chigi palace

today was a little uneventful. we learned a lot about the palace. tommy and cinzia talked to us for a very long time in the morning reviewing the syllabus and talking about impression management and how we are perceived by the italians. it was really good.

we broke for lunch and we all went to a small restaurant that cinzia recommended. here is where i met my new husband (sorry jordon). he is about 6'0" tall, bald, and 60 years old. he was with his wife. but that didnt stop him! he kept coming over to the table offering us bread, trying to tell us how to make bruschetta with it. he spoke broken english and was biting his hand in the "oh my gosh" way and pointing at me. it was the funniest thing ever.

in the afternoon we headed over to the palace where we met maurizio who is one of our teachers and the director of the program, francesco who is the museum curator and our art history teacher, and susanna who works in the museum and used to have cinzia's job. maurizio speaks really good english and was fun to talk to. francesco was hilarious. he was cracking jokes the entire time, but he's incredibly smart. he studied architecture in rome in college and then went back to school for art history because he loved it so much. so now he's the museum curator.

they gave us the tour of the palace where we saw the big events room and the chapel. then we went up to the tower where we were able to overlook all of ariccia and albano when the sun was setting. it was beautiful. then maurizio took us to our classroom and handed out more information booklets for class.

this is in the chapel at the chigi palace

it is the ONLY fresco that bernini ever signed

very very very famous

its of joseph with baby jesus

the altar in the chapel

the ceiling of the chapel in the chigi palace

we went up in the tower at sunset in the palace

so beautiful

the church across from the palace

pictures of cardinals

they're trying to restore them

after all of this cinzia took us to the supermarket so that we could buy groceries. i got some things, but it was really difficult shopping without brand names that i recognize. usually when i go into the grocery store i know what i like and i pick it up quickly. but i cant do that here! i had to browse around for forever and figure out what looked good and how much it cost. quite the long trip to the supermarket. but i got a lot of food to hold me over the rest of this week/weekend.

then i had to do my homework. we have all been assigned different topics throughout the semester that we must be "experts of the day" on. tomorrow we are going to the towns around ariccia and i have frascati. so i had to research all about the town so that i can print off a handout and speak about it for around 5 minutes. it's pretty interesting. maybe ill post my homework later.