First things first, yes that title makes sense. Ok now on to other things
Lets see....This week has been super busy, hence why i have not been keeping up with my posting. Just about every single day we have a class or lecture in the morning, then another class, lecture, or trip somewhere in the city in the afternoon. That coupled with the long walk to and from our apartment after every event keeps me pretty well beat. So what has happened since I have gotten here.
Well first of all, the weather is pretty much the same as in Rome. Instead of 75 and sunny everyday it is about 85 and sunny. There has been no rain as of yet, at least that i can remember, and the morning tend to be cooler then in Rome but it heats up later in the day.
On Tuesday we had our first class on Machiavelli in the morning, which was utterly amazing. We discussed his ideas of Virtue, a new style of Republic, and human nature, all of which I find fascinating. After class we headed back to our apartment and found our nearest supermarket so we could buy some food. After relaxing for the next 45mins we walked the 30mins back to the Accent building and had a lecture about the history of Florence. It turned more into a lecture about the art history of Florence, which was actually ok because i have gathered a growing interest in art because of the this trip, and I know next to nothing. Thanks to the lecture i learned a lot about the different styles of renaissance art, and also learned that almost all of Florence's famous landmarks are actually Medieval in nature instead of renaissance.
The next day was tons of fun. We went to the Medici chapel in the morning which is the private chapel that the family built on the back of the church that they had built with their own money. The church is called San Lorenzo which is a patron saint of the family. We had the same guy who gave us the lecture the day before give us a tour and he was great and knew so much! The biggest thing that we learned is about a stone called Porphyry. It almost like a purple marble, except its much harder and very rare. (how rare and hard is it?) well its so hard that if you try to chisel it, the chisel will break. Its so rare that it doesnt exist anymore in nature, so its worth more than gold. Almost all of it was mined in Egypt under the Romans, and all of it now is recycled from Roman ruins. Because of the rarity it was known as the Imperial stone and related to royalty, and the Medici tombs where covered in it. It was all over the place! so that just speaks to how much wealth that they had. There was also another room and tomb designed by Michelangelo. And we learned the story of how the Medici rose to power and its a very godfather-esq story, which made it even better! After that we had class later in the day, after which the day got even better. After class it was 5 and me and my friends were hungry as was our professor, however a place that was recommended to us was not open till 7 so instead we bought some drinks and went back to our professor's apartment and talked in his garden (yes his apartment has a garden! its really nice!!). So we talked for about 2 hours and then went to eat. The place was very Italian and fancy and we had to ask what everything on the menu was. Brandon ended up getting ravioli with octopus with it. FANCY! We talked about our majors, things that interested us, and other random things. We stayed there till 11. yep we spent 6 hours with our professor and had a blast.
Ugh I cant blog anymore right now. I'll post the rest tomorrow.
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