ciao milano!

Sigh..... last weekend in Milano. I'm still quite content with the idea of going home and although I have fond memories of Milan, I feel fine leaving it. This past weekend I wanted to get everything done in Milan so that I would have done everything that I planned on doing and wouldn't leave with anything unchecked on my to-do list.
Saturday I slept in, went downtown, window-shopped at Prada, went to the Duomo, did a little last minute shopping and had dinner with my classmate. The duomo was BEAUTIFUL and packed, because there was a full chorus and full orchestra performing Christmas songs (in Latin and Italian). Now Milan (and Italy in general) hosts a lot of operas, so this isn't your normal church choir. This is a church choir filled with opera singers from the most famous church in Milan, and one of the most famous in all of Italy. The sound quality is amazing within the cavernous sanctuary, so wherever you are standing there is a surround sound effect. It was magnificent. Then, Olga and I went to the top of the Duomo, where you can walk around on the roof and see the thousands of statues on top of each spire more clearly. The weather was beautiful and so was the rooftop.
Sunday, I went to my own church, which is magnificent in its own right. The children performed two Christmas plays in lieu of a sermon. The first play was a more traditional Nativity play, except that each child represented a person from the story by holding up a picture of the person, rather than being dressed in costume. There was a large nativity scene painting hung on the alter, and at the beginning only Jesus was in the nativity. So, as the play went along, each child spoke from the point of view of Mary, Joseph, shepherds, etc., and would tape their picture to the scene. Everyone who came in had been handed a small cutout of a person on their way into church, and we were all asked to write our names and a thought about Christmas to the person. The paper people were then collected by the children during the play and were also added to the large nativity. The second play was a bit harder to follow (both were in Italian) because it had something to do with Harry Potter....characters from Harry Potter learning about the Bible and the true meaning of Christmas (I think). It was nice, and after the service they had a Christmas bazaar upstairs, where I did a little more shopping!
After church I had lunch with my classmate Kristina and was able to pick up a few small odds and ends from various shops along the way.
Tonight I packed..... my suitcases are very full, and I might have to sit on them, but I will be able to fit everything in (although my fingers will be crossed as I zip everything shut)!
Now all that's left is running around campus tomorrow collecting signatures and finishing paperwork. Then I'll be traveling to the airport with 2 giant bags (my classmate Weichun will help me with them on the bus) and a long flight home!

Buon Natale!

*The blinged-out Christmas tree by the Duomo*

It's Christmas-time! Which means that it is time to go home! Finally I have finished all of my exams, all of the meetings, all of the classes. Suddenly we have free time, and looking back, everything is a blurry mess (but a nice one) of studying, traveling, stumbling through Italian "conversations," and trying to get enough sleep. Now that the first segment of the MA is almost over, it feels a little bittersweet, but a lot more sweet than bitter. Two weeks ago I was already excited for the end of the quarter and for spending the holidays with Julian and my family. With only 4 days left in Italy, I'm surprised that I'm the tiniest bit depressed about leaving. Once I'm not here, I'm sure I'll miss little things about Milan that I never would have realized. The gigantic aisle of cheese in the grocery store (where I only recognize Parmesan and mozzarella), good chocolate, Italian style, elaborate Christmas lights decorating the streets, public transportation, etc. The main thing I am sad about it leaving Milan without a firm grasp of Italian. On a day-to-day basis, we barely needed to use it, so my level didn't increase as much as I thought it should. But, I passed (thanks to a very kind instructor) the Italian exam for beginners.
As much as I might miss the details of everyday life here, I am looking forward to the next stop: Groningen, Netherlands. And even more than that, I am happy to be going home for a short while.
So then I guess it's time to pack. This will be quite the undertaking...

*we had a festive sweets night at Kristina's apartment: Sorin, Kristina, me, Felipe, Tom*

*Christmas lights decorating Via Dante, where National Geographic had a photography exhibition*

*festive window display in the fashion district*

*Bolzano*

*we have arrived! everything is in two languages: Bolzano (italian), Bozen (german)*


I had the privilege of traveling to the beautiful Alpine town of Bolzano for a couple of days. Bolzano is a quaint town in northeastern Italy, in the region Trento, where Grandma Overholt's family is from. The feel of the city is decidedly more Austrian/German than Italian, which might be partially why I loved it so much. Everyone there is perfectly bilingual-- on the streets I heard more German, but in the stores I heard more Italian.
Bolzano is famous for their Christmas market, so our timing was perfect! The city is decorated beautifully and the atmosphere is festive wherever you go. My classmate Kristina and I traveled to the region, and spent one day in the city of Bolzano and the next in a village up high in the Alps called Klobenstein, where there are "erdpyramiden" (earth pyramids), a geological formation from volcanic ash. Here are some pictures:

*Christmas lanterns line one of the main streets*


*a small park decorated in Christmas (Weinachten) decorations*


*leaning wooden carvings of people are headed toward the cathedral doors*


*a building turned advent calendar*



*Christmas market of Bolzano*


*Father Christmas*


*Kristina standing still in the fast-paced market place*


*delicious wienerschnitzel*


*me next to the outdoor heater, which allows cafes to keep their outdoor terraces open year round*


*day 2 in the Alps*


*ahh the air was so fresh and clean*


*the earth pyramids on the side of a mountain in the distance*


*close up of the earth pyramids*


*very happy EMCL students in the Alps*

*Modena*

Last Sunday I took a day trip to the nearby town of Modena. Luckily, my neighbor's brother (Rayme) lives there and offered to show me the highlights of the town. Modena is a small, typical northern Italian city. It's not very touristy, and on a Sunday afternoon it's very peaceful.
In the morning, we went to several churches, most of which were having Mass when we showed up. One of the churches had been converted into an art gallery. We went to the city hall, where there was a couple getting married. The city hall is incredibly old (one of the rooms has a plaque saying the building is from the year 500) and houses the bucket of Modena. The story behind the bucket isn't quite clear... but the city of Bologna stole it from Modena and few times, and now Modena has it, kept behind a security rope and under an alarmed glass case.
In the afternoon, my hosts took me out for lunch, then to the Ferrari factory.

Overall, it was a really relaxing day, and it was nice to chat with someone about home. Rayme (my host) grew up in Sidney as well, and it turned out that we knew a lot of the same people. It was nice to have a piece of home in a foreign land, while also enjoying the foreign land. Here are some photos from the day.

*my gracious hosts: rayme, claudia, claudia's dad*


*bucket of Modena*


*painting in the city building of the patron saint of Modena, Saint Geminianus, who covered the city with fog in order to save it from Attila the Hun's attack*


*duomo of Modena*


*outside the Ferrari factory*


*a Ferrari was outside the museum with the owner nowhere in sight*

Merry Christmas!

It's a little bit early, but the Overholts are wishing everyone a Merry Christmas!

Share in our holiday cheer by clicking here

take a walk with me

In linguistics, there is a type of sentence known as a Garden Path Sentence. This is when you read the sentence, expecting it to fit into a certain pattern, but it doesn't. So you have to go back to the beginning and try to reconstruct, re-decode the elements in order to figure out the meaning (ie, turn back on the garden path). We are learning about the theory in my psycholinguistics class, and I think it's really fun to figure out what the real meaning is, mainly because I NEVER can. Someone always has to explain to me what the sentence means. Maybe my parser is blocked. Who knows? Regardless, I wanted to share the joy of Garden Path sentences. Try to figure these out:

• The horse raced past the barn fell.
• The log floated past the bridge sank.
• Fat people eat accumulates.
• The old man the boats.
• Because the little boy hid the ice cream that his little brother wanted to eat melted.