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Published: June 27th 2007
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Last Sunday they sent the entire school group to Venice. In the bus on the way I realized I had left my map of Venice that came in my orientation packet in the room. Fortunately, in the seat across from me on the bus was Luca, who lives in Milan and goes to Venice frequently. I asked if he would be a tour guide and he was more than happy to show around some of the "foreigners." There were 5 of us who ended up discovering Venice together. It was very crowded, but somehow the line for palace tickets was very short when we walked by, so we immediately bought tickents and went inside. It was amazing. The palace is connected by 3 bridges to the prison just across the "street."
Luca has fair skin like me, so he was always looking for a shaded alley to get where we were going and we managed to avoid the crowded streets that way too. The views were stunning. I have a couple of them posted on the website. But I think my favorite part was looking at all of the colored glass items created there. Unfortunately, between it being a
tourist attraction and the recent inflation in Italy, the prices were very high and I could not afford to buy the most magnificient pieces. (Plus, it would have been difficult to get them home safely, too.) It was a wonderful day and I'm glad it worked out they way it did.
Monday we had two classes with prominent Italian economists in the morning and afternoon. For dinner we went to a castle. It was a less well known place that not even the Italian students have heard of or seen before. It still has a working draw bridge, but once they put it down for us, things went downhill. This castle has had a rough century or two recently. It was really run down--think of it as the Italian version of the house in the Money Pit movie. But it was so bad that it was good. The tour guide was honestly pointing out more flaws than features. At one point she pointed out the fact that the room was missing half of it's ceiling, but told us they were planning to replace and repaint it to match the half of the ceiling that was still intact. I wasn't
sure if they best strategy was standing under the ceiling and hoping none if it fell, or standing under the hole and hoping no creatures dropped from the rafters. Then she took us upstairs and told us that those 5 rooms (all disastrous) were going to be consolidated into a theater to show movies recreating medieval times. We had a lot of laughs and had fun imagining how we could make an awesome haunted house out of the place. The place smelled of the pig farm that was obviously nearby, and the room they had the food in was not able to accomodate a group our size. But we had fun laughing all evening long.
Tuesday morning at breakfast I was sharing a table with a woman from China, a man from Palestine, another man from Lithuania, and another woman from the US. I was sitting there thinking about what an amazing experience it was, when Ricardo (the program director) called me over. He took me to the patio and there was a TV news crew that wanted to interview me! I answered a couple of questions on the spot and hoped that I did not sound like the
stupid American economist. Fortunately, none of you get Italian TV, and I doubt the clip is available on YouTube. (Mom, you can ask Jacob what YouTube is.)
Tuesday morning we had class with Vernon Smith (nobel prize 2002) for the morning session. It was an interesting class and I was surprised how little some of the students knew about experimental economics. I did not realize how fortunate I am to have studied at a school that has an active economics lab.
For the afternoon we had a boat tour of Iseo Lake and spent some time on Iseola, the largest island in the lake. (It's huge--not like our lakes in Arkansas.) The island is large enough that several hundred people live on it.
After the boat tour we went to a real castle. We had to walk across one section of the island, then ride on the boat in the sun, and then walk to the castle, so we were all hot and thristy when we arrived at the castle. They had beautiful real fruit displays on tables in the yard, and several studetns started eating the fruit immediately. It was pretty funny since the hosts didn't seem to be too upset.
Dinner was wonderful and was served in the courtyard of the castle. Then we were taken into the front yard and the porch became a stage for a local orchestra and chorus. They put on a show just for us including everything from an song from Carmen to "I will follow him" from Sister Act. They were clearly trying to entertain their international guests and it was a wonderful show. While they were singing they had several families in period costumes (I'm guessing the period was 16 - 18th century) walk in and join the crowd. And they finished the show with fireworks. The castle was on the lake and I sat on a rock wall at the edge of the yard that was also right above the lake so I could hear the water below and feel the cool breeze. This is what dinner in a castle is supposed to be!
Wednesday we attended a conference in Bergamo in the morning. It was held at the military academy that trains their finance police. (Think armed IRS agent.) They were very honored to have Dr. Smith and Dr. Solow there.
We ate lunch at a restaurant in Bergamo and then had a couple of hours to explore the Bergamo churches before heading back to the hotel. At the hotel we had to get ready for the gala dinner tonight. I'll have to tell you all about it later.
Most of the students are in their early or mid 20s, so I am clearly one of the oldest students here. There are times when I feel like the old fuddy-duddy in a room of teenagers. But so far they are all at least kind enough to pretend to be surprised when they find out how old my son is or how long I have been married-- as if they thought I was only 30!
Ciao,
Julie
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