golden.

 

Mmmm, highly recommended you watch this. That is all, goodnight.

Food and flea markets

 More after the jump!

Why I am in Italy:

lol, fun with photoshop

Fish-scale shoes for footwear design class? 

I guess if you only enjoy one of the five classes you're taking you might as well have fun and go all out. Besides, sketching on paper is so passe. I will have a collection to share with you in a week, sans rainbow bass prints.

take that!

I'll admit it, I bought this just for the packaging... read more after the jump

This Week

heheheh..

Saw this on a walk the other day, and got quite the giggle:

:)

lethargic, and a weekend.

muji muji muji

I should stop, I'll bore you all. But I just love MUJI to death. Somehow I failed to learn of this site until just now. I could watch those videos all day. Sadly (or luckly?) most all of the products are only available in Japan. So I'll watch and be inspired instead.

--------playMUJI

Some of my favorites include: clay pencil, homemade envelope template, foldable suitcase, and the north pole in a box.

 ps. thonet chairs?

Starting school

My first assignment for footwear design was right up my alley (somewhat literally):

TED

To add on to what I was saying the other day: highlights from my TED talks binge. 

1st day of class

Lots of thinking and walking today. As well as some learning. But I'm sleepy and have another early class tomorrow, so thats all for today.

Weekend

 

Saturday: 

First weekend in Florence. After a ridiculous meeting for the permesso di sogiorno, which included a whole bunch of waiting in line just to sign one piece of paper, the roommates headed off the the marcato centrale. I have a pretty ridiculously strong sense of direction so I ended up being the trailblazer of the pack. (Little did I know my high school cross country nickname would have been so accurate). I think it's more a combination of good direction and being super observant of my surroundings, add in the fact that an elephant never forgets. Give me another week and I'll have this city down pat. The market was pretty great, it reminded me of reading terminal market, with a side of canal street. I bought some greens, beans, and a melon. Food pictures coming soon.

Last night we went out with a whole group of other students of the palazzi association of school. Oddly enough, they all were from long island? I kept having flashbacks from my terrible experiences with my awful roommate from freshman year at UArts, so me and a couple other girls peeled out early. I'm just not much for spending time with people I don't find interesting. As I mentioned before, I'm very excited for school to start. Hopefully I will be able to meet some new people, more my type so to speak. Really, I would love to befriend Italians, I just have to figure out where to find them. 

Sunday:

Sagmeister

It's taking me a while but I'm finally get caught up on my blogs. I've got quite an embarrassingly large collection of design/food/culture blogs I follow daily, and having been at camp all summer they have been quite neglected. Hence why I am referencing something from Core77, circa late June. 

Stefan Sagmeister for droog, the Darwin chair:

Perfect for the indecisive (one of my less desirable traits I was reminded of after I spent almost half an hour staring at shoes and still didn't buy any). You can tear of a 'page' to change the grafic on the seat.  Read more about it @ core77

Point being, I read a lot of Sagmeister's musings and interviews before I left for New Mexico, and recently found a text file of his list of beliefs, etc hiding on my desktop.  A lot of these were featured in his project, Things I have learned in my life so far.

The rest are as follows:

5. Being not truthful works against me
 6. Everything I do always comes back to me
 7. Assuming is stifling
 8. Drugs feel great in the beginning and become a drag later on
 9. Over time I get used to everything and start taking for granted
10. Money does not make me happy
11. Traveling alone is helpful for a new perspective on life
12. Keeping a diary supports personal development
13. Trying to look good limits my life
14. Material luxuries are best enjoyed in small doses
15. Worrying solves nothing
16. Complaining is silly. Either act or forget.
17. Actually doing the things I set out to do increases my overall level of satisfaction.
18. Everybody thinks they are right.
19. If I want to explore a new direction professionally, it is helpful to try it out for myself first.
20. Low expectations are a good strategy.
21. Everybody who is honest is interesting.

Right now I am working on #'s 11, 12, and 17. And of course:

The best thing I heard all day,

The fabulous news of the day: YOU CAN BUY GLUTEN FREE FOOD IN LA FARMACIA!!!

I did some research on my food blogs of the day about keeping g-free in Italy. Apparently it's much more of a common knowledge condition here. Being a medical condition, they sell foodstuffs in the pharmacy. I stopped in the one around the corner from us to find a small but promising selection. They had a shelf with pasta, bread and most importantly: i biscotti (not the kind we have, but instead cookies... for breakfast). I'm giddy. Now I have something to dip in my espresso. Tomorrow, I'll buy bread. The day after that, pasta, then flour, and ohhhh my goodness. Exciting, very exciting.

We had a pretty silly orientation today. An hour of so of more Florence-specific information. I learned that you can be heavily fined (think: 5000 euro) for purchasing counterfeit goods. As the man said, 'in italy we don't worry about nuclear weapons, we have counterfeiters." 

Another cultural difference that was pointed out to us was that when you go to purchase things at a grocery store, you go through the checkout and are not given a bag. You have to ask specifically for one. I love it. Instead of practically begging the clerks not to give me a plastic bag, it's compulsory not to use one. Less plastic bags = <3

So stoked on starting school next week!

oh!

While browsing For Me, For You the other day, I came accross yet another reason to love Shiba Inus. Not that it takes much convincing. Kitsune belongs to Madzooka on flickr.

stuff and thangs

Some things that i've been lusting over for the past few days:

I stopped in at the Marimekko store in Copenhagen, ohhh goodness almost died. I've been thinking about this ever since. Backpack @ Marimekko

And also this, since New York. Oh muji, how I love you so. (Travel alarm clock @ MUJI)

day one + copenhagen

Soooo many bicycles!

My least favorite font followed me to Europe!!!!

I've been here for one full day now. Orientation activities for the next few days. It feels like freshman year again. I want to be a cool kid and skip orientation, but I feel like there is not much point to that though. I cannot believe that I have been in italy for more than twenty four hours and have yet to have gelato. Che pecato. Thankfully, I can say that even in the past day that my italian is coming back to me. I find myself frustrated with the english only aspect of SAI. I keep remembering the first few days of orientation with AFS in high school; showing up with no idea what was going on and then all of the activities were in this odd church/hotel in the middle of nowhere in outside of rome. The meetings often took place in dimly lit classrooms in the basement. They of course only spoke to us in Italian, even though there were only a handful that actually knew any of the language. It was quite the jarring experience. I can happily say that this time around I can walk down the street, hear people talking, and instead of feeling that it was just all noise actually be able to understand a lot of what they are saying. I am almost disappointed with the fact that everything is done in english, they don't even add things like italian interjections or call us ragazzi. It seems that for many people, myself included, that having class in english and most likely speaking english on a daily basis with my roommates (who are boss, by the way) will hinder my abilities to really get into the language like I used to. Hopefully I'll still get the point of dreaming in italian. Must say though, I'm impressed with myself. I really want to get together with friends from lecce and actually get to spend some time with non-americans.

well hey there.

One of my favorite things about the farm, moss roof.

An introduction: This is a little project i've been wanting to start for a long time now. But lacking any real reason to start a blog, other than simple self indulgence or procrastination, I decided to hold off. Leaving the country for a year is the perfect excuse to start. I am on my way to Italy for the year, Florence to be exact. One could say this is a continuation of what i started four years ago when I pestered and nosed my way into spending some time in italy during high school. I had a wonderful time, but felt as though I might have missed something by only spending one semester there. By the time I got a hold of the language and culture it was already time to leave. So this time around I am headed back to italy (because really, are there any other countries that speak italian?) to spend the whole year there, all in one place. I'm excited to be back in the country with a few more years of  life experience under my belt, no longer being held back by the baggage that comes with being seventeen. Let's hope that my italian comes back to me!

This blog specifically is here to document daily life away from Philadelphia. I hope to keep up with things, I won't lie and say that I am going to post every day. I'm shooting for something closer to at least three times a week. Expect photos, design observations and inspirations, culture notes, and of course some self indulgent ranting will slip in. Feel free to ask questions or just say hi from time to time!