I promise I will show you pictures of the market at some point (don't worry, there are lots of Wednesdays left), but today I was busy running around the market looking for a new bag. I was successful though! I opted for a cheap, 10 euro bag. It's big enough to hold my Italian textbook, and has a cross-body strap so it is versatile for everyday use. I was pleased.
I know it's not genuine leather, and yes, Italy is known for it's leather, so if I'm doing ok financially at the end of the semester, I may buy another, nicer bag to bring home. But we'll see.
We also went to the market as a class. This was our novice Italian class with five other girls and myself who know absolutely no Italian. Well, we started knowing absolutely no Italian, but I'm pleased to announce that I'm up from "zero" to "practically zero"!! We had to find the prices of certain items and identify popular colors of clothing (In the winter: black, white, grey, beige). The sweaters looked super comfy though. I think next week's project is a cozy sweater.
We also learned about the Palio here in Siena. It is a crazy cool tradition that dates back for many many hundreds of years. Siena is divided into 17 sections, and each section is a contrada. Once in July and once in August, there is a horse race in the Piazza del Campo (this is called the Palio). It is a HUGE deal. There is a parade and events and celebrations, and it's just HUGE. Unfortunately, we won't be in Siena during the actual races but it was really cool learning about it. The amount of emotion that goes into routing for your contrada is insane.
We learned that children are baptized into a contrada when they are very young and it becomes like an extended family. It's actually really cool. Each contrada has elected members that make decisions on behalf of the group and they all have their own bar where they can go to hang out.
Additionally, each contrada has a museum. We visited one of the museums today...and I can show you a little bit of it! The tour guide showed us around. There are some really cool artifacts that they have, and this is also where they have meetings regarding the affairs of the contrada.
The symbol of the contrada we visited was the porcupine (as depicted above).
Look! Even the chairs have the porcupine on them! (Well, I guess it's kind of hard to see, but look for the porcupine on the chair...)
This is the meeting room where the affairs of the contrada are discussed:
So one of the more interesting fun facts about this race is that the horses get blessed before the race. It seems super silly but the race is extraordinarily dangerous. We watched a video about the Palio and we saw horses fall over and many jockey's fall off the horse and get trampled. However, it doesn't actually matter to the race if the jockey falls off. The horse can actually win on it's own. This picture (above) is of the church area of this particular contrada.
And lastly: If you win, you get a banner. I actually don't know the details of this particular banner. We took in a lot of information today. But this photograph shows some of the symbols of the other contradas. My next project is to learn about which contrada my family is in!
You can see the porcupine in the bottom, right of this banner. Also, note the art skills! What's Italy without some truly awesome art?!
Oh, oh, oh! I spent a long time looking at flights today, but I'm going to Greece and Israel for Spring Break! Money. well. spent. I'm so excited! Booking flights is super confusing and kind of stressful, but lots of progress was made so I'm pleased :)
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