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| Okay, I'm back. Overall, the trip was good. I met great people and learned a lot, but I am *very* glad to be home. Here are a few pictures from various parts of Italy. I will probably post more later, as I don't have all of my pictures on my computer yet (it's a long story, to sum up, I had camera problems). There is really too much to say to post a trip recap. If you'd like details, come down to Cincinnati and I will tell you all about it. Or, you could just call me. Or I could call you. Or, if you don't really care, you can just look at these pictures. Whichever.
Not a great picture, but this is the front of the main building at the American Academy
The Forecourt. Walking in for the first time was amazing. The pictures do not do it justice.
The Courtyard (where we ate meals)
One of two rooftop terraces
View of Rome and the Alban hills from the roof. We often sat up here with a bottle of wine at night.
Etruscan tombs at Cerveteri
Temple of Apollo at Ostia
Greyhounds on a sarcophagus in the Capitoline Museum - they look just like Percy!
Me in front of the Maritime Theatre at Hadrian's villa outside of Tivoli
Me in front of the Temple of Mars Ultor in Augustus' forum - I was so excited to be *in* the imperial fora!
Looking at mosaics in S. Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna
One of many multiple burials at S. Severo (the church where I was excavating)
The Medieval kiln that I excavated my last week on the site (with Roman funerary inscription inside). This was a really fun project.
Shops built onto the side of the basillica in Ferrara
Giant leaning tower that I climbed in Bologna
View from the top
At the top of the tower with Nick, one of the guys from the trip. I was feeling exhausted and more than a bit nervous about being so high up in a leaning tower.
Lido di Dante (Dante's Beach), where we stayed while digging. Our house is the one closest to the camera.
The view from our top floor balcony, with the Adriatic sea in the background and our van in the foreground
The American Academy team on our last day at the dig. From left to right the people in the top row are, Susan (Emory), Will (Wisconsin at Madison), Nick (Oxford), Beth (Emory), Nic Terrenato (our professor, from Chapel Hill), Greg (Berkeley), and James (Columbia). The people in the bottom row are Carolyn (Berkeley), Lynley (Toronto), John (UT Austin), me, and Laurie (Duke). Even though we were such a small group, we all got along really well. There was pretty much no drama, even though we were together 24 hours a day.
Okay, I think that those are enough for now. Can you tell that I liked staying at the Academy the best? I also loved my trip to Verona and Venice, so I'm sure I'll post some pictures from that when I get them.
Was that okay, Tiff?
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| Just a quick update from the American Academy-
If you want postcards from Italy, email me your address (my full married name without a period between the two names at gmail). I didn't think to bring any addresses with me. I also didn't think to bring the cord that connects my camera to a computer, so Nate had to pay $45 to send it. Stupid post office.
I'm keeping busy here. We get to do a lot of climbing around on temples and in tombs - yay! Being connected to the Academy gives us access to restricted areas, which is very fun. The Academy itself is amazing, perhaps indescribable. It's really pretty hard to take in; I think I might have even more appreciation for it when the program is over. Lou Reed is sadly not in residence this month, but there are many interesting people living here.
In a week and a half we head to Ravenna to excavate. This weekend another one of the girls in the program and I are going to Tivoli to check out the Villas there (the most famous of which belonged to the emperor Hadrian). Nearly everyone else is headed to Pompeii, where they are going to stay in the lovely poolside rooms at the (brace yourself, Larkin) - Hotel Villa d'Mysteries! When they told me which hotel they had booked, I just laughed. I hope they like trains running five feet from the window.
Okay, send addresses!
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| First of all, bah on all of you nay-sayers! Perseus loved his cake, so you can just say nay elsewhere.
Secondly, since this weblog is rapidly becoming the "Alli's Pets" show, here is another pet post.
Percy's birthday gift arrived today - two new and snazzy collars! The first is black and white checkers. It's very "The Ska Parade;" I would have been *really* into it in the ninth grade. The second is a retro brown with colored dots, which reminds me of Boogie Nights, disturbing as that is.
I tried to arrange a modeling session, but it didn't go as planned. First, Percy got very excited when I picked up a collar, thinking that we were going outside (he doesn't wear a collar in the house, because the hair on his throat is so fine that they rub it off). When he realized that we weren't going outside, he decided to pout:
"No, I will not cooperate. Instead, I will hide behind this chair."
Then Caesar decided to claim the chair for his own.
And of course, Percy ran away.
"Ha-ha, Caesar wins the day!"
"Can't we just go outside? Look how pathetic I can appear. Marvel at it."
"If we can't go outside, I'll just practice some yoga. Ah, I love down-dog."
"Okay...enough pictures."
"Another collar? Now this is just getting ridiculous."
"Seriously, enough."
So I gave up on trying to get cute pictures of the dog, and took pictures of the collars by themselves instead. The preppy green one is his old one, which is in desperate need of a wash.
And there is another post! Wasn't that fun? | | |
| Yup, Percy is four years old today. In celebration of his first birthday home, I made a cake. Possibly the grossest cake ever, but a cake nonetheless. Well, kind. Observe:
In case it looks too scrumptious to resist, here is the recipe!
Start with a ramekin. Spread a generous layer of peanut butter on the bottom and sides. Layer in crumbled dog cookies. Add sardine pieces. Add green beans. Frost with cottage cheese. Finish with a dollop of peanut butter and a sprinkling of parmesan. Serve and Enjoy!
Percy loved it.
I should have made a party hat for him. Now that would have been *really* cute. We did get him a present (actually two), but they are still on their way. Perhaps I will post pictures when they get here.
Two posts in two days!
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| How did this happen? A symposium used to be a place for intelligent and silly conversation, for heavy drinking and orgies. Now it's a place for people to listen to other people read papers for two days straight. Where are the flute girls? Where is the unwatered wine? All I can say is, if Socrates had wandered into a modern symposium while visiting San Dimas, CA in 1988, he would have been seriously disappointed. And who wants to disappoint the father of western philosophy?
So if you can't tell, I spent my weekend (well, Friday and Saturday) at a Symposium. One on literacy in the ancient world, to be precise. I actually did enjoy it and I learned something from every paper. One of my professors gave an amazing talk challenging one of the most fundamental views of reading in Rome, which was met with polite disagreement from some, and red-faced, sputtering anger from others. It really was brilliant and should change how a lot of people think when it is published, but classicists (is it like this in other fields?) *really* don't like it when fundamental assumptions are challenged, especially when they have given a paper relying on said assumption less than 24 hours previously. Ah, good times.
Today was spent at the library, writing a presentation that I have to give on Tuesday. Blah on that. Digging through really confusing site reports (the majority of which are in German) makes my head hurt.
So anyway, this makes three posts in two weeks. I think this constitutes a regular old-fashioned Xanga binge.
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