Lugano & Milano!

First of all, your daily glimpse of where I live:

So this is the Villa's Lobby. We hang here when we're ready to go out on excursions, or meet up. 

I know, it's pretty amazing. I don't know if I gave you any background on the Villa Maderni yet, so I'll do a little blurbing now:

The Villa Maderni was commissioned by the mayor of Riva San Vitale, who also happened to be the man that led the small area to become the Republic of Riva San Vitale, for probably about two months. The house is over 200 years old (250 actually), and almost everything but the furniture we use daily is just as old as the house! all of the doors, fireplaces, clocks, floors, and rooms are unaltered and original. A lot of the paintings on the ceilings and of the details on the walls are restored to a similar state. It's amazing to live in a place like this. 

I still can't believe it's real to wake up to all of this! It's so strange to see the alps out your window every time you wake up! (that's the view out my window!)

Alright, so again: we've established this place is gorgeous! 

So Friday night, we went (about 30 of us) to a silent film festival in Lugano which is just north of Riva S. Vitale. We walked around the whole city and into the park area, which is... you guessed it: Gorgeous!

After that little trek in the park, we decided to go hunting for a bar, or a club, or anything really. Well, I decided to play sheep for this one, and let the more...intense personalities take the lead. Let's just say we walked around forever. I think that would cover it!

In the end we did make it to the bar, where we spent a lot of the night, just hanging out and having a couple drinks. A lot of us are still getting to know each other (aka the business kids are still getting to know us, and we're still getting to know some of them-- there are a lot more of them!). So then we split a little bit: about ten people went home, and the rest of us elected to stay to go to a club and take the train back early. Well, split we did, but approx. 15 people is still a lot to take from place to place. I swear we look like a mob wherever we go!

It was a ton of fun, and I (typically) spent the whole night dancing. All in all, it's not bad to spend hours walking around when the place you're walking in happens to look like that 

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Eventually we did find our way back to Riva San Vitale (at 4:30 in the morning!!!)

Saturday was (thankfully) low-key, and we spent most of it just hanging out at the Villa. I think everyone needed a break. I went back to the Lido (which is actually how it's spelled, and also how it's pronounced, so please excuse my misspellings from earlier posts) and Julie and I just swan around for a while, trying to ignore the preteen boys being obnoxious (I guess that's the same in every country).

Later that night we started a puzzle of the map of switzerland, but needless to say, that one's going to take a while!!  Everyone just wanted to do something fun (not to mention cheap) so we decided to have a night game of capture the flag. About 20 of us ended up playing, and it was pretty cool. We played in the local elementary school grounds, which is cooler than it sounds. My team won 2 out of 3, so that's enough to make anyone happy!

We called it a night pretty early (especially compared to Friday night) because we were all getting up early to get to go to Milan in the morning at 8 AM!

So today was Milano, and it was really fun. It wasn't too exciting, as we mainly did a fast moving tour of the city. We're supposed to go back with a smaller group, but this time was just a feet wetting for the urban setting. Thankfully, we reverted back to 5th grade and adopted the buddy system. What else can you do when you have 50 people through the streets of Milan?!

So Will was my main buddy, 

(that's him napping beside a bridge when we took a bar break halfway through the day). We basically whipped our cameras out and played complete tourists. It was great. I mean, what else can you do in a mob of so obviously American students?

So this next week we spend in classes and it's Bellinzona on the 29th! 

So until then, Ciao!!

I'll leave you with a picture of the Duomo in Milano [the fourth largest cathedral in the world!]

A little walk around...

So I promised I'd have a couple pictures for you, and so today I'll begin by putting in a couple pictures of the Villa, and the grounds. 

It's been ridiculously hot here for the Ticino, so on Wednesday, we all went to the Leito (beach in Italian) to cool off. I think the whole town was there! 

We mostly kept to ourselves, though I know that once I know more than 5 words in Italian, I'll feel better about going up to them. 

I only know one whole sentence, and that is: Vorrei uno bicchiere di vino bianco, or, "I would like a glass of white wine."

I know, just the important stuff, right?

We started classes yesterday though, and we'll spend an hour sketching each day. I think there's a sort of theme here, where we do each project twice. That means every sketch twice, every project twice. I think it must be about the process. 

There is an elementary school by Galfetti about 50 Meters from the Villa, and we've been sketching that for the last two days (including this morning) though we've been assigned a block of Riva San Vitale per person, and we'll sketch that block the whole semester. My block happens to include the Temple di Santa Croce (my Italian is atrocious, I'm sure), which I'm ecstatic about sketching- it'll be hard to do well, so I'm really glad I've got a whole semester to sketch it!

I love living in the villa so far, though I keep on sleeping through my alarm, because at 7 o'clock AM, the bells at the church ring for mass. It is so intensly loud, that I can't help but sleep through my alarm that goes off at 7:45. Luckily enough, the bells ring again at 8:15. 

It's my own personal alarm and snooze, I suppose.

This just happens to be the view from the computer room attached to the studio. It's from the top floor of the villa, and yes, those beautiful bells would be the bane of my dreams.

So we've established that the Ticino is beautiful... but it's incredibly surreal to wake up to a view like this!

It's impressive to say the least, and from my studio desk, the dome and tower of the Sante Croce are just visible over the classic, tiled roofs of the Ticino. 

All of this, painted against the Alps, stretching off into the sky.

Like, I said...It's kinda pretty here.

Tonight we are going to Lugano, which is a little north of Riva. There's a film festival, and I'm assuming this means, wine, music, and nice weather. So I hope that I'm right about it. 

So for now, I'll bid you adieu, because I need to be at the train station at 7:40

Ciao!!