Catania and Continuing Education

All the girls!

Dwarf Elephants

Last weekend was pretty busy! Thursday we explored the Paolo Orsi Archaeological Museum here in Syracuse and on Friday took a day trip to the city of Catania after which we had the option of spending the night there to see the city and festivities a bit longer.

I found the Archaeological Museum to be amazing. The selection of the collection we toured (prehistoric through Greek and Roman mainly) was quite extensive and we really rushed through most of the place. I plan to go back there this weekend to explore at a leisurely pace!

The Duomo in Catania

From Ortigia it is about an hour by bus to get to Catania. Not bad considering this is where the nearest major airport is located - we fly out of Catania every time we want to go anywhere else! Unfortunately, my camera batteries died just a few minutes after boarding the bus, so every picture here is from one of my friends on the trip. The trip did not go quite as I would have liked - I was sick much of the weekend. I feel better now but did not get to see much of Catania at night!

Books!!

Roman Amphitheater

While we were at Catania we toured some of the most important city structures - namely the Roman Amphitheater, the Duomo (their cathedral), and what was once the Benedictine Monastery (now part of the University of Catania). We happened to be in town just in time for the festivities of St. Agatha (Catania's patron saint) and saw bits and pieces of the procession but not the main part. Thronging with people, the streets were full of candy stalls, balloons, and lights.

We found a bar that was showing the Super bowl and I watched it for a while along with one of my apartment-mates and some missionaries who were journeying around on a boat and stopped by Syracuse. By three in the morning Italian time I felt very sleepy and went home, leaving the more hardy individuals to continue watching the rest of the game.

Tuesday I actually received my first (though rather short) experience flintknapping with a real knapper! My flintknapping experience continues - thank you Material Cultures course for getting me started. Flintknapping is the process of shaping stones (like flint) or glass type materials (like obsidian) with other stones and various tools. We had an experimental archaeology lecture and watched a demonstration of fire starting (with real live sticks and stones!) and flintknapping. I mimed percussion flaking (chipping away at a stone by pressing on it rather than striking it) and got a quick demonstration after the lecture from the expert. A few of my buddies at MCAS got to try their hands flintknapping or fire starting - with varying degrees of success.

In other news, we had a pasta making night last night (watch out world, Becky can now cook home-made pasta! It was pretty easy and very good.) and, starting Monday, I will volunteer at the Institute for the Study and Performance of Ancient Drama digitizing their collection of sheet music. I was assigned my first real homework assignment (Latin) and my first paper (Art and Archaeology) and part of a museum wall panel to translate for the Paolo Orsi Archaeological Museum. Things are really getting busy here!

 

And Happy Birthday to Dad!! 

Week 2

Picture this with lots of wind and rain

Ahh Sicily - the land of the Sun. Wait, sun?! What sun? It has been storming all this past week, which has not been great for pictures, drying laundry, or leaving dry buildings in general. But though this week was not the best for beautiful Mediterranean panoramas, we still were pretty active!

(Some of these pictures are from my friends at MCAS)

Dark and Stormy

But first, some highlights of the previous week. I spent much of the first week here settling in and getting used to things, figuring out where everything is, sorting out the apartment, apartment keys, and internet, and attending life abroad seminars.

The food is still excellent! I have been living off of fresh bread and cheese supplemented with the occasional pasta dish or slice of pizza. And, of course, gelato (no pictures of that, sorry!). Balsamic vinegar and lemon juice add a bit of pizazz to each meal, and I am very surprised that I am not bleeding blood orange juice on account of how much of it I am consuming.

Fresh fruit at the open air market

A very large lemon!

Sweets!

The Duomo

The highlights of Ortigia (all within 10 minutes of me) include: the Duomo (cathedral) which was originally a Greek temple - you can still see the columns along the side, the fountain of Arethusa, and the temple of Apollo. Ortigia is like a small town though at the same time part of a larger city so I am starting to recognize some of the local people. I have made friends with a stall owner, a bus driver whom I met in an Arabic restaurant for lunch, and a German lady who married an Italian and has lived in Italy ever since.

The spring

Temple of Apollo

I also saw a belly dancer who danced during one of our first dinners in Italy. A few of us also had a chance to play cards with some old Sicilian men and other people from MCAS during another Syracuse tour.

One of the first activities we participated in was the procession for St. Sebastian. They carried his statue and relic container on a great litter throughout the streets of Ortigia following a marching band. Afterward they auctioned special bread and shot off fireworks. We also attended a free concert on the steps of the Duomo for the celebration of the founding of Syracuse. It was very chilly! I was also very surprised to hear Hans Zimmer's theme from Gladiator played among a collection of classical songs.

Today was the end of my second week of classes, and… field trip day! We went to the Orsi Museum instead of touring the Neopolis because the weather was still not great as far as touring outdoor monuments go. One thing I learned from this tour - I must go back to this museum! It was the most amazing thing I have seen yet. However, Maniace Castle, the castle I stumbled upon Sunday looking for an internet cafe was pretty impressive as well - I had almost the whole place to myself to explore!

Classes here so far are not quite what I expected, for the teaching styles are pretty different and there is a totally different philosophy on homework. However, the hands-on aspect in almost every course and opportunities to tie course material to the field trips makes for a spectacular learning experience. My volcanology class is particularly interesting and I am really enjoying my archaeology class - the professor keeps hinting at more hands-on experiences to come!

This weekend we are staying overnight in Catania and will be there for the festivities of St. Agatha. They should be spectacular.

Hello from MCAS!

Welcome to Syracuse!

So first things first - Where am I? No, not New York - I'm in Italy! You have probably heard of some well-known cities such as Rome, Venice, or even Florence or Milan, but perhaps not Syracuse. 

Well, to fill you in, Syracuse is located in southern Italy on the island of Sicily (see the arrow on the map). This city, founded in 734 BCE by the Corinthian Greeks, soon became a prominent in the region of Magna Graecia. Sicily later was captured by the Romans and became part of the vast Roman empire. Because of Sicily’s prominent position in the center of the Mediterranean, many other peoples wanted control of the island and occupied Sicily after the Romans, so Syracuse is swimming in history!

I live right in the heart of ancient Syracuse on the Island called Ortigia. My apartment is on one of the ancient main streets of Ortigia, about a minute away from my school if you go north, and two or three minutes away from the Mediterranean if you go south. You can see both from my balcony.  

The view north from my front door!

The view south from my front door!

MCAS!

I have just finished my first week of classes at the Mediterranean Center for Arts and Sciences. I am taking Italian 101 (like most of the people in my program), Volcanology (we get to explore Mount Etna!), Latin (all by myself), Art and Archaeology of Ancient Sicily (from the prehistoric to the Roman period, with an extra course module on Digital Archaeology), and the Sicily Core course (where we learn about Sicilian heritage and culture). Starting Monday I will be volunteering at the Istituto Nazionale del Dramma Antico at their archive.

Food here was one of the things I have been worried about because we don’t have a meal plan. However I have been eating better here than I ever have before. There is one supermarket type store on the island and a bigger one on the mainland that I explored the other day - but still even the big one was much smaller than any Kroger’s I’ve seen. You can get things like sugar, large containers of fruit juice, vinegar, Nutella, olive oil, and tomato sauce in the stores, but almost everything else people buy at the open air market. Fresh bread, fresh fruit and vegetables, and fresh cheese! You can get a large loaf of bread for 60 euro cents. Cheese was more expensive, at 4 euros for a ball of mozzarella, but the free samples you get every time you go to the cheese man as well as the phenomenal taste of fresh fresh cheese is worth every euro you spend. My usual lunch is bread, cheese, and fresh tomatoes with olive oil, balsamic vinegar and oregano. I usually have a kiwi or an orange on the side and blood orange juice to drink. I have fallen in love with blood oranges (Arancia Rossa), which apparently are native to this area and taste sublime.

There are bars on almost every corner where you can get espresso, alcohol, pop, or fruit juice as well as small snacks like stuffed croissants or fried cones full of rice and cheese and often sweets and gelato. These places often have free internet. However my favorite place like this, Café Minerva, has been closed for the past four days and no one can figure out why. Pizza places don’t serve pizza for lunch – after much confusion, we found out it is a dinner thing. Pizza places are all over the island and serve very good pizza for very good prices. We found three Chinese restaurants on the island and a few places serving gyros and kebabs. There are also many more expensive restaurants, but we haven’t checked very many out. We did eat at a homemade pasta place which was excellent – I got pasta with shrimp, mussels, something with claws that looked a bit like a miniature lobster, and squid.

Our street door.

 My apartment is one of the older ones in the area. It has stone floors and high ceilings. We have two bedrooms, an entryway, a living room, a kitchen, a bathroom, a laundry room, and two balconies over the street. The entrance is off of a courtyard, like many of the apartments around here, and so you need two keys to get in. My only complaints about the apartment would be about the lack of any kind of storage space – my roommate and I only have one small closet between us – and the problems with drainage in the bathroom. The limiting factor for taking a shower is not how much hot water you get (maybe 3 or 4 minutes at most) but how long you go before the shower overflows! This first week here we have had lots of fun with water in the bathroom – first our toilet flooded the bathroom and part of the kitchen, then the shower overflowed, and then the top of the shower totally broke off at the top and sprayed the rest of the bathroom that hadn’t already been flooded (walls and ceiling included) with water. Unfortunately once the shower was fixed (which gave us normal water pressure) we have even less time before the shower overflowed. However everything else seems to work fine so far. We have not set ourselves on fire with the gas stove and did manage to figure out how to work the washer.

The weather here has been wonderful, and I am constantly mesmerized by the sun, sky, and sea. These following pictures are for Alex.

More to come - lots more pictures, what I have been up to, what I am planning, and other thoughts!