Dreaming and Perugia: This is Epic.

Last weekend I went to Perugia with my friend, Magda.  It was a necessary trip.  I needed a breather away from the villa.  Don't get me wrong, this place is beautiful, and I surely can't complain but there does tend to be a sense of cabin fever if you don't leave the villa after a while.  The theatre students were in Venice last weekend, and the music students in Rome, so my usual duties as guardian of the villa (locking up, being the emergency contact) weren't as pressing.  FREEDOM!

We left Friday afternoon, after a morning of writing emails and relaxing and of course, a lunch of...need I even say it? KEBAB!  I just love them.  Mmmmmm...my favorite place in town is called Tangier.  On the train ride to Perugia, we started to notice some rain coming down.  By the time we finally made it to the Perugia station, it was POURING, and of course, like the space cadet I can sometimes be, I realized I forgot my piece of paper that had all of the hostel's information, where we were going to stay. WHOOPS!  I called a friend back in Arezzo and asked if she would be so kind as to look it up, and she quickly gave us the number to the Farmhouse Back-packer's hostel of Perugia (wooo, long name).  Of course they didn't answer and no one, cab driver nor information attendant, knew what we were talking about.  We FINALLLLY got a hold of someone who could tell us which bus to get on (but of  course not what stop).  I was having one of those, not anxious but...I don't know, frustrated moments like,  damn you Kira, way to forget important info, and of course it's raining and I feel like an ass speaking the language.  But I had Magda by my side to help with communication and to keep me sane.  After about a 20 minute bus ride we finally made it to our "stop," which seemed to be in the middle of nowhere.  According to me, we were now in bumblefuck Perugia.  We recognized some English speakers, and since we were clearly not in a touristy part of town anymore, we thought hey they probably are going where we're going!   They were Australian, and they were going to where we were going.  They had already been to the hostel so they helped us out.

We arrived and were completely blown away by the hostel's surroundings.  It was an old farmhouse which they renovated to be a hostel.  But mostly there were private rooms, with only a couple dorm-style ones.  We stayed there because it was cheaper than most in town and seemed like a nice "getaway" spot.  They also had free breakfast and a kitchen that we could use if we wanted.  Magda and I shared a room that had bunk beds.  We ordered some pizza with a bunch of other people that were staying at the hostel on Friday night.  Everyone was extremely friendly and from all over.  The States, Canada, Australia, Spain, Italy and Russia.  We had a bottle (and a half) of wine.  I practiced my Italian for the rest of the evening and we were off...to bed...so we thought.  I COULD NOT SLEEP.  Since we were way the fuck out there in the country, and it was an OLLLLD farmhouse (did I mention they had farm animals too, and an ENORMOUS turkey).  At one point in the night after I had woken up to go to the bathroom, I came back and heard a fly buzzing in my ear.  I thought, okay fly, go away.  But it kept on buzzing.  I tried shooing it away with my hand, and the buzzing would stop...or so I thought.  There would be a nice silent period of 45 seconds when there was no buzzing and I would get settled into the idea that, this was indeed the end of the buzzing, but NO, it kept on for most of the night.  I finally put a shirt over both of my ears thinking to myself, well, at least if they buzz, they can't fly in my ears and eat my brain. FUCKERS.

Needless to say, I was tired as all hell in the morning, and found out that Magda had the same exact experience as I.  But, we were in Perugia, and we were going to make it to town!  So we set off for what was going to turn out to be quite the interesting bus ride.

Me on bus hoping I would not die.

 So, right before we got on the bus, we went to Bar Olimpia, to get a bus ticket (which they were out of) and a coffee (and cigarette of course).  And this weirdo man came up to us and asked if we were working.  Prostitutes?  No.  I'm not really sure why he was asking, or what he quite meant, but he was strange nonetheless.  Anyway, I quickly forgot about him until we were on the bus.  We were on route to Perugia (the city center) and all of a sudden I hear a screaming man, and someone is kicking the door violently, pounding, with fire coming out of his ears. Literally, there was fire.  Well, not really, but there may as well have been.  The bus driver kept on driving and didn't let him get on, because the stop this crazy man was at, was not an actual stop en route.  So we go on our merry way, pick up a nice lady at a bus stop, turn around and contin...nope, not continue.  This same man ran his ass all the way up the hill (it was quite a hill might I add) and was standing with his arms out in the middle of the road so we couldn't move.  He would then try to go to the front of the bus and pound his way on and when the bus driver tried to keep driving, he would just run back in front of the bus, and not let us move, because if we did, he would've been run over.  Finally, the bus driver stopped the bus (going downhill..ahh poop in my pants) got out of the bus, and the two men started yelling.  The bus driver got back on and this crazy lunatic barged his way on as well.  I thought to myself, I'm going to die today, on a bus, because this fucker is crazy.  Well, he didn't hurt any of us but he kept yelling at the driver, there were a lot of vaffanculo's (fuck you) and he threatened to call the police and was cursing him out for the rest of his journey.  He got out like 2 stops later.  He caused quite a raucous for such a short trip.  FINALLY, we made it to town and went up the escalators into...

...HERE.  It was the coolest thing.  Ancient shit.  Here I am being oh so dorky :)

 We walked around the city the whole day.  It was beautiful! It felt like every corner you turned had something special, or felt unexpected, or like you were in a movie.  We ran into a girl from our hostel who was awesome and hung out with her for a bit.  Magda and I then made it to an exhibit called, From Chagall to Fellini.  It was pretty mind-blowing stuff.  Chagall, Ernst, Dali, Miro and some other bad asses.  There were installations of Fellini films all over, and near the end there was a little theatre section set up showing bits from some of his most famous films.  It was awesome!

Views of Perugia

Cool view!

So many fantastic bridges in that city!

 We hung out on the steps in the main piazza for a while.  We both got a beer and people watched.  It was quite an interesting crowd.  There were TONS of young people and in a matter of minutes it was

completely full of people.  Earlier in the day it had almost looked like a ghost town.  We had dinner at a Greek restaurant.  I momentarily thought that I lost my camera, but I had left it at a restaurant where we sat down to eat and then realized it was too expensive so rudely left.  Karma.  I realized I left my camera there...WHOOPS.  Later we met a bunch of people from our hostel at this bar in the same, main piazza.  There was a horribly annoying Italian man hitting on this French girl from the hostel.  He was reaaaaal drunk.  When the group decided to go out dancing, he started following us and brought a chair from the bar for
good measure.  He finally got lost.  We went to this little dance club and there was literally NO ONE else there.  Well, maybe five other people.  We were in the mood to dance, and a small crowd never turned me off, so I wasn't shy and started goin all out.  All of us started to have a little dance party and before we knew it the whole place was full and we were a sweaty mess.  We decided to leave around 3ish in the morning, waited a while for a taxi, had a pretty hilarious ride home in which one girl with us was beggggging the taxi driver to let her smoke in the car, he kept saying no, it became a very funny back and forth little game between the two of them. 

my obsession with doors part 1

Chilling at the farmhouse Sunday morning :)

Anyway, we made it back, went to sleep, no buzzing this time!  We left in the afternoon and made it back to Arezzo in the late afternoon.

A whole has gone by of work and such.  My back is getting progressively worse, but I FINALLY called this man who is supposed to work magic, so hopefully he is as good as they say.  Before I depart for the evening I must share with you the most exciting part of my week!  Today, I led my first workshop.  In my contract it stated that I could lead workshops as long as they did not infringe upon my working hours, or I had to make them up in some way.  So today, I had my first.  My freshman year acting class we explored our dreams and at the end of the semester staged them, using the ensemble to help support the images from our dream, while we narrated our dream as if we were experiencing it at the present moment.


So I decided to create a workshop on dreams!  I had no specific goal in terms of where I wanted to get with them (performance ready, etc.)  I thought I would lead them through a series of exercises, see how they responded, and hear what they were interested in exploring and how far they wanted to go.  There were a group of 6 undergrad theatre students today and we had such an incredible time.  I led all kinds of movement based exercises, object work, gesture work (all pertaining to images of their dreams) and we explored one girl's dream using the gestures that she explored.  It was fascinating to watch, both the ways in which their bodies moved through space in relationship to the room and each other, and also how they connected with this work.  They did an incredible job.  They were so open and eager and dove right in.  I too felt good about the way that I led the group.  I was always engaged, open to seeing how they worked, ready to adapt to their needs as I saw and also very comfortable and confident in leading the exercises that I chose.  It is quite an incredible opportunity to be able to "test out" my waters as a teacher, not that this is something so new for me, but I am able to explore new ways of facilitating, new ideas, subject matter, etc.  I'm grateful for this. It makes the hard times that I experience here all worth it.  I am off for my Friday night.  The students are having a TOGA PARTY! woooo...I will stop by and say hello and then be on my way to a bar in town that a bunch of people are going to.  Buon weekend tutti!


Imagine all the people living life in peace. You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us, and the world will live as one.

- John Lennon