26 Hours

Last weekend I left the office at 12pm on Saturday and did not return until 3pm on Sunday. For those glorious 26 hours I did not do one single school related thing! Instead I packed up and headed to Atlanta for the night to head to a concert with a friend! 

For the record, if you ever have the chance to see Ingrid Michaelson in concert, you should drop everything you're doing to make it happen. I've been to one concert before and this one did not disappoint either. That girl can sing and puts on amazing show! To say her live performances are infinitely better than her [already amazing] CDs would be a bit of an understatement. 

Although we bought the tickets for the first act, the headliner was Rufus Wainwright. I don't know much by him, but man, what a performance from him as well! So much talent and awesomeness in one night. And that guy is truly a fantastic performer. 

A great show by everyone, and a lovely weekend with a good friend! So I'll leave you with a clip from what was, for me at least, the absolute highlight of the night. Ah-mazing. 

The Dress Code

So now that my couple of posts have made you all desperately want to go book a flight to Rome and visit the Vatican, here is something you should know before packing:

There is a dress code!

Since Italy gets pretty hot and all - you know, most the year - the thought of traipsing around the Rome and the Vatican in your Sunday best is probably not the most appealing idea. So what is the dress code exactly? Well according to this sign, it pretty clear, right?

Of course, if you don't speak Italian cartoon... just know you can't wear your short shorts (I think we decided covering the knees was the trick) or your spaghetti strap tops. I managed to follow the rules swimmingly while still maintaining a breezy comfort on that hot day. 

There is actually a dress code for most of the churches in Italy. Of course, for the bigger, more touristy ones, instead of denying you entrance, the just give you a giant paper dress to hide your shame in.

My new favorite artist

I don't know if you caught this from the last post - but the Vatican has a big Wow-factor to it! And while I was walking around the halls and halls of amazing art, I realized I was kind of in love with Renaissance painter Michelangelo!

Maybe it had something to do with the fact that I remembered learning about it when learning about the Renaissance in 8th grade, or maybe just because it's an amazing work of art. But I could have craned my neck all day looking at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. 

Of course, my favorite work of all was nestled in a front corner of St. Peter's Basilica.

If anyone wants to call up the pope and see if he'll give me Michelangelo's Pieta for Christmas, I'd really appreciate that. 

Holy mother of big churches!

Ok, so maybe "church" isn't the right monicker for likes of St. Peter's Basilica, but seriously guys - whoa! 

After heading back to Rome, Matthew and I knew we wanted to dedicate a whole day to the Vatican. We figured the Vatican museum would take up a large portion of the day - which it did - and heard that it's full of amazingly awesome art, artifacts, and what I generally refer to as "old stuff" - which it was! We Spent no less than 3 hours in that museum (and actually, it was probably quite a big long than that), and to be honest, it never really got boring. 

And we high-fived the Swiss Guard.... Not really. But I wanted to. 

But we new we had to make our way out to get into the Basilica. And man did we get our timing right! Not only did we walk in the middle of a mass (don't worry guys, the place is so massive, you could have about 15 different masses in there without anyone realizing it), which meant live choral music was floating ethereally throughout, but we even had the sunlight on our side, creating this wildly impressive trick of light as we walked in. 

so for the next, oh, probably good hour, we just walked around with mouths agape, impressed by the overwhelming awesomeness of it. And I, for one, could not get over just how massive it was! I think I just kept taking pictures hoping that one would capture the sheer size of the place. 

Matthew and I concurred afterwards, if you have only a short time in Rome, you definitely have to make it out to the Vatican! 

Sometimes.

Sometimes you get more reading done than you expect so you can go hang out at awesome breweries you work at and meet your teenage idols and turn back into a 12 year old in the process.

Sometimes my crazy grad school life is pretty ok.

And I'd like to dedicated this to all my German students who asked me if I'd ever met a star. Especially because all of them are so young that they'll have no idea who this guy is anyway. 

life, sort of.

Why yes, I do still exist... 

but only just barely! 

For the record, grad school is a lot of work. Reading 100+ (with an emphasis on the +) pages of German every week, writing papers in German, planning lessons, preparing materials. Eventually it all just makes your head spin! I mean, this is the syllabus for just one of my classes - each of those highlighted or underlined words are books/plays we have to read. And I find this syllabus to be the best visual representation of my life right now.  I can try to plan things out, but really it just ends in chaos!

Which is why I'm horrible at blogging right now! So now I'm going to hang my head in shame and try to power through some Kafka before Monday. 

Duomygod!

Pretty much everything in Florence is a famous piece of art and/or some kind of symbolic structure. But whenever I think back to the Tuscan city, the image that always comes to mind is the Duomo. 

I mean, guys, the thing is massive! And very photogenic. Of course, I always knew it as the home of Brunelleschi's dome, which was one of my favorite stories when learning about the Renaissance. Basically, to decide on who should be the architect of the of the dome, the powers that be said the man to get an egg to stand on it's end could do it. So Brunelleschi, being a 15th century Italian smart ass, flattened the end of his egg so that it stood up easily, thus securing himself the job. My kind of guy! 

One of my favorite parts of the Duomo was climbing up to the top of the dome. At one viewing level, you actually walk around the inside base of the dome, up close and personal to ornate painting that covers it. The view from the top wasn't that bad either! 

Even though we only spent one afternoon actually exploring the Duomo, it was pretty much a constant of our trip to Florence. We walked by it more times than I can count and snapped pictures of it from every other museum/church/building we visited! A definite Florence must-see/can't-miss!