Word from Florence

Dearest Friends,

I would really like to hear some news from my fellow traveling bearcatz! So update, do it now…

I am currently in my beautiful apartment in Florence (yes I am bragging). It is probably the nicest place I will ever live! We have beautiful tiled floors and frescoed ceilings. My apartment is right behind the Uffizi and along the Arno river. I share it with four other girls from the United States. If you are in Europe (Megan!) please come and visit!

My bedroom

I have had class for the past few weeks and I am really excited about all of them. My studio classes are each six hours a week (and thankfully Willamette has decided to consider this equal to their three-hour-a-week studios). I have a really cool teacher for photo who specializes in experimental printing techniques which I am really excited about. I think that serigraphy (screen-printing) is going to be my most consuming class. For video I have this really funny French teacher who is a director in Florence. Etching has been a little bit slow because the intermediate students are in the same class as the beginning students, but I am sure it will pick up after a few classes. Basically, art school is amazing and it is going to be hard to come back to Willamette. I would really like to hear about your classes! Hint hint

Last weekend I took the train to the beach town, Torre del Lago, with two friends. The town is about 10 minutes from of Pisa. The beach was amazing, the water was warm and there were huge mountains in the other direction. It was a nice to get away from Florence, which is mobbed with tourists every day. It is starting to become cooler here as fall approaches, so hopefully the tourist crowd will dissolve.

Last night some friends and I went to this crazy electronica music festival called “Nextech” in an old train station and danced all night long. It was really awesome because unlike all of the clubs and bars around were I live, this was not full of Americans trying to get wasted. Today my flatmate Liz and I went for a walk around town and ran into some cool Italians at a café who took us to a park by the river where they played music and drank beer, it was the most perfect afternoon.

I would really like to here some news from Willamette/Mexico/Equator/Massachusetts/Denmark/Scotland/???/
Outerspace/where ever you are! please. Also, I noticed some people just joined the blog, so start writing!

Yours,
Claire