Driving through Tuscany

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3/7

It is 4:38am at home, 10:38am here, and feels like 3:30pm to my body. We are driving through the beautiful countryside of Tuscany and all that I wish is that Ben (my boyfriend) was with me. It is not that I can’t stand to be without him, only that we share the same travel philosophy. , which in reality is not a philosophy at all. Everyone around me has been exclaiming about the cars and driving, the Ikeas and McDonalds and the other things they didn’t expect to see— Just passed the Ceprano exit— anyway. I am not excited about those things, but by the the language, the beautiful countryside, the food. The culture that is not ours. There are villas on top of hills that are left over from before the ‘new world’ was a thought. America is young— nothing in America has the history that Europe has. We flew into Rome and I realized that later this week I would be looking at ancient structures that brought the greats of Roman history— the Forum and Julius Caesar, the ancient theatres. I am excited to explore what I will write about for my synthesis paper and that will hopefully later become an undergraduate thesis. I am looking— as a note to myself and a prompt for later— for an integrated topic— art and architecture of Roman theatre. Extant structure meets history of performance in those venues.

I want to watch Under the Tuscan Sun now that we’ve been though Tuscany— even the rain is beautiful.

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I want to watch Under the Tuscan Sun now that we’ve been though Tuscany— even the rain is beautiful. Beyond the things that any tourist might say, or maybe this will be more ‘tourist-y’ is that all I want right now— even though it is 11am (since it feels like 4pm) is a Mediterranean dinner with fresh vegetables and veal or lamb and plenty of wine. Wine is all I want— it reflects the culture of a region with its taste and smell. And we’re in Tuscany— can’t we stop?