Sunday, May 27, 2012

Week 1 - "Patria est, ubicumque est bene"

“Home is where you feel comfortable”… Well if Cicero is right with that quote then I can definitely consider Rome as home… It is now the third time that I am in this beautiful city, but this time it was a little different: the last times I just came here as a tourist, didn’t stay longer than a week or so. The city appeared to me intimidating with all his history and all his sights, I didn’t really know where to get start. This time I came prepared and not as a tourist; this time I actually become a citizen of this beautiful city. (At least I will try my best to do so) The first week was kind of busy, we had classes every day, and I already feel like we already learned so much, although we probably barely scratched the surface…, especially since it is probably impossible to define what Rome is, but exactly that is what makes it such an incredible place to study. I can already feel my improvement in sketching and in Italian. In sketching we had some hard sketching sessions, hard because we’re in Rome and there are a million vanishing points in every perspective. But you grow with every challenge right? And so I already did I think. Last Friday we sketched Piazza di Spagna (the "Spanish Steps) it's a very challenging subject, I picked a spot on the steps and sketched for half an hour. The result of that sketching session is this perspective, a little traffic analysis and a pretty bad sunburn on my neck…

Today all of us went to the Pantheon for Pentecost (some of us got up earlier some later...) but all of us made it to the mass and the rose petals raining from the oculus. It was an incredible experience, it was a grotesque atmosphere toward the end of the mass, more and more people entered the Pantheon and it got very crowded, suddenly thousands of cameras and iPhones were wondering around, and this was still DURING there was a mass going on. Every once in a while a Italian security said “no camera! NO CAMERA!!” but there were just to many and there were just over-challenged… But it was definitely as I said earlier an amazing experience, definitely worth getting up and not sleeping in.
Of course just like everyone else that I just complained about also I took some pictures, but this picture not even close does justice to the beauty of that event.


No comments:

Post a Comment