The beach was great this weekend (not exactly the cliff side beach I was imagining, but a beautiful beach nontheless). Civitanova (where the beach is at) is a much larger city than Macerata. There is a lot of shopping and on Saturdays there is a massive market. I have never been to a warm beach or swam in the ocean. The water was sooo warm and salty! It was also odd bobbing along in the waves. Not to mention the amount of scantily clad Italians frolicking on the beach.

Civitanova

Sunday we went to a harvest festival. It was great fun watching traditional Italian dancing from back in history and then the now traditional Italian dancing. We also had an amazing dinner with fresh food from the farm-and I discoverd what REAL lasanga tastes like.

Harvest Festival

Monday we began our journey towards Venezia. It was much easier traveling with people who speak Italian. Venice is gorgeous!!! But I get motion sickness really easily though so the first few hours upon arrival were not very enjoyable. Actually most of the time there was not as much fun as I thought it would be. To get anywhere you have to go by ferry (for long distance) or foot. I was seasick a lot of the time there. Venice is also full of tourists which is really obnoxious and because of this things are about doubled in price in comparison to that in Macerata. We spent most of our time in the Biennale which consisted of contemporary art work. I was actually a little bit upset that this is the artwork we saw, because the states is full of contemporary art work and I was really looking forwards to seeing famous works by artists such as Leonardo da Vinci. We brought a sketchbook with us to Venice and were required to fill the entire thing with sketches from the Biennale and things in Venice in general. The weather was also continuously getting warmer but luckily (and this was a rarity) we had air conditioning in our hotel.

Venezia

Me on the balcony of Basilica di San Marco

Typical art from the Biennale

We got back on Thursday and Macerata finally feels like my home. I was so glad to be back in our apartment and in a place where I recognized things, places, and people.

On Saturday we went to Civitanova again. This was our first free weekend!!! Us girls ended up getting a hotel there and stayed the night. Civitanova really is a fun place. Filled with bountamous amounts of gelato flavors, warm sand and water, and shopping as far as the eye can see. I was also able to reach my family and boyfriend using the phone in the hotel (before departing the states I had purchased phone cards but in order to use them you have to use a land line phone. And the phone cards I bought did not work so I had to purchase one there-nontheless I was able to hear all my loved ones voices and this was such a relief).

-Jolene Johnson