abstraction in art and cinema.

[BLOGGER SUCKS]. This is a photo of the inside of the Odeon Theather, that I obviously didn't take. Read further to understand.

Today was inadvertantly all about the abstract kind of mind-twisting that generally only occurs when one has taken illicit drugs. It started after my history class ended (that was a doozy!) at 2:30. I left my class, walked about 20 yards, and came to the Odeon Theater, where I met up with Bethany, her roommate, and Mary to see Alice in Wonderland.

I tried to take some photos of the inside of the theater, but it was weird lighting and none of them truly show its majesty. I'll try again the next time I see a movie. The theater itself is SUPER DUPER fancy, more like the inside of the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center than the local AMC 20. The seats are huge and comfy, the screen is enormous, and there is balcony seating in addition to the normal seats.

Obviously showing in English AKA original sound. Though I do wish there had been Italian subtitles so I could work more on my (lack of) language skills, I couldn't have handled an entire movie in a language that I essentially do not know. (Hey, I bet if I watched Friends in Italian I would pick it up SO quickly! Excellent idea.) I wasn't super thrilled with the movie. It was a good way to kill an afternoon, and I was glad to finally see a movie at the Odeon.

After that, I skipped...er...RAN home in the cold and made myself some lentil soup for dinner before going to see an exhibit with API. Marissa and I headed to the Palazzo Strozzi to see "A Look Into the Invisible," an exhibit featuring artists such as De Chirico, Magritte, Balthus, and Ernst who specialize in abstract art, mostly of the metaphysical sort.

While the exhibit was very interesting, I find it hard to listen to tour guides for whom English is a second language. Their technical language is often good but they have difficulty stringing together ideas in a coherent way that makes me lose track of what they are talking about, which makes it so hard to focus. I generally find myself drifting and reading the art explanations more than listening to the guide. I was definitely ready to leave by the time we had gone through the whole exhibit, but I am glad that I went.

Tomorrow, the roomz and I are headed to finalize our permesso di soggiorno (or something like that) applications, which essentially allow us to live here legally. We are planning to leave directly from there to go to the train station for our overnight stay in Verona! That's right, the four English majors are headed to Fair Verona, setting of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet...I'm just hoping this means that the Italian men are more Romeo-like and less...lurky.