2010 Blogs

Last Day in Alba

05/30/2010

Ciao classmates and friends!

Today is the last day for the group to be in Alba! Catherine, Ali, and myself (Jess) have finally arrived (well actually on Thursday afternoon) to join the composition students for the end of the Alba Music Festival. Tonight will be the last concert we attend and we will be off as a group to Venice in the morning. Last night was my favorite, and I think the favorite of many other students, concert. We saw Requiem by Verdi. EPIC EPIC EPIC EPIC EPIC. The church and overflow seating were full and people were still standing out the doorway. If you do not know what piece of music I am talking about, please google it or something. And then imagine it live in a church built in the early 1200s. SO GOOD( in my best teen girl squad voice).

The culture here in this little town is very exciting to see and experience. We walk everywhere because we can. The streets are one way and extremely tiny. Every single cafe serves lots of wine and the most fantastic cappuccinos and espresso macchiatos you've ever tasted. As a group, we've befriended some of the staff at VinCafe and we spend most of our time having coffee breaks and our meals there. Building relationships is very rewarding, and we've also found a translator in the mix. The small town Italian charm is very appealing and I think we'll all miss it when we hit the big city tomorrow. Perhaps everyone's favorite part of the culture is the daily afternoon naptime. Everything closes for about four hours and people just sleep. The town becomes nearly ghost like and only a few places are open. I could get used to not having to work from noon-4pm and sleeping.

Tomorrow will be great because we get to begin the seeing part of the Venice/Vienna class. We've had two sessions so far but we'll get to visualize the things we've been lectured about. Be excited!