Category: Italy

The Classroom Experience at Lorenzo De Medici

Published on by Claudia CutlerLeave a comment

I have officially reached my fourth week of classes, and – no offense to my previous education – I have never felt so excited to learn! This is mostly because I’m strictly taking classes that I am passionate about, but there are also other elements to it. Before I get into them, I want to mention I am taking four classes: Yoga, Meditation & Spirituality, Advanced Filmmaking, Digital Sketchbook, and World Religions. I am a film major, and the rest are personal interests. Also, if you didn’t know, I am studying at Lorenzo De Medici in Florence, Italy.

All of my professors are born and raised Italians, and they speak English well as most in Florence do. I’ve found that having Italian professors has been helpful in understanding the culture because they will more often than not connect the subject matter to Italian influence. In my digital sketchbook class, we learn how to create art using Adobe Photoshop, but in every other class we spend half of our time exploring the city to sketch statues or architecture (we incorporate our work later at the computer lab). Before my professor lets us spread out and find a spot to sketch, he’ll explain romantic lore about the widow of war waiting in a specific window above the Piazza of the Annunziata. He’ll finish his stories with an emphasis that the truth is up to interpretation – as it is just Italian folklore – and we don’t have to draw that if we don’t want to. He then proceeds to light up a cigarette and disappear to a cafe. The next day I have my film class inside of the Franco Zeffirelli museum, which is a grand display of a renounced Italian filmmaker’s work. To find the bathroom, first I have to get lost in the exhibits of Zeffirelli’s set design masterpieces and life-size mannequins wearing his character’s larger-than-life gowns. I’ll even sit down in the mini theater for a moment and catch a glimpse of whichever one of his films is playing at the moment! Lastly, my yoga professor happens to also be my religion professor, and she is always giving the best museum suggestions to seek out manifestations of what we’re learning in class. I’ve quickly come to the realization that it makes a huge difference to take classes in a location that is full of rich history!

One of the best parts of going to class is how compassionate yet casual my professors are. My digital sketchbook professor has no problem giving me the same advice in different words (I really don’t know how to draw), and it won’t be until I succeed that he admits, “Ah! I was really getting worried but now I am not!”. My film professor is hilarious and not afraid to roast his students’ work, but I prefer it to other teaching approaches because I learn faster. To give an accurate description of his style, in one class he goes, “Okay we’re going to watch a movie now. It is pretty lighthearted, but I want you to pay attention to the cinematography”. He proceeds to put on the Korean film “Old Boy”, leaving everyone in the class appalled and speechless. If you don’t know the movie, just understand there was a unanimous agreement that it is the most disturbing movie we’ve ever watched in our lifetime. However, the screenwriting and cinematography were out of this world, and now I’m inspired to push my filmmaking limits more than ever.

The last point I’ll make about studying in this program is how interesting it is to hear perspectives from international students. Especially in my World Religions class. Half of the class is from outside of America, so their perceptions of popular religions and stigmas are fascinating to compare my own experiences with. All in all, I feel like I’m learning a lot more than I would if I took the same classes in America. It’s pretty amazing!

A day at the beach.

Published on by lhnevarezLeave a comment

For some background, my school abroad, John Cabot University, has optional trips that students can pay to attend, filled with a bunch of activities and exploration. I signed up for a couple, but this trip was to the Italian beach city named Sperlonga.

We packed onto the bus at 8 AM to begin our 2-hour drive and the conversations began with plans of what everyone wanted to do once we got to the beach. It was great to drive down the Italian highways and see the stretching landscapes fall behind us as we left the city and began entering the more rural parts of the country. The quieter areas of Italy have their own charm, especially after spending so much time in the hustle and bustle of a tourist town like Trastevere. It was amazing to see the expansive agriculture and farmlands as we moved further and further from the city as we made our way to Sperlonga. Unfortunately, there is not much to say about the drive beside that because I decided to take a nap to help pass the time until we arrived.

The trip officially began at a museum on top of a hill with olive trees lining some of the outdoor walkways leading to ruins about 15 minutes from the city. The museum, Museo Archeologico Nazionale e Area Archeologica di Sperlonga, held many statues of great significance to the history of Sperlonga and the several other coastal cities due to the mythos behind the Greek and Roman legend of Odysseus. The statues have so much to them that if you allow your imagination to take over, you can picture the events of Odysseus tricking a Cyclops into a drunken sleep before stabbing the Cyclops in the eye to guarantee his and his crew’s safe escape from the Cyclops’ lair. They had other Statues that represented other tale such as Zeus’ transformation into an Eagle to kidnap Ganymede to join him in Olympus. For those who would like to, here are some Statue Pictures I took for you to get a glimpse with brief descriptions of the scenes captured in stone.

After looking at statues inside the museum, we moved onto the ruins of a coastal city as we descended closer to the ocean to enter a cove that was once used for meetings and parties. It was truly a beautiful reminder that nature always manages to outshine humanity’s architecture to create a site that simply takes your breath away. When we got into the cove, the water pool in the middle was mostly clean so it was providing a beautiful reflection of the rocks and people walking around within. If you stood at the back of the cove, you could see the city reflected in the water to create a breathtaking view that I was not able to properly replicate on camera. The tour leader had us do an exercise where we sat in the cove, closed our eyes, and imagined ourselves hundreds and thousands of years ago when bands would come to play within the acoustics that the cove provides and imagine ourselves being a part of the history of the land.

Once we were done experiencing and learning the history of the cove, we moved on to a lounge area that gave us direct access to the beach. We had a quick lunch before going to swim but the sight of the ocean was magnificent. The water was so clean that it sparkled with the sun beating down on it. It was so refreshing to be enveloped by the cool waves and look down and see small fish swimming around our legs as myself and a group of students began passing a volleyball within the water. Every part of the beach was far more beautiful than any beach I had been to in the U.S: the sand had a beautiful ripple pattern that showed under the water that I was not able to capture, the water was incredibly refreshing despite how salty it was, and the horizon seemed to go on forever in a sparkling blue blanket across the Earth.

Finally, after several hours at the beach, we were able to go to the actual city of Sperlonga and the buildings were an amazing white with an open-air market and band setting up as we arrived. The shops and restaurants seemed a bit too “touristy,” but it was still a wonderful area to walk through. While we were there, I was able to spot couple taking their marriage photos. The city had its own magic that made you appreciate the small details and I hope that the couple I saw got to capture some of that magic alongside their love. Sadly, we were only given an hour to actually explore the main plaza, so I was not able to see the city to its fullest but even the parts I saw from afar were amazing.

Unfortunately, everything must have an end and this trip could not be the exception. We left as the sun was setting and the way the ocean changed from a deep blue to a sparkling crimson was something straight out of a movie. It is definitely on my list of places I would like to return to and visit fully but for now, this experience added to my appreciation of the vast history and beauty of this country I am lucky to study in. I hope that my pictures do the city of Sperlonga justice, but I know that no amount of camera work could truly capture the depth of its beauty.