Motorino Crash

Me tonight after unwrapping my knee to let the raspberry breath a bit, I put ice on it to reduce the swelling... stupid!:

I had quite a rough day and I thought maybe blogging about it would help. I have been trying to learn how to drive the motorino (scooter in English - but faster really). Jesse and I spent some time on Sunday practicing together. The bad thing about me is that I am extremely accident prone. Just two Fridays ago I almost broke my toe while warming up in Music class.

Anyways, yesterday morning I was going to take the motorino to school by myself for the first time. I went down to the garage, pulled it out and then for one reason or another it was going to fast towards a brick wall, so I tried to slam on the breaks and the wheels slipped out from under me taking the motorino to the ground. Luckily, I was only jolted, not hurt, but I broke the bottom left corner of the windshield. I didn't want to wake Jesse up with the news and I knew if I didn't get back on the bike I wouldn't do it again... so I got back on and drove on the back roads very slowly to school. I made it there and back. I was pretty proud of myself and Jesse didn't care much about the windshield, he was just glad I was ok.

That brings us to this morning. I decided that it was probably the smooth concrete that messed me up, so I pulled the motorino out into the actual driveway with my feet before starting to ride it. I was doing just fine, then came a big turn and the motorino jumped a bit. I tried to slam on the breaks but I think I had the wheel turned too far so I went down on the pavement. Unfortunately, this time my leg was stuck underneath. The only thing that was hurt (thank goodness) was my knee, which is quite swollen, a little discolored, but got a bit of a raspberry. One of our neighbors came out to help me pick up the moto and dust myself off. He's a really nice guy. I went upstairs to Jesse in tears telling him the story. He drove me to school today where I wrapped and iced it before and during class.

Luckily we were doing more color exploration today in Marcello's class and then had Aesthetics with Mike this afternoon. However, I am not happy at how clumsy I am and it makes me feel vulnerable and helpless when I can't even drive myself places. Jesse says I just need more practice and our neighbor said that this is normal. He said it happens to everyone a few times when they are trying to get used to the moto. I'm not sure how long it will take me to get back on the horse, but we'll see.

Beginning of the End (of the Semester)

I just realized I hadn't put my pictures up from the last time we played soccer. Here are some highlights:

Doug, John, Ilse, and William had a surprise visitor. Hi Eliza!!

William, Meredith, Jenna, and Ilse enjoy some water before game play:

This is the face of a man ready to play soccer. Oh Jesse you fierce soccer player you:

Typical Taylor Italianism -- Talking on the phone during the break:

Tristan, Jenna, and Bob get ready for the game:

We're hardcore!

Me, Caroline, and Meredith before the game:

Taylor made me play goalie, so I spent my time writing a note to my husband in the dust -- 'Hey Jesse, I love you so please quit trying to score against me!' -- he was on the other team at the time:

I know it has been a long time since my last post. We have been repeating and adding a lot of different things in class so I thought I would just give you the highlights.

We are currently working on our solo projects which we will perform at the Aurora in Arezzo city center on November 23rd. My project is based on ritual (we covered a lot of different aspects of southern Italian rituals and presented our own versions of rituals in Music class with Gianni Bruschi this semester). I did not present this particular ritual in class. As most of you know, November 27th it will be one year since my father's passing. This ritual is for him. In the Jewish and Pagan traditions you are supposed to grieve over the loss of a parent for 1 year and then conduct a closure ritual. Though I know that this will not be the end of my grieving process for my father, I do this in honor of him, his life, and our relationship. I will go into more detail about this piece as the days pass. I worked with Claudia today on one portion, my movement piece with a chair while singing. I will be exploring this more over the next few days before my meeting with Mike on Friday.

We have really moved forward in Movement class. We worked on human juggling and back rolls off another person (like a back flip around the partner's arm). We have also been working more with Feldenkrais and restrictions -- once the restriction has been taken away, how does this affect your movement? Very interesting results!!

In Voice class we have been working with the text we chose and our partner. My partner is Caroline (I call her Shakespeareamazing) and I am using the Porter's monologue from Macbeth. Our last assignment was to find 6 different statues in which 3 of them we were each ladies and 3 we were each warriors. Caroline and I had a wonderful time coming up with our statues and the transition between them by using play and improvisation. While we do this piece we speak our text, sometimes at the same time, but it is always interesting where the stops and starts of the movement versus the text happen. 

In Acting with Marcello we have begun working with colors. This has been a frustrating exercise because we are supposed to present the color so that the audience can understand it, but colors are so subjective it is difficult to know what will be right or wrong. Today we also did the veils exercise (also difficult): you go to sleep in your bed at home, when you wake up you are surrounded by veils, you find your way through these veils to suddenly come upon the ocean at the end. How do you portray this for an audience without being too descriptive? It is difficult but interesting how each person goes about it. We added color to this (you are a color) and then we got in groups of 3 and 4 to make scenes out of colors. Bob, Meredith, Taylor, and I made a scene where a tree (Taylor as Brown) is struck by lightening (Meredith as White) at night (Me as Royal Blue) and catches on fire (Bob as Red).