I feel like every Rosh Hashana I have spent my time in Temple trying to think about my life and the whole significance of the universe. There is a whole theme about Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur relating to the idea of dying and being reborn. Today I felt like I was reborn and it was a spiritual experience outside of the synagogue. I decided to take a walk by myself all around the Tuscan hills where I live. I walked by tons of vineyards that were incredibly beautiful. I even happened upon a horse and I felt at peace. It is interesting because all of the people on my program have started coupling up and I am spending this time discovering myself. I want to find another person and I am sure I will, but I definitely don't think that they will be from this theater program. I am also really glad I am doing this now because if I had waited until after college I think that nothing about me would have changed and it was more than high time I stopped to take a look at my life and myself as an actress and artist. I love theater and acting and this trip has just reinforced me into believing that I really cannot see myself doing anything else, however this does not mean that I necessarily have to live in Los Angeles. Today was a wonderful sunday of doing nothing and loving it and I look forward to more time to really start understanding myself and where I fit in the world around me. Before I was afraid to really do things alone, but I am not scared anymore and I see that I am just starting on my journey.

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On friday our voice teacher told us that there was a commedia based performance on Saturday, so we all decided to go. I decided not to go to Florence and just to have a relaxing night. Elizabeth brought up that we had not seen the Fortress the Medici family had erected to protect the town of Arezzo, so me, her, tyler, and noelle decided to go. It was right next to a park at the top of the town near the duomo. The fortress is beautiful and has all these medievil ruins near it. There are some awesome views from the outside top of it and it overlooks this enormous cemetary in town. It was molto beautiful. After walking around the fortress we walked down the corso because Tyler and Noelle needed a map since they were going to hike to Cortona in the morning. Afterwards we went to a family owned pizza place where i had my first Calzone. It was delicious and not like the ones you see in the US that are piled high, rather it was flat and filled with proscioutto and cheese. It was really strange for me to be eating proscioutto on the first night of Rosh Hashana. I did not plan things out right, which is why I didnt go anywhere for Rosh Hashana. After dinner we ended up at Blockbuster where I bought some cheap movies because I thought they would be fun to watch and then we met Kevin who had spent the evening by himself in Florence. After getting some gelato we all went home and watched Animal House. It was relaxing and I got by far the best night of sleep I have had on this entire trip.

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I was all ready for my birthday to be just like in Sixteen Candles where everyone forgets and nobody really cares at all, but luckily it wasnt like that.  Yesterday I had all of my normal classes, but I was able to talk to my mom and dad, which was really nice. (Even though my dad was asleep when I called.)  Then after Italian I showered and got ready for our open mic night because me and my friend Jim decided to do a rap about dinosaurs.  When we got up to do the rap this performance group had come and lets just say we got to be incredibly silly in front of everyone.  Then at the open mic the people who organized ended by roasting me in "The Memoirs of Aysha".  It was really funny and one of the guys in the program, Chris, was dressed as me and kept adjusting his fake sock boobs.  It was hilarious.  Afterwards, we had dinner where they got me gelato instead of a cake, which I really appreciated.  I love gelato and was excited to have a ton of gelato without walking to the city. 

 After dinner sadly we had to watch a performance by this group in the teatrino who did an updated Don Quixote.  It was good, but I was impatient because I wanted to go out and have a good time for at least part of my birthday.  All of the theater students ended up going out afterwards to Mr. Blooms bar where we got drinks and hung out for a few hours until about 1:30.   All of us had a movement final today, so getting completely wasted was not really an option.  I had a good time though and we walked home through the cemetary where the views of the stars were spectacular.    It was a fun birthday and I got to do what I love, acting, hanging with people I love, and partying.

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Sunday was  one of the laziest days I have had in the entire time I have been here. I slept in until about 10 AM, but the stupid church bells kept waking me up. And its not like they just ring a couple of minutes before mass. They usually ring at the most random times like 8:25. Is that really necessary? After I got up I just chilled and ate my frosted flakes. I decided not to go on an intense hike with other people because I was feeling lazy. Instead I went to the Arezzo team's final baseball game. let me explain. At the, gelatto store/bar down the street, we met this guy named Steve who is an American, but coaches the Arezzo team. Me, Jim, and four other music students walked about 45 minutes to the baseball stadium where we found only a few people. We started to watch the game and I noticed some discrepencies like their pants were way too big and they didn't use cleats, rather pumas. The game was not good. And I am not someone who goes to watch baseball often. We left early to get back for dinner and then after dinner we went down to the gelatto bar. There were tons of Italians and i worked on my broken Italian. I learned a valuable lesson that night. Gelatto and wine are horrible together; seriously horrible. After about an hour I got Steve the coach to drive me home and had a nice relaxing night of sleep. Then this morning was woken up by my next door neighbors internet alarm, which is to the tune of JAWS. It was soo confusing at 7:30 in the morning.

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This is a quick summary of my fun weekend: Friday Night: We went to a pizza place where I had the best pizza I think I have ever had in my life. It was amazing! After a lovely dinner we went to a bar called Mr. Bloom's. They had every kind of drink out there. There were like 30 of us, from the program, and we just started getting drunk on the street. It is a big hotspot and there were Italians everywhere. I drank a whiskey sour, mojito, and capainea... oh and I had already had two glasses of wine. After this program I will be going to rehab. Just kidding. It was really fun. At some point,  the boys started to talk with these Italian girls. I decided me and my friend Christine needed to meet some Italian boys. We went up to this one guy on the street who was gorgeous and just started talking about clubs in Arezzo. He then told us that he made purses for Gucci and that the club scene in Arezzo doesn't really get going until the middle of september. His name was Raffael and I think he was interested in Christine, but it was still fun trying out my horrible broken Italian/English.

After this at the group split up and half of us went trolling the shady parts of the city for another bar. The boys in the group Andy, Jesse, and Chris had found an awesome bar a few days earlier, but by the time we got there it was closed. So we went to another bar that looked like something out of a mafia movie. The old bartender served us banana splits, popcorn, oily flat bread and beer. On the TV there were commercials for shower calking that just happened to include naked women. They were hilarious. While in the restaurant all we heard was horrible America 70's music, like old Billy Joel and Afternoon Delight. After a while we left and went to the park outside of the duomo where my room mate Kate and Claire got gellato. We sat around and this time an Italian radio station was playing. Let me just say that it was horrible. Italian pop is incredibly corny. Well, I don't want to make that kind of generalization. Maybe it was just this radio station. At 3 we finally walked home finding a Toad along the way.

Saturday: I got up early to go to the open air market today. In the middle of Arezzo they have this humongous open air market every other sunday, so we went for the cool finds. Elizabeth, Noelle, and me went off on our own to explore the whole thing. It was by far the biggest open air market I have ever been to. It went for at least five blocks and had everything that you could ever want. We found this awesome stand with 5 euro tank tops and wanted to try them on, so we had to go to the back of this guys mini van. It seemed so sketchy and it was something I would never do in America, but they were nice and I got two new shirts.

After walking around for like 3 hours and picking up a pair of 10 euro sneakers and an umbrella we decided it was time to get some food. We meandered back to the corso and found the high fashion part of town. However, at 1 PM everything was closed, so we looked for some open restaurants that were not flooded with tourisits. That was another unbelievable thing at the time. There were so many tourists everywhere; especially German tourists. My proudest moment though was when some intensely American tourists asked us for directions. Suddenly I was the expert on a city I have only lived in for a week. After finding a tiny bistro to eat at we rejeuvanated and went looking through the antique portion of town. There was such cool things like chairs with antlers and screens with Marilyn Monroe. At some point we decided gelatto was a good idea and got completely lost looking for a gelatto place. We ended up in the San Francesco church to see the frescoes and were not disapointed. The frescoes in this little church and stained glass picture of jesus are awe-inspiring. Finally, after about an hour and a half we found the gellato place where I got the best chocolate and nutella ice cream ever. Then we headed back to the villa. By the time we got back it was five thirty and we were exhausted. Instead of going out later with everyone I just passed out late watching the Muppets Take Manhattan. Muppets are amazing!

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So for the last two days I have caught the disgusting virus going around the villa.  It just makes me feel gross and my stomach hurts occasionally.  Luckily, I didnt get it as bad as half of the other people in the villa. Even my voice teacher Kevin got sick, so yesterday all of my classes were very easygoing.  Today was completely the opposite.  We went on a movement journey from the water to a forest and into a desert.  It was a twenty minute journey, which we then cut in half.  After doing it a couple more times we performed as a story with text for a little group of people.  It was really interesting because once we had to speak I started sounding like I was four years old.  It was fun though and the most interesting part was the end of the journey we were supposed to let our bodies surrender in a desert.  I fought the urge to surrender for a very long time and then finally gave in to the deathly surrender and it felt amazing.  The release was wonderful. After class my movement teacher Bryan came up to me and thanked me for really pushing myself.  This was a total surprise because I started the class completely unfocused, but all the movement we did really grounded me.  After movement we went into voice class and started moving on three planes of the body and making sounds.  At one point our voice teacher Kevin asked me to make sounds at the very low part of my voice and the weird noises I made are pretty indescribable.  the only thing that I think comes close is like an old man wheezing, but that doesnt even come close.  I kept laughing the whole time because I really couldnt believe the sounds that were coming out of my mouth.  Afterwords we played with the idea of fire moving us while doing a monologue from The Tempest.  It was physically intense beyond belief.  We were playing Caliban, and had to say we loved Prospero while moving in weird contortions, which almost made me want to cry.  Finally, after this intense period of time we did some chorale singng and I got to go to lunch.  Today i felt like I did a lot of good work, which is why I am here.  It made me feel much better in general.  This weekend I am excited because we are having a special workshop on viewpoints, which are something I have always wanted to learn, but never really gotten a chance at.  This woman Diana is a specialist and i am very excited.

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Arezzo is an old city, capital of the province of the same name, located in Tuscany. Arezzo is about 80 km (50 miles) south-east of Florence, at an elevation of 296 meters above sea level. Arezzo may have been one of the twelve most important Etruscan cities, the so-called Dodecapolis. Etruscan remains establish that the acropolis of San Cornelio, a small hill next to that of San Donatus, was occupied and fortified in the Etruscan period.

There is other significant Etruscan evidence, parts of walls, an Etruscan necropolis on Poggio del Sole (still named "Hill of the Sun"), and most famously, the two bronzes, the "Chimera of Arezzo" (5th century BC) and the "Minerva" (4th century BC) which were discovered in the 16th century and taken to Florence.

The Piazza Grande is the most noteworthy medieval square in the city, opening behind the thirteenth-century Romanesque apse of S. Maria della Pieve. Once the main marketplace of the city, it is currently the site of the Giostra del Saracino ("Joust of the Saracin"). It has a sloping pavement in red brick with limestone geometrical lines

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This morning at 9 AM I had my first movement class with our teacher Brian Burrows. He is an Ewan McGregor, Irish look alike, who hails from Trinity College. We started out with him teaching us his forty five minute warm up. It was exhausting in the morning, but as soon as we were done I felt incredibly loose. He has this whole theory about moving from an idea of something rather than just moving through space. For example, if you are reaching toward the ground what can you imagine that would be pushing or pulling you that way. It was really interesting and I think that it really helped to connect what my body was doing to my mind. It also gave me more freedom to use my imagination. After we warmed up he talked about how he was getting away from the whole Stanislavski ideal and pushing us to make emotions in a different more physical way. It was all really interesting. For the second half of the class he had us use different parts of the body to resist or be pulled toward the walls, ceiling, roof, sounds, and colors. My body made all sorts of weird contortions and I really felt like it helped me to explore the space. After movement I had voice class, which was especially exhausting after a grueling two hour movement class. We spent the entire time singing different variations of ze, ah, and oh. I find it strange that Kevin, our teacher always focuses on the lower part of my voice, but whatever. Then at the end of class we had a very primal moment when me started singing this song "Spirit of the World" We danced around in circles and then Kevin had me and Ryan harmonize improvisationally. I was a little freaked out because I am not the best harmonizer, but I tried my best on the spur of the moment. I really had to listen to make sure I wasn't singing the melody. It pushed me in a way I am not used to and am glad for the growthful oppurtunity.

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Monday  we had our first Italian classes and all Ihave to say is that I know nothing in Italian and it shows.  The one thing I really retained was basta, which means enough.  ok, maybe more than that.  The verb conjugation is actually really easy and reminds me a lot of Italy.  Yesterday, I started my drama classes.  In our creative forum class we rolled around on the floor and played arund like kids.  It was so liberating and let go of all the stress I was holding onto. Then we did this physical exercise called timlining where you go through a period of time with physical motion.  no words.  It was really cathartic and i started thinking about all the baggage I was holding onto from the summer.  In voice we did lots of stretches on the floor that were wonderful and then did these weird voice things that made us sound like dolphins- machine guns.  The class is going to help me so much and I definitely need it. 

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Today we spent voice class doing a linklatter voice technique where you make different sounds throughout the body.  We then combined that with what we have been doing in movement.  So we would feel the impulse all over our body and then pass it with sound to our partners.  We also started working with some of more later

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After my 13 hours of flying I arrived in Rome to find people from my program waiting for the bus to Arezzo. I soon found out that instead of 100 people being in this program there were only about 30. I'm sure it will be a very different experience; very individualized. Many of the people on the programn are seasoned travelers through Europe, which is strange for me because, well, I have not traveled much at all. It's also weird because I am one of the three people from the west coast. Most people are from different places, but not the coast. The drive to the villa was awe-inspiring. It was a two hour drive where I thought my bladder would explode and the only thing that kept me sane was the view. The beautiful marigolds, deep forest greens, and coral reds were stupendous. All you saw for miles was sunflowers and grape vines; not a costco or target in sight. When we finally arrived we ate some wonderful food under the stars. Afterward we went to the city because of the joust today. Arezzo was divided into four different territories who were to compete in the match. Our side was the carpitici side (I hope I wrote that right) and our colors were red and green. We found our territory after a twenty minute walk through the duomo. The duomo is also amazing. It was right where they shot the movie "Life is Beautiful". When we arrived it was one gigantic Italian party. Free wine and dancing. So for our first night I got trashed and rocked out to Italian music. And then at some point they began to play American music like La Bamba and the YMCA. I suddenly had this random surge of American pride and danced hardcore on the dance floor. At some point one of the girls in our group got sick because she drank too much. Poor girl was throwing up all through the streets and no taxi would take her, but luckily a former student took her in for the night. Afterwards we walked home and crashed at about 3.... sadly my insomnia kept me up until about 5. Today was a few random orientations and then we went to the joust. It was like medievil times brought to life. There were three processionals.

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Being sick away from home sucks! I mean when I am at school I get sick, but its different because I live where my classes are.  Seriously! So, if you are sick you just sit in your room and feel like crap.  Yesterday, I thought that I was all better, so I pushed myself too far.  We had this amazing movement and voice class where I really got to stretch. Then after lunch I had an immensely hard Italian class, but I still felt good. And then at 5:30 after going to the market I made two huge mistakes; acrobatics and cheap wine.  My movement teacher was teaching an informal seminar on doing different acrobatics moves.  I was having such a great time while doing the seminar because we were doing kips, cartwheels, and all these cool break dancing movees.  It was not until afterward that I noticed my left arm felt like it was about to fall off.  Then if that wasnt enough at dinner I decided to open up a bottle of 1 euro wine.  First of all, it was fizzy.  That should have been my first clue it was crap.  But I drank it anyway and went out with my friends to the nearby bar after dinner.  I was exhausted at the bar and just wanted to go home while my friend KK flirted with this Romanian guy.  I got into my cranky mode and wanted to kill everyone.  Then I went home and realized I had ate and drank too much and that I could hardly feel my left arm.  The worst was that my indigestion kept me from falling asleep and I realized that the villa virus had not left my system.  At three AM I threw up and could not fall asleep until about 6 AM.  When I woke up this morning to go to movement I thought I was going to die because we were supposed to do acrobatics again.  Before the class even started I left because I knew that I would not make it through the class. I slept through movement and voice and now I am about to attempt Italian.  

Just finished Italian and still feel like crap... sigh, hopefully I will start to feel better soon.  The other scary thing is the amount of mosquito bites on my body.  Oh, and the fact that it hurts to type.  If I were at home I would curl up in front of the TV and watch junk, but as I am here I am going to take two tylenol to quell my fever and collapse on my bed.  I hope I feel better by this weekend because me and my friend Elizabeth are either going to go to Milan or Florence after class on Saturday.  It would suck not to be able to go because I am sick.  And it also sucks because when I am in the villa for long periods of time I get cabin fever.  I mean we eat, sleep, and go to school here. Not that I dont like it usually I just feel stuck.

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Today was a day that I will never forget, with an image that will haunt me the rest of my life. It started out fine. Mara, Sabrina, Bri, and I woke up this morning and headed to Cafe Liberta for breakfast. I love Cafe Liberta and really missed it over Christmas break. I love how it is the real deal--a real Italian cafe. It is so adorable!! We then headed to the train station and were off on our adventure. Sabrina was headed down to Rome to visit a certain Italian boy she met in Dublin over Christmas but was on our same train so we had a fun time talking and laughing. Mara, Bri, and I got off in Arezzo, the first stop on our journey. We walked around and took in all the town has to offer. We went to the Piazza Grande (which part of Life is Beautiful was filmed in), Palazzo Comunale, San Domenico (the cutest church--very quaint and ancient), Pieve di Santa Maria, church of San Francesco, the main Cathedral, gardens, and we found this huge cementary overlooking the hills of Tuscany. It was beautiful and sad. After spending over 3 hours in Arezzo, we headed to Cortona (about 20 minutes by train). The train station is about 7 miles from the town so we jumped on the bus and before we were seated, it was off! We fell back, and then it turned and we tumbled to the side into the seats! (Crazy Italian drivers!) It was so hilarious though! We walked around Cortona and it was so beautiful. So old and full of history and life--it was the quintassential Italian town. It was really quaint and quiet. I loved all the little alleyways! We walked around the main square and then went in search of the fountain where "Under the Tuscan Sun" was filmed. (In "Under the Tuscan Sun" she lives in Cortona). We started climbing this huge hill, and once we got to the top we encountered this nice Italian man who laughed at us when we asked him where the fountain was. "You watch too many movies." It turns out the fountain was just put in for the movie. He did tell us where the villa she lives in was though so we went in search of that. We turn the corner to another giant hill--boo to all cities built on huge hills! We walk all the way up to find another really beautiful church. There was a group of kids milling about and a pretty busy area. We wanted to walk to find the villa, but it was really foggy so we just decided to walk back down towards the town. We follow the kids down, but they are pretty far ahead of us, and in the middle is an older man, probably around 65, dressed nicely and seems like a friendly man. A little TOO friendly. We walk down the hill and encounter him playing with his belt buckle. Thinking he was peeing, shocked we turn around to give him privacy and wait for him to go away. He does, and so we continue down the hill. Then suddenly he jumps out from behind a shrine to the Virgin Mary and undecently exposes himself to us! He has the grossest mix of pleasure and happiness on his face and is wiggling about! A 65 year old exhibitionist!! SOOOOOOOOOOOOO DISGUSTING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We take off sprinting up a steep hill, adrenaline pulsing through us and are soon back at the church--surrounded by people yet scared to death. We ran back down toward the town, scared that at any moment he will pop out and expose himself to us again. We get to the bus stop, wait the longest 30 minutes of my life for the bus to come, and then head on the first train back to Florence. I am sooooo glad to be back in Florence in my room where I am safe and sound--far away from CREEPY old, Italian men!!! What a day! I still can't get over the fact that it happened--what a story I never wanted to be able to tell!

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Today I was exhausted and was not ready for movement at all, but I made it through the 45 minute warm up.  Then we began to do moving isolations of our feet, hands, pelvis, shoulders, head and so on.  It was really intense and took a lot of energy.  However, the good part of it was that our teacher Brian started explaining how when you have an action onstage it should not just be free flow, but originate in your body from something.  The class really helped me to open up my imagination when thinking of why something would be pulling my elbows in a direction.  At one point when we were working with our hands as fists I just started thinking about when I used to work at jamba juice scooping ice cream.  It made the movement so much more clear and precise in my head.  In voice class we did things relating to the isolations by working in partners.  We chose a point of contact like a finger or hand and then had to stay connected as we moved around the room exploring different levels and sounds.  Me and Alissa were very loving toward each other as we did this, but at the same time we were free to act like little babies when we were in front of the class.  At the end of class we began to sing an African chant and Kevin used our voices to affect people.  Like I sang this African chant and KK would contort her body based off of my sounds.  it made me a lot less self consious because I had to let go of my precautions when it comes to my voice.  It sounded fine and I was able to stretch myself in the process. I just came from lunch where we had American BBQ and french fries.  Weirdly all anyone has been talking about for the last two days is the food that we miss. Popular favorites are waffles, taco bell, frosties, and anything relating to In N Out, but I have to say I still am loving the Italian food.  Although, the BBQ was like comfort food and it made me feel really relaxed.  Random thing about Italy that I have to put out there is that coke is a thousand times better and ketchup tastes like cinnamon.  Now I am off to Italian and then off to Philosophy class.  I think I need a walk later because sitting for about four hours leads to me falling asleep in classes.

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Today I had movement where we did the warm up we did yesterday and then went into the movement consciousness of different elements. We did air, water, fire, and earth. Each was completely different physically and quite exhausting. As the water I became a free flowing languid being while as air I was a complete sprite. It was really interesting to think about how approaching a character from a physicality standpoint at first would be so helpful. Brian, our teacher, talked about how elements like fire could inspire you if you were playing a character with Parkinson's disease. It was all very interesting and my favorite was being of the earth because it got me out of my body. Then in voice we did a lot of work with relaxing our tongues. I did the tongue pushups I was used to with Cynthia Bassham, an acting teacher at UCI, but then we started going more in depth with the tongue. Kevin Crawford our teacher worked in a lot of what we were doing in movement to apply to our voice. We would stay on the same pitch and then assume different stances or positions like King, Queen and princess. Then he had us play with the cracks in our voice and there was a crazy range of what people did. It ran the gamut from gorillas in heat to old men. My voice sounded exactly like a motorcycle and I played around with the levels. It totally freed up all the weird pockets I had been holding onto in my voice and was very effective. Now off to Italian and then later I have a tutorial on the characters of Commedia Dell Arte

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