Oh Roma! Part One!

So, Roma was amazing! We all had so much fun, and I know it was the best part for most of us! Oh, the adventures we had in Rome. Lets see what happened :)
We got to Rome Sunday around noon. After we all got packed we went to the Piazza Norvana, which has the Fountain of the Four Rivers by Bernini! It was pretty sweet.

Then it was on to the Pantheon, which is amazingly amazing!

Then some of us decided to get something to eat, and we happened apon a McDonald's! The McD's in Italia has an amazing meal called the Crispy McBacon! And we all ordered it! It was pretty good for McDonalds! Yay first burger in a month!

After our lunch break it was off to the Trevi Fountain!

Our coins we threw in!We all took pics of ourselves while we threw in our coins and made our wish!So pret-ty! (people laugh at me because I pronounce my t's ha ha) :)

From the Trevi Fountain we wandered apon the Trajan's coloumn and the ruins of the Roman Market Place. Where we also met some.... Interesting gladiators...

The Trajan's Column, and a close up of the details. Its just unthinkable how someone would do this... but amazing!Said to be the market placeThe crazy Roman guys that Charity wanted a pic with! Ha ha they were funny!Me and Rachel with the Gladiators!

Kris with the Romans! Love it!Then to the Colleseum!Me and Rachel touching the Colleseo!

Inside the Colleseo!Constantine's Arch!So, this was the first part of Rome! Sorry I didn't upday sooner, but we had no, zip, zero internet connection! Stay tuned for the Oh Roma, Part Two, coming tonight!

Ciao! Kaci and Charity

Catch up day!

So I finally got done packing! We're off to Rome bright and early tomorrow! I thought I would go ahead and write a second blog of the day, to catch you guys up on whats been happening the past week. I know I won't have time in Rome, way to many things to see, I'll be writing about those amazing things!
Ok, lets start off with the day trip we took to Sansepolcro and Arezzo. We learned a lot about the artist Pieoro della Francesca. He has many wonderful works such as, The Resurrection 1492, Madonna of Mercy 1462 (one of my favorite), Baptism of Christ, Death of Adam (I like this one a lot too), etc.. In these paintings you really see the perspective starting to show. It's quite interesting.
From Sansepolcro we went to Arezzo, a beautiful town. It was also where they filmed the movie Life is Beautiful (which is amazing and you should definitely go rent it if you haven't seen it!). We did some shopping while we were there, of which I got not one but two bathing suits! yay!
Cathedral of Arezzo
Arezzo
Arezzo
So, after all of this we got on the bus to drive back to our home of Montone. We were just riding along....... when we heard a horrible sound..... we had a flat. And I have some awesome pics of how we passed the time on the side of the road!
Our flat :(
How I passed the time... Ha ha of course.
How Denny passed the time away. haha
How our amazing bus driver passed the time away.
How the snail colony we found passed their time away :)
And the rest of us just played with the snails to pass the time :)
Eventually our awesome bus driver fixed the wheel and we were safely transported to our destination of the Fortebraccio!
Another adventure we had was when we hiked up a mountain called Mt. Bestia (the beast!) ok ok... Maybe not a mountain, but it was a kind of steep hill! We hiked to the top to paint our quaint village of Montone from afar! On the way there we had some interesting going ons. First off Bryce decided to help us forget our walk ahead by making us laugh!

He did this by doing some sort of gorilla dancing or walking or something. It was quite hilarious!
Then I tried to take a picture of a pretty blue flower, and got attacked by a crazy killer bee! The bees are very harassing here in Italia. And finally we made it to the top where we started our work.
Our water colors!
Rachel and Kris painting and smiling! :)
Carl getting situated.
Our beloved Montone. Which we will miss. I can't believe it's our last day. :(
Well, I tried to catch you guys up. I didn't get quite all of it in there, but it's time to change for dinner. And maybe a night out on the town since it's our last :)

Ciao!
Kaci and Charity :)

Last days in Montone...

Well, today is our last day in the quaint village of Montone... I am a little sad, but the excitement of Rome is still over powering my sadness. It probly hasn't hit me that we're leaving either. Maybe it will when I pack later today, eventually, ha ha.
The art show went well :) Our linolium (don't make fun of my spelling) prints sold the best, which of course made made Denny smile. Our show turned out better than we expected I believe. Yay! Here are some pics of some of our finito work!









Today we have a date with our last gelato in Montone! So, there will be more pictures later! Chow, as my father would say! Kaci and Charity

Florence and Montone:Oh the Excitement!!

So, just thought I would update on the whole picture thing seeing as how we don't have too many of them up. :]  Below consists of ....interesting.. pictures from an evening in Montone, and also a few from Florence.  Enjoy!!

Below:

Kaci, Brian, and Kris touching the "creepy door." ....which is actually the door to an old prison in Montone where they beheaded their prisoners above!! Yay!!

Professors Denny and Bryce taking a delightful car ride back to Montone from dinner.  There wasn't enough room in the car, so we had to kind of.... squish, as you can see below.  Denny absolutely loved the entire thing.  No complaining whatsoever.  Haha! 

The Uffizi, which we toured on the second day in Florence.  I almost cried when I saw Sandro Botticelli's work.  I really got inspired in there. :]
The Gates of Paradise on the doors to the Baptismal.
The Dome of the Duomo.  Brunelleschi's Dome, to be precise.  Apparently it was a tough walk up.... of which I did not have the joy of experiencing.  Kaci and I assumed the line would be super long, so we took our time at what we were doing, and by the time we got there to meet some of the others, they were already inside.  Sad day.
The tower of the Duomo.  Which also looks like a tough climb, but none of us got to experience that joy either.
Me, Kaci, and Perry Jo standing in front of the copy of David outside the Uffizi.
Copy of Michelangelo's David.
And some other copies of which I have yet to look up the names for.  I knew them when I saw them, but..... forgot.  Sorry, guys.

OH MY GOSH!  This guy was hilarious.  He was dressed as cupid, and kept winking and waving at people to come over and drop money into his little basket.  I didn't do it, but I stole a picture of him anyway. :]
Well, that's it for now.  I'm hungry and we're going to the Pizzaria tonight!!!!! YAY!

Ciao,

Charity and Kaci

Update!

So, I know we're in Italia, and we seem to just be going and traveling and having a good ole time, but lets see... what was the real reason we're here? oh, yes! Classes, thats right. Well, I thought I would do a little update on just how our classes are going. I don't have a lot of pictures of our work, but I'm working on it. So, I'll show some more pics later.
When we first arrived, the classes... were... interesting... We had some issues getting started, well I did anyways. But now everything is coming together. I was very excited to see one of my paintings finishing up rather nicely today! We have been working hard though.
We have been working on print making that past two days, yeah... lets say thats been interesting too. Our supplies are limited for that field; so we're still trying to get some good prints.
This is our first couple of days when we were just drawing.
This is Bogi working on her bellisimo painting!
This is Isabella (Matteo and Rebecca's daughter) helping us clean off our printing blocks!
Oh, and heres a fun pic from Rachel's twenty-first birthday party! We all dressed up!

And this is Rachel on the phone with our beloved Gary of whom we miss so much! He called to wish her a happy birthday!

Well thats all for now, come again! We still have to post the pics of the rest of Florence so get ready!

Ciao!
Kaci and Charity :)

Oh, bella Firenze!

So we have been in Florence since yesterday morning, oh what a couple of days! When we first began our adventure in Florence we went to a walkthrough, or to us a marathon, of the Uffizi and Duomo... We stopped to take a few pictures of the city lifestyle; of which some of us had missed so dearly. As shown above! We went to many beautiful places such as: The Academia, Uffizi, San Lorenzo, Santa Maria Novella... But these adventures will be coming soon with pictures! We just wanted to let you know what we've been up to! We still don't have a good internet connection, blah!.... Ciao! Time for dinner!

Kaci and Charity

Si Si Assisi! Silencio!

So Saturday we went to the beautiful quaint town of Assisi.

We had many interesting encounters while we were there. It all started with Charity lusting after all the very, oh so cute Italian boys! Isabella on the otherhad (Rebecca and Matteo's daughter) decided to chase the pigeons instead of boys it was adorable! We had an awesome shopping spree while we were in Assisi! The first thing Charity and I bought were these amazing scarves to match our outfits! Then we found some leather bound journals that we had to have! I bought a knife and the man that sold it to me said that I speak perfect Italian! I was pretty stoked! At the end of the day we went to get some yummy yummy gelato! As we sat down to eat this wonderful creation, Perri Jo told us an interesting story that happened to her in this quaint town of Assisi.

She told us how they were trying to feed the birds, and an Italian called her an 'idioto Americano' for feeding the pigeons. Then later in the day she was called a 'stupid Italian' by an American. You might say she had a rough day, but it turned out for a funny story.

As we walked through the town we encountered both Jesus and a green monk. (These were two men posing as statues) We took pictures of the monk and gave him some euros and he blessed us with the ringing of his bell and by giving us a piece of paper with inspiring words written upon it, of which Charity had to fight desperately for. This monk had a sense of humor, which was quite entertaining to watch!

Now about the things we actually went there to see...

Church of St. Claire

The only pic I got inside...
The next was the church of St. Francesco (I forgot how to spell it)

I know there aren't as many pictures of the churches (that were amazing and beautiful) but we couldn't take any pictures inside... :( Oh, and they also had monks inside the Francesco that kept saying, 'silencio! shhhhhh.... silence!!!' into a microphone every ten minutes. Which we all kind of laughed at. But it was an amazing place!

Ciao for now!

Kaci and Charity :)