Giants

Ciao! I had a good weekend. A few friends and i went to check out the arena di verona. Its in the piazza Bra' and only cost 3 Euro fo students it was really cool to see. (my keyboard is sticky so if i randomly leave out a letter here and there, sorry) Took a lot of pictures They were practing for one of the operas so that was really cool! im getting realy excited to see Aida now. Im trying to decide if i want to see Carmen now. a few people i know are going the day after we see Aida. Saturday sarah and i were going to go to Padua with a few friends, but ended up going to Lake Garda instead. We decided we wanted to relax.. well that didnt really happen. We ended up taking the train even though someone's rooomates recommended the bus. the train took us to a place not near garda but the lake is big so we were still at lake garda. It wasnt as nice as we thought it was going to be. i think we just went to the not as nice part. the water was fairly clear except for this one part that was thick and green from algae :/ a few of us walked around tryinig to find a nice place .cuz the others laid on the 'beach' which was pebbles well small rocks. it was a little strange because some places would have sand but way away from the lake. so we tried to find the ferry to take us around the lake, but ran into a nice town and had lunch and then we found more pebble beach, so we just sat there and relaxed, i read more of the Da Vinci code and then we got gelato later and headed back.
Sunday was a group trip to mantua. it was nice, not too exciting. the town. we went to 2 palaces which i realy liked. Palazzo Te and Palazzo Ducale. Palazzo te was my favorite. it had a lot of greek paintings. Ducale seemed to have more Christianity paintings which i like, but they seemed darker in color Plus i remembered more about what i had learned about th greek paintings in my art history class then the Christian art. My favorite room was the one with the giants the painting itself wasnt what i liked it was what the artist was trying to make you feel... ths is a link to a site i found online, hopefully it works http://www.itis.mn.it/palazzote/ its in italian.sorry (this is from a past email so if you already read it skip ahead) the room is square but is a bit of a dome on top so according to the guide if you have three people in the room, one in each corner and one in the middle, the one in the middle cannot hear what the other two are saying. also, the theme of the painting was to create this image of fear, so they used to wet the floor, because it was painted brick that you see throughout the painting so the people coming into the room would thing they might fall. you have to see the whole room to fully understand.

Theres more story behind it, but i dont remember it all. also I believe it was Austrian soldiers carved their names into the wall. it was neat.
Classes are going well. Art history is awesome. Im learning a lot about Verona. My teacher speaks in Italian, and then repeats what he just said in english. Im getting to the point where i can almost understand what hes saying in italian, and by almost i mean one or two words a sentance or every few sentances..its getting there. Its freezing here. well im in a tank and zip up hoodie, jeans and imcold, my nose was really cold during art history today, we went to the arena.

well i need to go to the grocery store to get something to contribute to dinner. sarah has the pasta and lauren has the desert.so Maybe a bottle of wine...yes i said wine. i find myself enjoying it! white more than red but some of the red wine is good too.
ciao!