Italy Post #11

Dear Readers,
I apologize for the length of time which I will term my "absence". Yes, yes, I know the story, you waited by your computer every night this past week in anticipation only to be let down, yet again, by my lack of communication. Believe me, I would have rather been on my computer, pouring my heart out in electronic text to you all than studying for finals. But alas, this was my fate.

Yes, it was finals week last week. I can say that cheerfully at the moment because it is over and done with, but at the time I felt like I was slowly traveling through Dante's Inferno. Let me just rant a bit: Weds was a memorization test (80 slides with name, date, artist, location, and medium), Thurs was a group project (we got the worst one - Renaissance Humanism, which is wayyyy too broad to cover anything), and Fri was the individual paper (mine was on Fra Angelico). Blah. It was horrible.

Yet, as I was strolling the streets of Orvieto this morning without the weight of homework strapped to my back, I felt the joy of taking one class at a time. Yes, there is a period of crunch time once a month; but this is balanced with the fact that there is only one subject to focus on. Its quite comforting. And I get a great period of rest in between. For instance, I woke up this morning at 9:30, leisurely made my way around the market at 10:30, and sat at a cafe reading Dante until 12:45. It was fabulous. I can do whatever I want for the next day and a half because I have no homework clouding my fun.

Its great. Buonissimo! And the next break I have to look forward to is only in a month, and hopefully will be filled with people that I love who made plans to come visit me in this little walled city on a cliff. In conclusion - this is great!