To sum up how the rest of the week went,
Butoh, was great and I didn’t write about it due to having a Italian midterm
mid-week (it went fine) and needing to memorize my part for acapella. Some
highlights from the Butoh classes include finding our fishies (an exercise
where our center of gravity was controlled by a fish swimming in our body that
we had no control over. This ended up being a lot tougher than it sounds,
especially with all of the modified versions we did too), Mark telling us
stories from his past (like how Pina Bausch would notice any little fidget they
would do and then have them repeat it a ton or make a dance from it and the
time that he was taking a dance class and suddenly realized that the classmate
who was dripping sweat during plies, doing one pirouette and then seven, and
jumping very high was Baryshnikov), doing slow no-contact rolls over each other
while two people walked behind being old ladies, having ballet barre work on
Thursday and Friday, and pulling literally everything we did together on
Thursday to make a show for Friday.
For the show, we ended up doing the singing
exercise, some sternum rolls on the wall, our four floor movements, the slow
rolling and two old ladies walking, improvs based on movement we did, slow
walking with butterflies for one hand, various fish exercises, a circle dance
of small fidget gestures in homage to Pina, a combination Mark taught us
combined with a name exercise, and a slow walk to bow. Overall the show went
very well and everyone in the audience seemed to absolutely adore it (I’ve
never received such a long applause before in my life!). However, during the
slow walk with butterflies, I was concentrating so hard on my gaze that my eyes
started to water so badly that it looked like I was crying the entire time I
was walking…and then my nose started dripping too from the stress of holding
the gaze. However, due to the mood of the piece, I could definitely not move at
all to wipe anything so the long walk became absolutely torturous as I tried
keep my concentration up without dripping to much or laughing from the
absurdity of it all. Luckily, everyone I’ve talked to didn’t notice a thing,
and I’m hoping that the video doesn’t show it clearly either.
Afterwards, Mark and Mitsuru gave us all
carnations and we gave them a card with our names and fish to thank them for
such an amazing week. I’m so sad to see them go; it was such an enlightening
and enjoyable week.
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| Group photo before the performance. Mark is front left and Misturu front right. |
However, today I didn’t get a lot of time to
mope since I took a day trip to Assisi!
From Arezzo, Assisi is about an hour and a
half by train. Since I wanted to get there before noon, I ended up getting up
pretty early to take the 9:14 train. It turned out to be really good that I did
since, once I arrived, I then had to wait about 30 minutes to catch the bus
into town, then decided to hike to the complete opposite side of the city in
order to begin to follow the path suggested by my guide book (and which would
also end back where I needed to catch the bus to the station), and then got
really lost trying to find the first landmark.
After walking up and down one street over
four times, finding a really nice Umbria viewing point, and bumping into an
Italian couple looking for the same thing (I couldn’t give them directions, but
they found it first anyways), I finally found the old Roman amphitheater. It
turns out that it actually is an old amphitheater turned into a neighborhood,
which may be part of the reason I walked right by it twice (I was looking for
signs and there were none!). However, it was pretty and charming, but not worth
the trouble it took to find it.
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| The roman amphitheater |
From there, I then walked back the way I came
(I now was absolutely sure of where I was) to reach the Cathedral of San
Rufino. Unfortunately, my getting lost meant that I arrived at the Church just
as it was closing briefly for lunch so I decided to go with the flow and do
lunch then (it helped that I was REALLY hungry at that point too). I ended up
stopping in a café for a sandwich and fries and then getting gelato nearby. By
the time I had bought the gelato, I still had a good 30-minute wait till the
church opened again, so I decided to hike up the hill to Rocca Magiore to see
the supposedly great view.
And it was not only a great view; it was a
phenomenal view! From the front, you could see Assisi spread out below you and
then Umbria flow out from it. If you then hiked down around to the side/back
you could see the valley below and the great hills rising up from them nearby.
Both were great views, and I thoroughly enjoyed sitting in the sun, eating my
gelato, and basking in the wonder of the scenery.
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| View from the front |
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| View from the front |
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| View from the back |
Eventually I had gone past the 30-minute
timer I had set, and I climbed back down the hill to go to the church. I
honestly enjoyed the outside decorations to the inside, but it was really
interesting to see the glass panels in the floor that showed some of the
original structures from the old 9th century church that used to be
in that space.
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| Cathedral of San Rufino |
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| Inside the church |
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| Fun statue outside of the church |
Continuing on the route the book suggested (I
really wasn’t a huge fan of the book’s suggestions and poor directions at that
point, but didn’t really care where I went so I followed it anyways), I then went
through some medieval back alleyways where I saw people of about my age
measuring things with tape measurers for the upteenth time. I attempted to find
out what they were doing, but my poor grasp of Italian got me as far as “it is
for school.” Oh well!
I then walked to the Basilica of St. Clare.
Inside I was again rather not impressed, though I was a little saddened to see
how little remained of the original frescos and how the paint had faded over
time (this turned out to be a problem in every church I went to in Assisi).
Downstairs, in the tomb of St. Clare, the frescos looked better maintained, but
still weren’t that exciting. Besides the bones and creepy wax version of St.
Clare, there were also clothing she owned, a lock of her hair (…is it bad that
I find that a little gross?), and a tunic of St. Francis stained by his blood
when he received the stigmata (also ew and ow).
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| Basilica of St. Clare |
Feeling a little creeped out by
and feeling sorry for the saints, I then took the road back to the main center
of Assisi, Piazza del Comune. Besides the view from Rocca Magiore, this was one
of my favorite parts of the trip. The Temple of Minerva/Christian Church in the
piazza ended looking like it was trying too hard to be interesting (though the
old columns outside were pretty), but I ended up finding a cool fountain, a
giant horse statue, and a random side tunnel street with old frescos all over
the ceiling that were amazing.
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| Fountain |
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| Temple of Minerva/Christian Church |
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| Horse Statue |
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| Tunnel with amazing old frescos |
From the piazza, I then took some side
streets down to the church of Santo Stephano (the church wasn’t that impressive
but the walk there was gorgeous and their garden was adorable), and, from
there, took Via San Francesco to the Basilica of St. Francis.
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| Santo Stephano |
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| Santo Stephano |
Now the basilica was really impressive from
the outside and inside just due to sheer size (I really want to know how long
it took to cover both the upper and lower basilica entirely with frescos), but
the style of the frescos was pretty boring so I ended up moving through the
building pretty quickly. However, there were a few points of interest that I
noted. The first was a fresco of St. Francis receiving the stigmata that I had
seen in another church earlier but couldn’t remember which one, a fresco of a
crucifixion done upside down (I don’t really know my Christian symbols, but
isn’t that one considered bad?), a fresco where it looked like baby Jesus was
asking Mary for something and she was saying “No, and get the hell out of here”
by jerking her thumb in one direction, and a room near the tomb of St. Francis
completely covered in Stars of David.
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| Basilica of St. Francis |
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| Star of David in Lower Basilica |
Once outside, however, I found a door
completely covered in monsters and grotesque figures that I completely adored.
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| On the door |
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| On the door |
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| On the door |
I then walked around the rest of the grounds of the basilica and then headed
back to the bus stop. After waiting a bit, I then rode the bus back to the
station. Unfortunately, when I bought my ticket, it turned out that I had about
an hour to kill before the train arrived. So I walked from the station to Santa
Maria degli Angeli, which was about five minutes away.
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| Santa Maria degli Angeli |
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| Santa Maria degli Angeli |
Again, the inside of the church was not that
impressive (too much plain white), though I really enjoyed the random small
stone church within the church (INCEPTION!) that housed a lock of St. Clare’s
hair (again, ew) and a beautiful old painting. The painting contained several
scenes, but the one I loved was of an angel kneeling near a woman who was posed
like a shy young lover being flattered. Besides the wonderful expressions, the
angel (and all of the angels in the painting) had wings as colorful as a
tropical bird (mostly orange in his/her case though I saw one with blue wings).
Besides the wonderful painting, I also had
fun people watching since there turned out to be a TON of little girls in
uniforms with ladybug yarmulkes and flags walking around. Apparently, they are
the Italian girl scouts, but I only just found this out by searching online.
From the church, I still had some time left,
so I sat by a fountain nearby and read my tour book for a bit. I then went back
to the train station, waited, took the train back (with a full-blown migraine
blossoming, unfortunately. I almost fell asleep a few times because of it), and
then got a panino kebab and a croissant for dinner (both were so good) before
heading back to the villa.
Luckily the headache is gone now and I’m just
relaxing in the villa (though I need to go do work soon). Look out for another
post very soon, exciting things are happening tomorrow in Arezzo!
Ciao!
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