melissa grace kreider

I attend three of the six schools here in Italy that make up Palazzi, the Florence Association for International Education. The Italian school, sQuola, also the Center for Contemporary Italian Studies, deserves its own blog post because of the moves it is making in the Italian community. Right now we’ll focus on DIVA and FUA.

            DIVA stands for Digital Imaging and Visual Arts. DIVA is equipped with multiple computer labs with up-to-date technology and boasts a beautiful high-quality digital photo printing lab. My favorite part, though, is the photo studio for my Introduction to Fashion Photography class.

The studio part of the studio.

Other part of the studio.

Inspiration board!

 Other than my Italian class at sQuola, I attend all of my other classes in FUA, or Florence University of the Arts. FUA is absolutely gorgeous with a newly equipped Darkroom [which I couldn't score photos of-there was a class going on. apologies!] and all the trimmings of a fancy Italian building.

I’ll let the photos speak for me!

The lobby of FUA.

Our lovely library (Listen, I'm a huge book nerd. I worked at Bierce. Don't judge me)!

A classroom in FUA.

Oh, did I mention the courtyard?

Yeah, that's a palm tree.

The view from the terrace in the courtyard! Unreal!

All in all, Palazzi is a wonderful association and my schools have a very high standard for the work you produce. Just how I like it! So far I really reccommend studying through Study Abroad Italy to Palazzi/Florence University of the Arts.

Start looking into it! Most programs [any program! it doesn't have to be this one!] are now accepting applications for Summer programs and maybe even Fall 2012!

Ciao for now!

I took a short trip to the chocolate festival yesterday in the freezing cold. This week-long celebration dedicated completely to chocolate (good guess!), is in it's eighth year and takes place this year in Piazza Della Repubblica. To differentiate, this ChocoFest is formally named Fiera del Cioccolato Artigianale, or "Artisan Chocolate Fair." These chocolatiers want you to know that what they're shelling out are no ordinary sweets! 

The need to point out that it's artisan chocolate is almost useless. Looking around the festival, I could immediately tell that this was not run-of-the-mill chocolate I'm used to.

This is an entire replica of the city center of Florence-fashioned from chocolate.

Chocolate cleats and tools! Everything you can imagine made into chocolate form.

At this point, we were absolutely frozen solid and found hot chocolate. Note: hot chocolate at Fiera del Cioccolato Artigianale does not mean Hershey's hot chocolate, powdered and combined with hot water. It means this:

Hot chocolate /hat choc-o-late/ (noun): straight up melted, lukewarm dark chocolate with whipped cream and hazelnut/nutella-like shavings on top.

Beat that!

            I’m in fabulous Florence, Italy, but I seem to be having to handle with every day stressors. Let’s face it: I am in college, after all! The thing is I’m thousands of miles away from home and have no one to vent to.  

            I found myself a little overwhelmed by my Intro to Fashion Photo class today. We began studio work and I was asked all of the questions, chose all of the lights, and felt frequently at a loss. Being a young freshman in college, I haven’t been formally taught anything past the basics of drawing and design. No studio lighting experience or classes; nothing.  I wanted to be in the Matrix, “plug in” and know everything there is to know about studio work in two minutes. I’m actually very grateful for being thrown into it because so much clicked in one class period!

 If you (and you should) ever have the experience of studying abroad, you’ll realize that everyone in your studio/digital art classes are on a different level. In my case, everyone is a step (or 34,985,723 steps) above me. It gets very frustrating, but that sort of competition pushes me to work harder.

            When you’re learning or taking the initiative to learn, never put down your preexisting knowledge simply because you haven’t been taught something yet. That’s why you’re there: to learn and experience.

            I came to this conclusion while sitting on the Ponte Santa Trinita. I left class feeling walked all over and came to Ponte Santa Trinita (Our Bridge), gave up walking and placed myself on to the ledge facing the Ponte Vecchio. The sun was out and I sat, hovering between Oltrarno (my neighborhood) and the North Centro (the Duomo side of the river) until I calmed down and collected myself.

 Instead of breaking down and crying into my gelato, I found a list of books on studio lighting, downloaded them to my iPad, and planned on devoting my life to them this weekend. Being abroad is teaching me to deal with my stress in an extremely positive way!

            Moral of the story? Don’t feel stupid for not knowing what you haven’t been taught. Learning is a process and there is no way to be a master without once being a beginner.

Ciao for now!

-m.

My view from the Ponte Santa Trinita.

Florence used to be the fashion capital of Italy, maybe even the world. Within a ten year span, the major designers we know today moved their headquarters to Milan. This a major migration and quickly turned Milan into the fashionable city we know it as today.

So why?

                Versace requested to the city of Florence if he could hold a grand fashion show in the very famous Boboli Gardens (Google them-now). They thumbs-downed his request and Versace simply got up and moved to Milan, a city that would better serve his needs. Within a decade, designer after designer hopped on over with him, leaving Florence still a fashionable, fabulous, beautiful city, but lost it’s name as “The Fashion Capital.”

All over the Boboli Gardens.

Over the weekend I was lucky enough to go visit Pisa-about an hour train ride from Florence-and see the famous Leaning Tower of Pisa!

It is very surreal to see it in person. It was one of those "seen-it-a-million-times-on-TV-slash-internet-and-oh-my-god-it's-in-front-of-my-face" kind of moments. 

We were walking from the train station to the tower for quite awhile along a relatively suburban area (Pisa's suburbia) when all of a sudden...

While the tower itself is beautiful, we can't forget the cathedral right next to it..

You may know why the tower is leaning or you may not...it is simply because the foundation it was built on was extremely unstable, therefore it began to lean. The architects decided to let the foundation settle for about a century (obviously by then they were dead...) and the tower was finished, still leaning, in 1370. Since then it's most recent restoration was in 2001 to keep things pretty.

This small day trip to Pisa made me want to travel even more around Europe. I suffer from a bad case of wanderlust, no doubt.

Ciao for now!