Forget whiskers on kittens...

Everyone knows that I am not easily enamored of anything, declining passing infatutations like dead flowers. But since around last April, when my Japanese teacher told me about a free concert, there has been a special something creeping up on my heart. Taiko, the traditional Japanese drumming. I sat entranced throughout the entire two and a half hour performance of that performance, having sneakily snuck onto the campus of Swathmore College to see it, and then went home and immediately found the next time I could drag my family along with me to see another performance. To my dismay it was the last one before the group returned to their performing arts school in Tokyo.

I went to see a taiko concert again last night, this time by a professional group, and fell in love with it all over again. This is serious, people. Taiko is one of the most amazing things on Earth, and just the thought of going to see it can make me loopy for hours. If I was a cartoon character I'd have stars in my eyes.

Here's a link to a video for those who don't know what I'm talking about. Remember that seeing it live, when you can feel every beat through the floor, is infinately more amazing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3x0et5D9DQU .

Italy News, Pt. 2: Rome (day 1)

After another four hours in the bus, we arrived in Rome!

I didn't take a picture of the monastery where we stayed. It was more of a wayhouse for Czech Catholics than a monsatery, anyway; there were a handful of priests and many groups coming and going. Anyone who has been to someplace like Harvey Cedars has seen was the room was like.

The first day, one of the priests escorted us around several Cathedrals and Ancient Rome after breakfast, which was bread. A serving dish of rolls in the middle of the table. Since Italy is famous for good food, I was actually looking forward to be eating, you know, real Italian food! But it never happened. We had dry bread for breakfast and cafeteria-quality Czech food for dinner. Lunch we were on our own, and almost everyone had brought enough food for the trip. Traveling on a budget has it's disappointments...but the bread was not stale, I am happy to say, and so, well, it could have been alot worse.

We began by seeing this church. You're going to see alot of pictures of churches; and since the priest showing us around was Czech and spoke (of course) in Czech, of which I understand approxiamately four words, there isn't a whole I can tell you about them. They were pretty interesting to look at.

In the back of the church we saw the revered finger of St. Thomas. It's in the gold cross. I was also told that one of the little ones on top contains a thorn from Our Lord's crown of thorns, complete with Holy Blood.

I tried to look suitably non-skeptical, and hope I succeeded enough that the priest didn't notice. He had us sing a hymn (in Czech) here.

Although I didn't take a picture, this church also contained the supposed shroud of Christ. Since when he came back to life he of course blazed with light and this zeroxed his image onto the cloth. Which is still intact two thousand years later. Cue hymn number two.

We went from there to another church, whose name again I did not catch. There were no relics, but there was some incredible architecture. I believe there were bronze doors in this church that were over two thousand years old, although I seem to not have downloaded the picture. This was the outer foyer of the church.

Sts. Peter and Paul.

Even the ceiling was intricately and richly decorated.

These cathedrals are absolutely stunning in their proportions and sheer size: stunning enough to get a group of 45 teenagers, many of whom are 13 and 14 year old boys, to walk in hushed silence the entire time we were in them.

I really loved the way the sunlight fell from the windows onto the arches of the opposite side.There were several banks of organ pipes throughout the front of the church. It must sound incredible when it's played.

There were frescoes on every inch of available wall, mostly showing scenes from the Bible or church history/mythology.

A sunbeam.

There was a chapel in this cathedral, smaller and older; it was dark with age and very quiet and peaceful. As impressive as the huge cathedrals are, a part of me liked this better. It was also less richly decorated: compare the wood paneling on this ceiling to the gold of the main part of the church.
The art was also older than the Baroque frescoes in the church.

Every church had the requisite stand outside selling tourist junk.

We began the only non-religion related part of the trip that afternoon, with this famous statue of Marcus Aurelius (I think).

In the same square was this fountain. On either side are the rivers Tiber and Nile and in the middle an Ancient Greek goddess: Athena, I think. (forgive my repeated uncertainty. Remember that I'm going on sketchy second hand translations from Czech courtesy of a kind student).

A triumphal arch.Of course, no trip to Rome would be complete without a visit to...The Colosseum!

In spite of the food, there are several distinct advantages with going as part of a group, particularly a school group.Inside the Colosseum. The rows in the bottom that you can see today are the lower levels of the arena, where things and people were stored until they were needed. There used to a floor covering it, as well as a cloth canopy to cover the entire structure. I wonder what the Caesars would have thought of this?

Pilgrims come to pray for the people who died there.

View from the top of the Colosseum.

After the Colosseum, we walked down a very pretty path to visit some more ruins of Ancient Rome. I don't know what some of them are, though.

I liked the marbling on these columns

This was either a prison or a government building.

Did I mention that it was a perfect spring day the whole time? I know I posted pictures of the flowers in Florence...I'm not sure if Italy, like Prague, was mysteriously passed over by winter this year, or spring always comes this early. Either way, we won.

The tomb of Romulus and Remus.

This is a Roman cell such as St. Paul would have been staying in. Although you can see things in these pictures, because of the wonders of flash, it was actually practically pitch dark, except for what light came from a small hole in the ceiling, and very small. The door is for conveinant dumping of dead bodies. Bottom picture is of the Czech priest who was showing us around.

At the top of some building; more arial views of Rome.

From there we went to this famous fountain.

By the time we finished at the fountain, I was frankly exhausted, and it was starting to get dark. I hoped it was time to go back for dinner; but no such luck: we proceeded to this basilisca. The light was all wrong to get a picture inside, being too light for the flash to do anything yet too dark to actually get a picture. Anyway, it was more frescoes and tiling, but even despite the light it was hard to see with the amount of people and the fencing put up around the walls so you couldn't actually get close. Oh well. It was, thankfully, the last stop of the day.

After dinner, I promptly went to bed and fell asleep. :)

Outside the Vatican Museums

Mrs. Vacohdach (trip co-ordinator): Did you enjoy the museum?
me: yes, it was very interesting...
V: You do not have such good museums in America, I think.
m: No, we have very good museums in the states as well.
V: but they're more modern.
m: No, they also have ancient things.
V: I don't think so.
m: . . . excuse me, I think Annetka is waving me over.


Just because I'm an American doesn't mean I'm a culturally inferior, mostly stupid child.

computer failure

Around nine o clock last night, Zuzana and I were watching a movie on her computer when it suddenly lost consciousness. Being unable to revive it, it has been removed to the computer hospital until further notice.

I'll continue this blog venture when the patient has recovered. sigh...


(for the logically curious amoung you, this notice comes from a computer at the school where I'm volunteering.)

Italy News, Pt. 1: Florence

I was instructed to take many pictures in Italy, and I did the best I could...

We began our trip Wednesday night at 6:00 and arrived in Florence at 8:00 the following morning. People who have traveled long distances with me know how well I sleep on trains and buses, i.e. hardly at all, and so while I enjoyed Florence, I was also stupid with exhaustion. Oh well...

Early Morning View. The girl in the foreground was also named Marie, and she and I and Jason (the exchange student living with the Miloschewsky's) hung out for much of the trip.

We began by admiring this church.

In Florence, there were many statues by famous people just hanging around in every square, which is pretty cool. (I'm sorry, I'm not sure how to turn the picture around...just tilt your head to one side to get the appropriate angle) This is one of a series of eight or ten we saw on the way to see...

Florence Cathedral.

And the...baptismarium (sp?)...across the street. It is the oldest building in Florence, first century I think, pretty much unremarkable except for the door, which is scenes from the bible beaten into, I think, copper. I tagged along with a Japanese tour group to listen about it :) and learned the Japanese word for baptism (senrei).

Next we went to the Medici family private library/chapel, although we didn't have enough time to go inside. I tagged along of an American art history class trip group to learn that there was a big competition to design the facade of the building, which Michelangelo won. However, because of the political situation, the facade was never built. The front of the building is rough like this because it is supposed to be supporting a facade.

While I was absorbed in taking this picture, a mime tapped me on the shoulder and scared the living daylights out of me. He motioned for me to put some money into his hat; I rummaged dramatically in my pocket to produce...a button. He didn't want it, but everyone had a good laugh.

Next we went to "the prettiest square in Italy." I'm not sure about that; there were these houses on one side, however, which were very pretty.

I really liked all the flowers in the windows all over the city.

To finish off the day we visited this bridge.



These were once houses, and then regular shops (butchers, etc.), but people complained because of the smell. These days it is all tourist shops.

There are more pictures of Florence, but some of them didn't upload properly, so I will add them tomorrow. Here is one last picture of the beautiful city.