Lunedi (Monday)

Eccomi, hello! After a long, difficult, exhausting, and fun week, I’m back to the blog! I’ll get right to it—since I last wrote, here’s what’s happened:

On average it’s been 8 hours each day of dancing:
9-12:30 two technique classes in the morning (one of two contemporary classes with Amy or Nicole and then jazz with Bob)
an hourish lunch break
1:30ish-3:00 rehearsal for the student choreographers’ pieces
3:00-4:30 a contemporary composition class. With Nicole, we’re learning and practicing ways to create a piece—how to inspire ourselves, elements to consider, etc. In the end we’re going to be creating solos. In Amy’s composition class, the material we’ve been working with (it began with improving around the building outside, that was pretty entertaining consider the gym is in the middle of a residential area so the Italians were giving us looks/laughing at us as we were wrapping ourselves around trees and crazy modern dancer stuff like that), we’re doing a bunch of contact-ish duets. I think it’s going to be beautiful.
Then at 4:30 we have repertory class with Bob in which he teaches us routines in a variety of styles of jazz.
Around 6:30, we walk back to the apartment and make dinner, while hanging out with/borrowing dishes and ingredients and utensils and stoves (when our gas wasn’t working) and showers (some of us don’t get hot water) with the 8 other people in my program who live right next to us. Then it’s usually out for a gelato--there’s a couple great gelaterias near our place, one’s called Peter Panna which I think is pretty clever (panna means cream, it’s a common flavor of gelato), and then I’m in bed by 10:30.

I’ve been able to practice my Italian a little bit more because a really sweet Italian girl named Laura joined us for the week. She’s from Florence and got some sort of scholarship to take classes with us for a week. She spoke barely any English and she and Sophia, a girl from Greece who lives in the Netherlands but is here for the summer to dance/vacation wound up joining us for lunch almost every day this week. Laura and I talked a lot, mostly in Italian, and I’ve been serving as her translator so the other girls can talk with her too. It’s good practice. She unfortunately is already back in Florence, I hope we can meet up again before I leave.

On Thursday night, Pola (program director) organized a group dinner for all of us including faculty at a chic new bar and restaurant. This place was straight up GORGEOUS. The place itself was brand new and stylish inside, and it is right on the water. We had the whole balcony to ourselves that overlooks the sea, and for 5 euro a person we got three courses of delicious homemade pasta, seafood rice (yuck…), and a salad, and lots of wine. After mingling with full stomachs and a little buzzed from the wine, we—faculty and all—went up to the roof where there was a DJ and danced the night away to our favorite tunes. It was a late night but soo much fun—tons of food and wine for a fantastic price, and dancing on the roof next to the Mediterranean with 20 other people who love to dance!

I had the whole weekend planned to visit Perugia, but to my disappointment (but honestly, I was not surprised), a train strike ruined my plans. We weren’t exactly sure how the trains were going to run, and even though it was a regional train strike that only took effect in Tuscany (which is where Castiglioncello and Florence are, and I had to switch trains in Florence), I wasn’t sure if I could get back here for classes in time on Monday from Perugia, so I decided not to risk it. I was really disappointed but no matter what happens this coming weekend with strikes and all that, I WILL get to Perugia, even if it means missing a class. There are people I really want to see and some business to take care of. Everyone in my program except me and three other girls went away this weekend, working around the train strike. Most of them, including my roomies, got up at the crack of dawn and headed to Rome for the day. I woke up at 7:45, which is when my alarm goes off during the week for class, and could not go back to sleep, so I got up, went grocery shopping, cleaned the apartment, and made a little video for you all that tours my apartment (see Facebook!). Then Ariel from across the hall and I went to the beach! A friend of Pola’s named Simona owns one of the private beaches that is really close to our apartment- in fact, we can see her green and yellow umbrellas from my window. She helped move us in when we first got here, and she told us and Pola continues to remind us that we were welcome down there anytime and we could lie on the sand (I took a walk along the beach on the way to class on Friday and found that I was mistaken—the public beaches are sand, not rock) we didn’t have to pay. So, we found Simona, and she led us to two lounge chairs and an umbrella! We found out later that it’s normally 50euro for two chairs and an umbrella, and she let us lie there all day and told her staff not to charge us for anything, and kept coming back to check on us to make sure we were doing okay. It was SO sweet! Ariel and I spent the whole day there, taking a break from the sun to go into the PERFECT water. They even had warm showers right next to the water where we could wash the salt off before we went to lie back down. On the way back to our apartment around 5:30, we went to Bar Porticiollo, a seaview bar/restaurant that is right across from our apartment, and got a mimosa. It was the definition of “the life.” After we showered we were too tired to make dinner so we treated ourselves to a nice meal out. We ordered some bruschetta, which turned out being more than just fresh tomato. Two did have tomato, two had prosciutto, and two had a grey-ish topping with the consistency of pesto that we both thought was some sort of fish. We tasted it together, it was nasty. We asked the waitress what it was. It was chicken liver. I guess I can check that off my list. Yay? When we were waiting for our check a nasty guy wearing a black muscle shirt with a Playboy bunny on it sat down at our table and tried to offer us 50 euro and our check to come sit at his table for two minutes. I didn’t understand the rest of his Italian, but he was gross and his friend was laughing and I think they just wanted to see us squirm so I just crossed my arms and looked at him angrily and said no, sorry, we’re leaving. He begged and persisted and he was annoying and I just kept telling him no. It was weird and I didn’t get it cuz we were in a fairly nice restaurant and a part of me suspected that he was some sort of prostitute. Maybe it was the playboy shirt that threw me off. Ew. Anyways, we got out of there pronto and walked off our food around town for a bit. When we came back from dinner the rest of the crew arrived from Rome and we all went to bed.

Yesterday, we all slept in and then went back to Simona’s beach, where she once again let us soak up the sun, swim, and shade. I went back in the water twice, and once swam all the way out the end of the rock bed (I’d say about 100 feet from the shore), and sunned on some big flat rocks with Aili and Noelle, two of my neighbors. I was lazy bum around the apartment for the rest of the day. I finished my book, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. It was a really, really, really amazing read. Light and heavy at the same time. I’ve never smiled so much and had such a knot in my stomach while reading. I wound up taking a nap because I was worn out from the sun and the book made me sad. Then Amber and I made green beens and rosemary mashed potatoes. Go us!

This morning Nicole taught a Western African class!! We even had a live African drummer! It was siick. Bob is leaving on Thursday (booo, I’m sad, I love his class) and since the Indian dance teacher’s aren’t coming anymore, I’m glad there will be some variety. The hip hop teacher comes this week, I’m scared, rumor has it that he’s mostly popping and locking which we all know I cannot do. It’ll be an adventure, ha. But it will be a fun week and I’ll most definitely be in Perugia this weekend so I’m excited!

I’ve been trying to take pictures but I don’t really have time to upload them yet, unfortunately. Maybe this week, though!

As always, thanks for reading, sorry if it bored you, and I hope everyone is having a splendid time with whatever life has brought to you right now. Ciao!

P.S. not sure why I feel the need to include this, but whatever, I will anyway. I had the freakiest dream that included Michael Jackson last night. It was one of those really long, really realistic dreams that was really wacked out. It involved me and Melissa and someone else who were somehow Michael Jackson’s prisoners and we were jumping trains and hiding under seats of boats and buses and buying plane tickets to countries that I don’t even know if they exist to escape him, but no matter when we did we thought we were safe and then he would come out of nowhere right up to us along the streets/in train stations/airports and just casually grab our arms and say in his creepy voice something like “you thought you can get away, you never can” and lead us back to wherever he was keeping us. He was wearing a bright red suit and a black fedora hat and I remember everyone being like OMG IT’S MICHAEL JACKSON and they would crowd around him and be like I LOVE YOU MICHAEL but I was mad because he kept finding us. I woke up kind of confused cuz I was like whereee did that come from, and was even more confused when I remembered that he’s dead now. What the hey?