leave your brian outside

funny story: our performance teacher, giorgio rossi, constantly confuses the word "brain" with the spelling of the name "brian". so when he tells us to not think so much and to allow our bodies to move naturally, he tells us, "your brian is in the garden. leave your brian outside," rather than brain.

anyway.

we had combined classes this week with the theater track. it was taught by a sarah lawrence theater professor, christine terry. the class is called "theater sports", so instinctively i started getting nervous about having to do theater improvisation. dance improv, no problem. but when it comes to voice and acting, i get so nervous about the pressure of being funny or inventive.

the class ended up being so great, and after the first few exercises, i realized i wasn't as nervous as i had anticipated. we played several games, the first one being action and attitude. one person does an action and says a line, and the person across from them comes out with an attitude, and responds with another line. the first person adds a third line, and then the scene is over, and we move on to the next couple. we also played an interview game, where two people sit across and conduct an interview like they're on a talk show. it really surprised me how quickly the nervousness left me as soon as the games started. i think that if it were earlier on in the program and we all weren't so close, the games would have been a little more awkward and people wouldn't have felt so comfortable with playing. whenever i'd get nervous about a scene though i'd just pretend that we weren't in class. like when emily c and i were doing the interview game, i just looked at her and pretended that we were just goofing off and being silly like we do outside of class time.

this weekend ended up being so relaxing and low key. friday night we went to a club in arezzo called Snob. we all got in for free because it was "american decadence" night. to recover from the night out, saturday a bunch of us got up at 7:30am and headed to a town outside of siena to visit La Terme, hot springs and spa. we stayed there all day and lounged around in the hot waters, filled with sulfur, so it smelled like rotting eggs the whole time. i took a nap in the afternoon on one of the long chairs, and ended up not waking up til 4:30. then we stopped at this little bakery where i bought 2 chocolate chip cookies and 2 biscotti for only 97 cents. that night i had a dinner date with my roommate Jessica. our dinner lasted a little over 2 hours (i can't remember the last time i ate that slowly), and we ended it with the most AMAZING desserts: chocolate cake with strawberries, and a chocolate pie with pear filling. after we got home around midnight, i passed out in front of my computer with my contact lenses still in.

this week is only a four day week!! friday we go to naples for a school trip, the train and hotel are paid for by the school, and monica tells us that the pizza in naples is the best in the world, and only costs around 1 euro for an entire pizza. i'm pretty sure that means i'll be having pizza for all 3 meals.