Advertisement
Published: June 29th 2007
Edit Blog Post
Me with Professor Solow
I'm not really as fat as I look in this picture. Wednesday night was the Gala dinner where Professor Solow gives us each a certificate for attending the programn in front of the business leaders and local officials who help sponsor the program. It is the only formal event of the week and it was held in a nice hotel here in Iseo. One very nice surprise is that my dissertation adviser, Gary Ferrier, was there. (He is working on a project with the WTC for a week.) I did not realize how much I had missed him or how homesick I was until I saw him at the dinner. (He was on sabbitical during the spring semester, so I haven't really seen him since I defended my dissertation at the end of the fall semester.)
Anyway, it was the first time we had a real Italian dinner with courses. The first course was vegetable lasagna. The second course was risotto, then meat and potatoes, then some pastry with fruit and custard, then coffee. Locally produced red and white wine and sparkling and mineral water were available throughout the entire evening.
The students acted like typical college students and hooted and hollered for each other when it was our
turn to go on stage. It was a bit interesting to see how people from different cultures interpreted our instructions to have a "smart" dress for the dinner. Once again, it was obvious that I am the old lady of the bunch--no spaghetti straps or mini-skirt on my dress.
Thursday morning was the lecture by Professor Solow. It made me wish I had gone to MIT and taken classes from him. I think it was the best presentation of the week, but it could be because I think so highly of Dr. Solow by now and I am interested in the research he is working on right now.
Thursday evening we went to the Berlucchi winery for a tour and dinner. I know Italy has wonderful wines, and I should have been paying attention to the wines served with dinner all along. However, the first week I was so unaccustomed to the heat, that I was actually worried about having a heat stroke, so I decided to enjoy my own personal exploration of the different mineral waters available in Italy. (Also, I do not care for unpasteurized milk, so I have been drinking San Gemini water which has
Before the Gala
This is me with my roommate, Laura. a lot of calcium in it.) The tour of the Berlucchi winery was very interesting. After the cellar tour, we were taken into the courtyard and served dinner. They had the buffet tables set up along the edges under the roof overhang, but the grassy courtyard had scattered tables and chairs. There was also a very professional wait staff that could tell which wine you were sampling by the subtle shape of your glass that circulated through the courtyard and kept your glass filled. At one point, the WTC asked professor Solow to pose for a picture with the president of the WTC, Gary Ferrier, and the four students the WTC sent to the school. I ended up between Gary and Dr. Solow in the photo. I'm anxious to see how it turned out. Anyway, after it was over Gary and I ended up talking to Dr. Solow for a few minutes before he was called away to watch the chef's special presentation as he finished the risotto for our next course. The weather was perfect, the setting was perfect, the food was fabulous, the wine was excellent and I got to chat with two outstanding economists, a nobel laureate
and my advisor --I still have no idea how I ended up in such a perfect situation for the evening.
Friday morning we had our last lecture of the week with Dr. Dennis Snower. It was exactly what I expected all of the lectures this week to be. He had a theoretical model of umemployment and discussed features of the US and European systems that affected unemployment differences. But he did not prescribe a solution or suggest one should be more like the other. It was a good lecture to end the week on. His lecture inspired many wonderful questions and comments despite the exhaustion beginning to take its toll on us.
Friday afternoon we took busses to Cremona. In Cremona we were taken to the town hall where a world class violinist was allowed to play a 300+ year old stadaveri violin for us to hear. I wish there was a way to adequately capture how wonderful it sounded. Then we had a couple of hours to explore Cremona before we headed back to Iseo. I went to view the Stradeveri collection and went through the church across the palazza. I was not allowed to take at pictures at the stradeveri museum, and I thought it would be rude to take pictures at the church since there were people praying. But I did get some pictures of the outside of the buildings.
This evening we all said our "goodbyes" and starting packing our bags. Tomorrow we go our separate ways. Tomorrow I pick Tim and Ethan up and we have a week together at an apartment on lago D'Garda. I don't think there is an e-mail connection there, so don't count on any posts next week. I'll try to keep track of the highlights and update the blog when they are gone and I'm back in a hotel room.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.12s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 9; qc: 49; dbt: 0.0443s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.3mb
Melody
non-member comment
How exciting! I'm glad that all is going well and you are getting to participate in this great experience.