Apologies, and updates.

...I know it's been an age. I've been on Paros for a week already, and Greece for a good week and a half, so you've all missed the full month I lounged (okay, sprinted) around Italia. Pistoia, Roma, Firenze (Florence), Pisa, Sienna, Venezia, Prato, and Lucca - I am truly spoiled. For a brief overview of what the heck I did for such a long time in , since it's hot in this computer room and I promised my dad I'd finish my college essay, I'll explain the purpose of cutting our Grecian work time down by a full third.

In most basic terms, the entire point of the "Italian Session" is to give the art students (read: me and 22 other afficionados, from 17 to 30) a chance to cram in as many of the world's great art pieces into their heads, so as to give a) context to the techniques we study and materials we use, b) inspiration for what works we may choose to pursue, and c) appreciation for how art developed and shifted focus from the Romanesque age through Baroque (in Italy), and through the rise and fall of the Greek and Roman empires in early Greece.

To summarize:

• Over the past month and a half, I've seen at least three hundred "Madonna and Child"'s, a few hundred "Crucifictions," and more "Annunciations" and "Adorations" than I care to consider.
• I have seen what made Donatello, Cellini, Brunelleschi, Giotto, Michelangelo, della Robbia, Ghirlandaio, Masaccio, Botticelli, Lippo Lippi, and a multitude of other artists famous and memorable, and had a chance to form an opinion on every single one.
• I've been in more churches than I can keep track of, which makes more sense when you know that in the time periods we predominantly studied (1200s - 1600s), everyone showed off their wealth by contracting art pieces to display in their local church.
• I've stared intensely at enough gorgeous nudes to no longer feel self-conscious about loving the human form and anatomy, and creating art that reflects that.
• I've discovered more about myself personally and what kind of person I want to be (as well as what kind of people I want to surround myself with) than I anticipated, a process sped along by such experiences as intensive heart-to-hearts with my Italy-roomie, Chelsey, being almost tipsy in Venice, after three tequila shots and a "rum and coke," breathtaking concerts of operatic and symphonic music, bodily dragging one of my friends back from a bar, drunk out of her mind and a good half a foot taller than me, and loving "unimportant" art and feeling apathetic towards "revolutionaries," even as my art history professor tries to tell me what pieces I should care about and why.

I'll post more later, I promise. There's tons to say!

Signing off,

Egg