Chiesa di Santo Spirito

Day 4 senza internet. I vacillate between going crazy and feeling a semblance of inner calm. I find myself having so much more free time to do things like yoga, studying, reading, and thinking -- pastimes that are clearly more beneficial than uploading pictures on Facebook, but not as important as emailing my friends and family back home! 

My day went as follows:

• wake up, phone Wind re: internet. Am told that I need to present a summary of my credit card balance to verify that the transaction went through as their records show otherwise 
• throw a tiny hissy-fit. Luckily Posh is away this week so I don’t embarrass myself or lose a friend by showing my true colours in our shared bedroom 
• take my sweet time getting ready since the bathroom and kitchen are all mine and I don’t have to rush to walk with my roomies (a ritual I liked but was always late for!); Killer has afternoon classes and as mentioned before, Posh is away and Rob has gone home 
• check my email at school. Find an email from Wind that says my transaction went through. Print the email as proof. Was kind of hoping that it hadn’t gone through so that I could prepay a lesser amount at the store 
• after class, go to Il Pizzaiuolo with 3 classmates. I’ve had pizza almost 5 days in a row now since I went to the same restaurant with my roomies on Thursday night and had been finishing off leftovers since. I ordered the Calabrese and it was delicious. Next time I will either get the Sciuè Sciuè or Bomba. They’re pricier but much more special! (As an aside, the chairs literally gave my bum splinters and I had to awkwardly try removing them without looking like I had a social problem) 
• I go home and ask Killer if I can borrow her internet key for 15 minutes so that I can check my Visa account. Unfortunately transactions don’t show up until upwards of a week after 
• head to Wind, the bane of my existence, with my new German roomie Stefanie as she needs to buy an internet key. We rush afterwards to school for the 
• tour of Chiesa di Santo Spirito in Oltrarno. Inside are works by Filippino Lippi and Michelangelo, among others, and the artwork shows evolution from gothic to renaissance to baroque. The highlight was Michelangelo’s crucifix which I was told was the first sculpture to have a well-defined 360 degree view. The body was modelled after the cadavre of a 14-year old boy (Michelangelo had to study anatomy by observing cadavres!) and shows torsion. It’s a sculpture that presents something new in every angle and though simple and small, it’s definitely a masterpiece. 

Then we zipped by a few of the paintings, all of which were commissioned by rich families that lived near the church during the Renaissance (the Palazzo Pitti, where the Medicis lived, is just a short walk away). There are also copies of Michelangelo’s Pietà (the original is in the Vatican) and Cristo Risorto. 

I didn’t take more pictures in the church because photos aren’t allowed. I did, however, sneak the one of the cross above because the guard wasn’t looking. 

(PS. to Pleuve: the homeless people were still in front of the church)

It was quite windy and cold compared to this morning but I still had to return the DVDs from last week so I went to the library. In their place I rented Run Lola Run and Big Fish. I’ve seen them both before but will plan to watch them in Italian sometime this week.

When I got home I did some yoga in my room while listening to some Damien Rice. The hardest part is remembering the sequence of positions. The second part is not injuring myself since I do everything in my flipflops on a hardwood floor, so lots of sliding is involved. I tried doing dolphin plank on Saturday and Sunday and got a bit of a bruise on my elbow (why just one I do not know).

Then I went into the kitchen to make a very light dinner and ended up studying with Stefanie for 2 hours. She’s in the same class as me so we went over our homework together once we finished. While I was reading my other Italian book, I read out a small German phrase (nicht wahr = isn't it true?) that I came across and was pleased to hear from her that my German pronunciation was good, especially since Rob used to mock me or say she didn’t understand what I was saying. Either Stefanie is super nice or I have somehow learned German by osmosis. This is encouraging.

Today’s word of the day is piuttosto. It doesn’t mean what you think if what you think is “more toast”. Rather, it means “rather”!