Ciao! Come va? Tutto bene, grazie!

Ciao! I’m Ege, I like writing things but I’m not as funny as Charlie or Patrick, I don’t even know anymore; however here’s my blog about my internship in Perugia, Italy at the Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria, which is a Gallery, but like a museum; we don’t sell art, we just keep it and show it to people. Linguistics is fun. This internship things really makes me question life. Before I was like “Imma write a cool blog about what I do and how I do it and I’m gonna keep it simple, efficient and accurate, but now the bar has been raised. I see you Patrick and I check, or raise… I don’t know I don’t play poker.

Alright now that I’m done with being funny (I know I wasn’t don’t kick a guy when he’s down), I’ll tell you all what I do on a daily basis. I wake up in the morning (as one does), go to this one American bar in town (there is actually two but only one of them has fresh ‘New York style’ bagels with cream cheese, oh yeah!), have some sort of a breakfast with coffee (just an espresso shot cuz it’s Italy, duh) then head to work around 9 am where I sit at a desk, except for Mondays when this random older man comes and works one day a week ON MY DESK and then doesn’t show up till the next Monday, whatever I’m cool with it.

At my desk (Tue-Fri), I do whatever my boss asks me to do for that day which consists of some Excel work to digitalize documents and other paperwork and hard copies of transactions with other museums to keep track of where our artworks are or from where we borrow artworks for our temporary exhibitions; this kind of work is mostly what we do in the Head Curator/Conservator’s office. Oh by the way our office is in this one section of this small library on the fifth floor of the main building in the heart of the centro storico, historic city center of  Perugia. The museum is on the third floor of the same building and on the second floor is the Municipality of the city; we are one big family that love and support each other at all times (never ever have I interacted with anyone from 1st-4th floors in the 45 days I’ve been here).

Perugia is a very beautiful little city, kinda weird too because the historic center is very small and concentrated and then there is this somewhat large city on the outskirts of the historic center (we’re on top of a large hill or a small mountain, not sure which one; either way I mostly stay in the center where I live, work, eat and go out.

I usually work an average of 30-35 hours a week but it depends a lot on what is going on at the museum and whether or not my boss is in the office – she travels around the region to visit other museums and meet with director and curators about exhibitions for the region’s artworks, which is mostly medieval and early renaissance ( A LOT OF Mary and the Child..).

After getting out of work around 3/3:30, I usually go home and eat some food before I eat dinner around 8-9 pm as one does in Perugia. Before coming to Perugia on May 30, I studied abroad in Bologna, Italy for 5 months and there I ate all kinds of great Italian food and really got to experience the gastronomic culture in the world’s capital of amazing food. Because of that I usually eat at home now and try to cook some good food and prepare for real life after Conn (freaks out and starts crying). Once in a while I go out to have pizza or some kind of Perugian pasta but all food is amazing in Italy and I do not discriminate one bit.

I live in a monolocale, one room with a bathroom and small kitchen in a building with many exchange students all around the world as well as some Americans from New York. I try to hang out with Italians as much as possible and that usually happens when there is an event at the museum like a concert or this free drawing event that happened last week when artists from all over came and created these amazing drawing in a matter of a few hours and then proceeded to have drinks and hang out in an exhibition room of the Gallery. The event was to promote this comic book that tells a story in the Medieval times and acts as a contemporary guide to the Gallery’s collections (it’s pretty cool tbh). One other big event that happened recently was the opening of this photography exhibition by a musician/artist/photographer called Guido Harari who’s been taking pictures of very famous musicians for the last 30+ years. I got to meet him and had a guided tour by him walking through the temporary exhibition, it was very awesome.

During events like these I hang out with couple of the younger people that work in the museum with me and afterwards we go out to hang out at the steps of the main church by the main piazza of the historic city. Apparently I speak some Italian now since my friends don’t just run away when we hang out but I’m hundred percent certain they talk about me and how I don’t understand their jokes cuz being the only not-laughing guy in the room is very noticeable.

Well, thanks for reading my semi-funny, hundred percent serious post about what I do in Perugia for 9 weeks thanks to CISLA. I’d like to thank everyone who posted on this blog for inspiring me and to Patrick for encouraging me to try to be funny. Hope I didn’t let anyone down. Hi Mom, hi Dad, I did it, I wrote a post on a blog, I’m famous!

Cordiali saluti – Ege

P.S. Please read all the blogs, they are all awesome and make sure to check out Oviedo +1 by Charlie so my jokes make more sense. Thx, bye!