Week 6

It is Thursday night in Cortona. Last weekend I did a lot of studying and also exercise. My tests on Monday went very well I think. I wrote on Medieval Roman history and mortuary archaeology. Today I had my last midterm exam. It was an oral test for my italian class, and that too went well. The big excitement this week has been the arrival of "the Georgians." The University of Alberta is not the only foreign university that has a field school in Cortona. The University of Georgia (United States) also has a school here. And they arrived on the weekend. Yesterday a celebration was held in the main piazza of the town to welcome both us and them. The local grocery store and a wine vendor supplied nutella on toast and mulled wine--heated wine with spices in it. It was good. And we were able to meet the Georgian students. It is hard to believe the sex ratio in both of our groups. I'm not sure if I have mentioned this so far. In both groups, there are about 45 students. I am one of four men in our group, and the other group has only one. This is an amplification of the imbalance that already exists within arts faculties across North America. Tomorrow I have a Classics field trip to Florence, after which many of us will head to Venice for the weekend. That is the place to be for the Carnival (the period of revelry and indulgence preceding Lent in Catholic tradition). I hope everyone is doing well back home.
Michael