I Giorni Successivi

Here's what's going on in the next few days.

Tomorrow, instead of my normal classes here at VIU, I'm instead going to Ca' Foscari University, the main letters university of Venice, and I'm meeting up with some friends from the VIU program who have lessons there. I'm going to Elena's Canadian Literature course, which should be kind of interesting because it takes place in English... then I'm going to check out the library and go with Elena on a few bureaucratic errands. There's an Italian lit class in the afternoon that I'm thinking about going to as well. Unfortunately, all this means I'll have to wake up super early at 7. Oh well.

Tomorrow evening, we have a night visit to the Basilica of San Marco which should be cool.

No plans for the other days. I've gotten all my work done for the week so I can chill for now... although I need to fix my Shakespeare essay idea, which needs textual references from both the Merchant of Venice AND Othello (who knew? My English professor at BC never told us to "cross the streams" as it were. Yes, that's a Ghostbusters reference).

Some of my friends are just frenetically working, especially the ones in the Globalization program. A lot of the students, especially the Italians, are 24 and 25, and the professor is only 27! So they have to use the more formal "lei" when speaking with him, even though some of the students have siblings or boyfriends/girlfriends older than him!

I had a fun conversation about animated movies with the Italian students... hearing what the names for Disney movies in Italian is was really cool. Il Re Leone = the Lion King, La Sirenetta = The Little Mermaid. The movie Monsters vs. Aliens, which came out recently, is called Mostri contro Alieni, but neither Francesca or Giorgia knew about it... they confused it with Alien vs. Predator, which I said was a little different... just a little.

It was raining earlier today but now the sun has come out. Actually, speaking of movies, I went into Venice with my BC bud John to go to the movies. There's a film called Disastro a Hollywood, with Robert DeNiro, it's an American film. Actually we were curious to see if DeNiro did his own dubbing (which i should add, the Italians prefer to subtitles, a lot). But anyway, yesterday was acqua alta, and somehow we missed the memo. We delayed before going to the cinema, and realized that the water was just rising and rising... so we decided to go home instead of going to see the movie. I was actually really scared we weren't going to be able to get back... because seriously, Piazza San Marco floods like crazy, and in fact, the water was over a foot high when we got to the Piazza. And the only way to get to San Zaccaria, where our station is, is going on the passarelle, wooden footbridges. And what annoying tourists taking useless nighttime photos on the passarelle, blocking our way when we need to hurry to the vaporetto! So yeah, it was crazy. This morning though, talking with the Italian students, we heard that the water reached a meter high. Unfortunately they were studying together until 2 AM, and then they had some problems trying to get back to their own apartments. It's a sign if even the Italians get stuck in the acqua alta ... that is, you can't control it.

Let's see... no travel plans this weekend, in fact, I'm not going anywhere until Sicilia. I'm just going to stay in Veneto, it's really nice. On Monday, I'm going to the Collezione Guggenheim, which is maybe the most famous art collection in Venice, collected by the kinda weird American lady Peggy Guggenheim. But there's a special thing next Monday... you pay 7 euro, which gives you a pass for 2 spritz (the typical drink of Veneto) and you can go in the museum. Cool huh? I can't wait.

So anyway, that's all for now. Sorry if this post turned out to be a little more random than anticipated. Oh well. And everyone in the states... take care with that Swine Flu thing.

Andrew