so on tuesday i took laura to saint anthony's basilica, and then we decided to go into venice for dinner (what a hard life i have!). we wandered around the whole city, to saint marks, to the rialto bridge, and pretty much everywhere. every once and a while we'd just look at each other and be like hey, we're having dinner together in venice...what. we talked endlessly about linguistics, which was pretty fantastic. we wandered through a bunch of little deserted side roads and wound up at this really amazing bar/restaurant. we got fusili with pesto and ravioli with ragu, and just sat there for hours. the owner was this young and hip lady who did pretty much everything. it was quite the find, basically. another cool thing: while we had been walking around, we got stopped by two students, one from italy, one from france, who were working on an art project that involved asking us what justice was and taking our picture. very cool.

yesterday laura and i had lunch at cafe pedrocchi, this swanky but not overly expensive place with the greatest ice cream dishes ever. after that we went to the scrovegni chapel, which was full of original frescoes by giotto. it was quite an experience seeing such legendary stuff up close. we had dinner at one of my favorite restaurants with some of the other girls, and then went to a really cool bar that played reggae music so that laura could try some traditional veneto drinks. after we got back to the room we stayed up pretty late talking about Serious Things and that was pretty wonderful.

this morning laura departed for france once again. i just had my very last petrarch class, and in 20 minutes i'll be having my last self expression/grammar class! this weekend will be finishing the italo calvino book and preparing for my two final exams. the petrarch exam has a question and answer (and probably analysis) part as well as a sit down essay, and the grammar exam has a question and answer portion and a 20 minute one on one oral exam. pretty scary!

i'll be home a week from today...