in vacanza (non certo, ma ancora, una vacanza)

Questa settamana e andata veloce, ma ancora tranquillo. Lunedi e Mercoledi in mia clase di pittura, noi abbiamo comincato fare una pittura di un fiore, e tanto divertente.

Anche nella mia clase di lingua italiano, abbiamo avuto un esame per la prima meta del simistre. E andato bene, ho pensato ho fatto buona, tanto facile, ma non so come buona adesso.

Dopo le mie clase, siamo andati a un “excursion” venerdi. Prima, siamo andati a Loreto vedere La Basilica Santuario della Santa Casa e la Sala del Tesero in dentro. Questa chiese e stato fantastico. Desidero conosco le piu perole describere come bella e stato. Le relique di Maria e nella Sala del Tepero. Non so essato, ma penso che Maria abita in Loreto o vicino a qua. Quella basilica e tantisimo famosa. Il papa va qua spesso.

Ci sono solo le tre chiese in Italian che lui va in un anno. San pietro certo, la basilica a Firenze (che io vado visitare questa settamana,) e questa basilica a Loreto.

Ok, quindi, piu cosi volgio dire dei miei viaggi, ma e tanto difficale scrivere solo in italiano. Adesso fermato le italiana e cambio a inglese dire piu, ciao ciao.

This week went very fast, but still calmly. Monday and Wednesday in my painting class, we started to do a picture of a gorgeous flower, it’s a lot of fun and I’m very excited to be doing it.

Also, in my Italian class, we had our mid semester exam. It went well, I thought I did very well, very easy, but I don’t know how good right now so I’ll wait to see.

After my classes, we went on an excursion on Friday. First we went to Loreto to see the Basilica Santuario della Santa Casa and the Sala del Tesero inside. This church was phenomenal. I wish I know more words to describe how beautiful it was. The relics of Mary (the mother of Christ) are inside the Sala del Tepero. I don’t know exactly, but I think that Mary stayed in or near Loreto (something like that). This church is so famous because of it. The pope goes here often There are only three churches in Italy that he goes to every year. St. Peters of course, the church in Florence (which I am going to visit this week) and this church is Loreto.

Ok, so there are more things I want to talk about my travels, but it’s really difficult to write only in Italian. So I stop the Italian and change to English to write more.

I love talking in Italian and writing as well for the practice, but it takes a lot of time right now and with my vocabulary I can’t truly describe how wonderful some of these places are.

So anyway, after Loreto we went to a small town not far from Ancona called Sirolo. This place is pretty much the Cinqueterre of the east coast. It was so beautiful. You should really watch the movie I am posting because it describes the beauty of this place.

After that we went back to Genga where I was stranded the week before. But this time the experience was much more amazing. Genga is famous for its caves. It has the largest natural indoor space in Europe. The formations inside were absolutely gorgeous and incredible to fathom. I couldn’t take any pictures but believe me, it was amazing.

After that we headed to a winery in Metalica to learn about and sample the native white of Marche, Verdicchio. It was a lot of fun not to just learn about the process, but to learn the correct methods of tasting and choosing foods to join with it. I will say, that this winery had by far the best white wine I’ve had since getting to Italy. So if you are ever in a wine store and see Verdicchio white wine, BUY IT!! I promise you that you won’t be disappointed.

Well for now I am done, enjoy the pictures and tell me what you think when you get the chance. Take care everyone. Ciao Ciao!

This first image is of the piazza in front of La Basilica Santurario della Santa Casa. It’s fairly large in this small town, but really gorgeous, everything was built at different times which makes the composition more interesting.

This image is inside the church, the marble square box you can see in the middle of the image is the Sala del Tesero, where the relics of Mary are held.

Here is another image, you can see the scale of the house better and in comparison from the last image how big the church is. Inside this renaissance house is a two thousand year old brick construction where Mary’s relics are located. It’s amazing that through Napolean’s conquests that this place still stands. There are other rooms in the same church that were destroyed and everything was stolen.

This is the church from the exterior at the back, and some friends.

This is back in the main piazza, while we were inside a man had uncovered some of his works and was working on another, fantastic.

So this is Sirolo, an amazing place, we’re up a few hundred feet from sea level but the next image…

…shows the view from below at the beach, it is absolutely amazing. I hope you can grasp from this image that it is almost a full 360 degree image, about 300 degrees

Here are two pictures of me and some friends climbing some of the rocks on this beach, it was a lot of fun.

Here are the mountains of Genga, but we got to go inside and see the 1.4 million year old formations (sorry that there are no pictures of the inside)

This is at the winery in Metalica. This gentleman, Luca, explained the process and then took us here to the store to do a wine tasting and let us spend money on good wines. I bought three bottles, two of Verdicchio and one of a white wine and honey, all of which were produced at that winery.