Saturday is “adventure day.” We are going to try to go somewhere every Saturday, probably only in Italy for now. Last weekend we were supposed to take the train to Pisa but that didn’t happen because we both had too much painting to do. This seems to be the theme of our life here.

My Painting teacher and drawing teacher gives us a ton of homework. So far it has been a painting every week and when we get to class she rips them apart and basically makes us start over. Im not very fond of her yet…but I think she’s starting to grow on me as I get to know her better. One of my roommates dropped the class and then after that she seemed to be nicer and gave us less work to do.  I don’t have any new paintings due for next week but I do have to finish all 3 that I have already started…and watch two 2 hour long videos. So it’s a lot of work but im learning how to make time for everything. In my photography class im the only art student. The rest of the people are from design which means all their work is digital and all they do is still on there Mac books all day. I’m the only person who wanted to use the dark room and do film photography so I had to go around the school and get permission to use the dark room by myself, when there’s no class in there. I finally got everyone to let me do it and my teacher told me that she doesn’t think that I will be able to complete the project in time. She wants me to go to a photography store and have them develop my film and print all my photos for me. I would much rather print my own photos since that’s the best part of film so I’m going to attempt to do it myself, and I think I have plenty of time to complete the project on my own. I’m used to Cornish where every photo has to be perfect before it can be turned in so I don’t think this project will be too hard. I haven’t had Italian in over a week because my teacher was sick. But on Monday I got to class and I had a new teacher. I like the new teacher I think I will learn a lot more from her then the teacher before her.

I’m regretting not bringing enough shoes for Italy. I thought I would have too much when I was packing but now I’m starting to see that I was wrong. Both pairs of flats that I brought have holes in them from walking around on the coble stone streets. And my flip flops are dying fast too. I won’t need either of those soon though but for the time being I’m trying to find more flats and it looks like I’m out of luck. Italians have small, narrow feet and small, narrow calves and I have neither of those. I need probably a size 42 wide here and the biggest I can find is a 41 and that’s if I’m lucky. I also want to buy some boots while im here and since I have big calves they don’t fit either! The best part is that the salesmen act like you are inconveniencing them when you as for a size 41, like it bothers them that I have big feet or something. Sara has big feet too but she can wear a size 41 comfortably. She bought a pair of boots and they are already falling apart on her, I guess that’s what we get for trying to buy cheap shoes! Italy is also very fashionable and my shoes and clothes just aren’t cutting it. If I walk to school in flip flops and jeans I get stares sometimes, especially if it has rained recently. When it rains here people act like they will melt if the get one drop on them and they all pull out their umbrellas instantly, I don’t even own an umbrella.

But I really do love Italy! Minus the fact that it ruins my shoes and I’m swamped with homework all the time! I will try to write more sometime next week J