April 2012 Firenze

April 2012

How wonderful to be experiencing spring in Italy. It has been many years since we lived in a place where we actually have spring arrive in March and April. We are thoroughly enjoying the daffodils and tulips coming up in our garden, the budding trees and bushes, and the sounds of birds every morning. Sheila especially loves the blooming wisteria all over Firenze.

       our garden

 Along our daily walk

Wisteria on "the ancient wall"

We have enjoyed lots of activities this month. But our experience here was overshadowed by the tragic death of our 24-year old grand nephew, Conner Lowry. He was the eldest grandson of Sheila’s sister, serving in the military in Afghanistan. Marine Corporal Conner Lowry was killed on March 1st, leaving behind is mother and sister and lots of extended family. There was a huge memorial service in Chicago, where he was born and raised. Our sons, Quinn and Conner represented our family at the services, which were attended by hundreds of people.

Also, a couple of dear tennis friends from Kalispell passed away recently. When we are touched by death by those we know and care about, we are more acutely aware that our time here on earth is indeed limited.  The silver lining of these losses is perhaps the appreciation of this time now, that we are given.

Sheila attended an 8-day meditation retreat at a famous Catholic monastery called Camaldoli, way up in the Apennine Mountains. The three Buddhist teachers, including Joseph Goldstein, were excellent and inspiring. The 1,000-year old hermitage and monastery are surrounded by a national forest.  Sheila had an opportunity to do walking meditations in the nearby forest. One highlight was seeing a wild boar walking across the road. But of course, she couldn’t share her excitement with anybody because the retreat was in silence! Dang!

      Camaldoli Monastary

                 Camaldoli Church with Vasari painting

Joe has had a two-week Spring break. (That is one of the benefits of being a student again!) We just returned from five days on the Isle of Elba, off the Tuscan coast. We rented a car in Florence and drove southwest to catch the ferry to a port town called Portoferraio. We stayed on the eastern side of the island, which was mountainous, but also arid.  It was sort of like Moab, Utah meets the sea (with fabulous Italian cooking thrown in).  We had a couple days of great hiking through pine forests, seeing cacti, aloe vera plants, and wild goats. We loved it. We spent another day sea kayaking off the rugged coast. It was enjoyable but we were really whipped when we got back. The trip was a little over eight miles round trip and that was plenty for us.

                Hiking above Marciana Marina, Elba

     

     lunch break during sea kayaking day

     Overlooking Chiessi, Elba

     Wild mountain goats on Elba

Joe thought it would be interesting for folks to compare the progress from his first semester to the second.  Perhaps the most telling comparison is of his pencil drawing sketches.  These are done over a 3 to 6 hour period from a live model.  He included two life drawings and two portraitures from the end of both the 1^st and 2^nd semester. 

left, end of 1st semester; right end of second semester

left, start of 1st semester, right, start of third semester

We have been making some nice friends here. It seems like we are enjoying more social activities with different people these days. Most of all we are having so much fun together. Although we miss our family and friends, this experience has been a blast.

 We were going to the Pasqua (Easter) celebration in the city center. It is supposed to be a beautiful parade that ends at the Duomo after winding its way through Florence.  Unfortunately it was raining so hard that we decided to cancel and just go to one of our favorite restaurants instead. Today is Pasquetta (the monday after Easter and a national holiday in Italy.)

We will probably be writing one more blog before we head back to the Flathead Valley for the summer.  It is hard to believe almost a year has gone by.  We are looking forward to being with our friends and family.  Ci vediamo presto! (We’ll see you soon!) 

Joe e Sheila

February

February 2012

There really is a winter in Florence.  Although it is not as cold or as long as our Montana winters, when you are walking or biking everywhere, it can seem pretty daunting.  We got a Siberian cold front for a couple weeks.  It left snow in many parts of Italy.  Florence was mostly spared of snow but not the cold and wind.  Sheila would bundle up in all her warmest clothes to ride her bike to yoga or shopping.  While our apartment has a good heating system, the buildings are not well insulated so we spent most of the days with our coats on, even in the house.  Thankfully, it has warmed up to a balmy 50 degrees Fahrenheit during the day again. 

We had several visitors the last month.  Josh Brann and his college friend Javi, are architect students who are studying in Paris for a semester.  We know Josh from our neighborhood in Kalispell and from the time our boys went to school together at Kalispell Montessori.  They came to Italy with their class and at the end of their tour, stopped at our casa for a couple of days.  Their visit was during the period of cold, so it was not the most pleasant time to walk the streets, but they made the best of it. 

Mikie Dimuro, a Kalispell artist friend also spent a weekend with us.  She had been in Venice with a group from Flathead Community College and took the train down for a visit.  We mostly walked around the town and ate lots of good food that Sheila cooked up for us.

It is nice to have friends and family visit.  It makes us feel connected still to our Montana infrastructure.   We have also slowly been making friends here.  We have gotten to know a lovely Italian couple in our building, Francesco and Barbara.  We have had several language exchange dinners with them.  There are several “older” art students who we often meet after the Friday art history lecture, for a class of wine and maybe go out to dinner.  Sheila has also struck up friendships with several expats, Matucha (originally from Peru but has lived all over the world), Sherri and Curly (a semiretired couple from southern California) and Megan (a California tennis player who is a buyer for Williams and Sonoma). 

We continue to adjust to our cultural experience.  Our Italian language development continues to improve slowly, but surely.  We are getting to feel more comfortable in the routines and customs of the locale. We notice we seem to spend less time judging what we “like” and what we “dislike” about the culture.  Instead, we just seem to move into the flow of things.  We have kept some of our old routines (like our early morning yoga and meditation) but we have mostly transformed our schedules and habits to fit the life style found here.  There is an appreciation that there are different ways of living life and we are grateful for this time in this very beautiful (if sometimes annoying) place.

Joe continues to love the art training. Probably the biggest news we have is that Joe has decided to finish the full three years of the professional painter curriculum at the Florence Academy (and Sheila has decided to let him).  It is a big commitment and will continue to be a big adjustment of course.  We will be in the Flathead for the summer, but will be returning to Italy next fall to start the second year of art school.    

We hope you all are staying warm and healthy this winter.  Take care and we hope to hear from you soon.  We love getting notes from our friends and family. 

Joe and Sheila

Josh and Javi check their emails (it is cold outside)

Dinner with Barbara and Francesco (speaking only italian this night)

Sheila, Joe and Mikie on the terrace at the Museo Annagoni

Sheila and Mikie walk home in the rain along Via Dell Erta

A "long pose" charcoal of Joe's (the model said he didn't work out)

Joe with his nearly completed Bargue "Mose's arm"

Sheila in her winter gear bringing home the groceries

January Blog

January 2012

Buon Anno! Our holidays seemed to be extended this year, as our sons were here over a six-week period. Quinn came before Christmas and Conner joined us after the New Year. Their visits overlapped for about ten days, so they got to have some time together too. In fact, they took a long weekend and visited their AFS brother, Francesco. The three played some soccer together and also went to a professional soccer game in Torino. That was a highlight of their visit.

We had the most wonderful Christmas Eve and Day in Bergamo with the extended Mazzocchi family. It was an opportunity for us to speak lots more Italian, which always helps bump up the skill level. The food was so fabulous. The Christmas Day meal lasted for about five hours with many courses. We did take a break in the middle to open presents, though. Alice Mazzocchi is such a great cook! In fact, Sheila was so inspired that she came back and took a three-hour afternoon cooking course on pasta sauces at Cordon Bleu School of Florence. The group learned to make five different sauces and of course got to taste each and every one. So Sheila had five generous helpings of pasta covered with these varied sauces. She road home from class on her bike and did not eat for the rest of the night. The class was in Italian of course and she was glad to have waited to take the class, as she was able to understand the teacher pretty well. She is already perusing the website to look for another one.

This wintertime season means that the tourist population is way down. It’s really kind of nice. We have been frequenting the museums more, especially with our sons here. What a treat to not have any lines outside and no crowds on the inside of these famous places. The Uffizi and the Pitti Palace were both very quiet. It was glorious to be able to linger in front of Raphael’s paintings with no one bumping into you. We bought an annual family pass to all the state museums in Florence. This allows us to get into many museums and gardens for free. What a great Christmas present that was.

Brett Morton and his fiancée, Alessia visited us for a couple days in early December. He is from Kalispell and was one of Francesco’s good buddies when they went to Flathead HS fifteen years ago together. Brett is now in love with an Italian woman and they both work for an Italian non-profit in Africa. Of course, Brett and Francesco are still buddies!

Joe started back to school January 9^th.  He managed to work a little at the school studio and home on a few projects over the break.   He is back in the full swing of the second trimester.

Sheila is slowly returning to some semblance of a routine. She starts back to yoga this week. She and Lorenzo continue to meet 2-3 times a week for conversation exchange. They now occasionally need to study and clarify grammar rules in both languages. It can get rather challenging and comical.

Lorenzo’s elderly father has a neurological impairment resulting in his needing more caregiving from the family. Next week, Sheila and Lorenzo are going to a medical supply store together to look for some adaptive equipment for the home. Sheila gets to do an OT consult for her Italian friend. How do you say, “gait belt” in Italian?    

It was great having our boys here for Christmas.  We miss the rest of our families and friends, so keep writing when you can.  Hope you like the photos.   

Joe and Sheila

Quinn, Conner and Francesco play men's league in Bergamo

Christmas Eve with Ago and Alice

I tre fratelli

Eating well, all day long on Christmas

Eating well in Florence

Overlooking Fiume Arno

a drawing exercise

a drawing exercise

Doing homework

Lorenzo, Joe and Sheila

Brett, Alessia, Sheila and Joe

  

December 2011 blog

December 2011 Blog

November was month of “settling in” more deeply.    The crazy summer tourist season has been over for a while.  There are still tourists, but now the non-Italians are more likely to be foreign students or Chinese (who for some reason continue to come en mass). The weather has been cooler (but not cold by Montana standards).  The Italians seem to have hunkered down to their work a day worlds and we have followed suit.  We traveled less this month, but did get to spend a weekend with our AFS son Francesco, his wife, Giulia and their 13-month old ”Principessa,”  Irene.  We enjoyed Giulia’s fantastic cooking and got to see the “fauna” (Francesco’s term for the animali roaming the the Milan high end shopping district).

We had a very low-key Thanksgiving.  Sheila found a restaurant catering to American tourists and ex-pats serving a traditional Thanksgiving fare.   Sheila brought a friend from yoga who was a wonderful young American woman studying philosophy here and in Germany on a Fulbright Scholarship.

After this period of time in Italy, there is a small amount of “deconstructing” and “reconstructing” of our identities, which seems to be taking place.  Like most people our age, we have long since created the form of our lives from our families, professions and friends.  Here, we are doing the same anew, albeit in a different culture and different undertakings.

Sheila continues to meet several times a week with her conversation exchange friend “Lorenzo” and (while not fluent) can now carry on a limited conversation in Italian for an hour without being exhausted.  Lorenzo, an engineer, is looking for work and has been trying to improve his English skills.  Sheila has edited his English job applications. Sheila continues to study Iyengar Yoga three days a week (in Italian).  She plays tennis one day a week (on wonderful clay courts) with an American woman who is a buyer for Williams/Sonoma.  She is also working one day a week at a local food bank associated with the Florence Episcopal Church.  Most of the volunteers are ex-pats who are married to Italian spouses.  She describes them as an interesting motley crew.   She is contemplating some additional language classes after the New Year.  “Fluency” in a foreign language is turning out to be a nebulous standard measured by an increasing awareness of the extent of the project. Nevertheless she makes steady progress.  

We have discovered that we have different learning styles when it comes to language acquisition.  Sheila is exacting.  She likes to feel like she is using the proper word, verb tense and pronunciation before she opens her mouth.  She is always understood, although she sometimes doesn’t say anything because she isn’t sure of herself.  Joe on the other hand, is likely to wing it.  He is frequently wrong, but never in doubt. Sometimes he comes up with interesting creative phases and at other times leaves the listener with a glazed look on their face.

Sheila has begun to experiment with Italian fashion and is slowly finding her shopping legs.  Tight velveteen pants, red tennis shoes, a few beautiful sweaters, brown walking boots and black knee high boots are some of the purchases, which are being admired on our evening walks. (see photo)  Joe is a slower learner, but due to weight loss (about 12 lbs.) he is seeing a pant size he hasn’t seen since law school. So, he had to buy a few skinnier pants (and why not in black and purple?) 

One of the joys of Joe’s morning walk to school is his seeing Italian parents taking their kids to school, often on the back of their bikes. (see photo).  He has just finished his first trimester at the Florence Academy of Art.  It has been an exhilarating, if humbling experience.  Prior proficiency or achievements in other areas or even age, account for little in the fierce meritocracy of art academia. The brain and hand are slowly adapting to the demands of training (although the ego rebels at every turn). (see photos of some of his latest work).

We are looking forward to our two gorgeous boys coming to Florence for Christmas vacation.   We will go to Bergamo, Italy to be with Francesco’s extended family for Christmas day.  Conner has a job as a ski instructor in Telluride, CO so will have to join us after the New Year.  We are still enjoying our great adventure.

Buon Natale e Felice Nuovo Anno!!!

School Days!

Florence at dusk

Sheila and friend

Trying Italian fashions

Joe's new look!

Milano in front of Duomo

Francesco, Giulia, and Irene

Joe's 2nd charcoal

Joe's 2nd bargue

Florence Academy of Art students at the pub