This is the week of museums, and surprisingly enough, I don't really mind that much that we are trying to fit all of them into a few days in a row. of course, it would have been better had we gone out and seen a monument one day and a museum the next, just to break it all up. but the way we are doing it now is still alright. especially since I am seeing such awesome stuff in the museums, how can I not be excited to go, no matter when I am going? the first museum that we went to was the vatican museum. evidently it is a lot larger than I thought it was, so I missed out on more than a few galleries, but that is because I was trying to do my homework by finding a certain statue, and spent so long looking for it that I didn't really want to be in the museum for any longer. plus it was lunch time and I was hungry and wanted to go home and eat food I had there. But the museum was pretty awesome with all the different things it had. there were many many many different statues of Roman gods and goddesses, and other random scenes from mythology. the one I was most excited to see there was the Laoocon state that I learned about in high school when we were reading the Aeneid. I had seen plenty of pictures of it, but I had never seen it in person, obviously if it was here I wouldn't have. it was weird though because I always thought it was this huge statue, and it really isn't that big. maybe life size. perhaps even a little bit smaller than life size. there were loads of other things we saw as well while we were wandering around. there were a few greek pots that had very intricate designs on them. it was awesome seeing how detailed it was because someone put so much effort into making it, and at least I was appreciating it. I don't know if they really appreciated them back when they were being used. There were plenty of other little things that were really cool to see, and luckily we could take pictures, as long as there was no flash, of anything: anything that is except the Sistine chapel ceiling. I didn't really know what to expect with that because although I've seen parts of that ceiling before, I had never seen pictures of the whole thing. There were so many people in there just to look at the ceiling, if Michaelanglo could have seen what everyone thought of his painting now, he would probably be super embarrassed, but also a little proud of his work. it was weird for me though because at first I was kinda disappointed in the ceiling. I thought we would be able to see the detail more clearly, or the pictures themselves would be bigger. and I also thought the coloring would be a little different. however, the longer I sat there and looked at it (and I sat there for 40+ minutes) the more I liked it, so maybe it is an acquired taste. the next day we went to the Capitoline Museum, where a lot of the more ancient stuff was. although there is so much ancient stuff everywhere, I can't really describe it as that. But there were a lot of cool statues there as well, and we were again allowed to take lots of pictures, so I did. although I have been getting so caught up in what I'm seeing I'm starting to forget that I should get in a few pictures myself. But I did get in a picture of me in front of the famous She-wolf and Romulus and Remus. There were a lot of other famous statues there that Rachel was totally geeking over, but I didn't recognize most of them very much, so I just listened to her talk about how they were so amazing and why they were so famous. that was pretty interesting to listen to, and it was a nice change from Prof. Stanford who often goes off on tangents that we don't really care about. yesterday though, yesterday takes the cake for awesome museum days, and those were the museums that didn't allow us to take our cameras even in, let alone take pictures without flash. But they were so awesome!!! the first museum we went to yesterday was the Borghese Galleries. we had to check everything there, and we got walkie talkie style things to listen to Prof. Stanford as we walked through the rooms, but it was a little annoying because she wanted everyone to go at her pace, and so she would talk about what ever was in front of her, and it definitely was not what was in front of about half of us. The one statue that I had to look at in depth for class was Bernini's David, which I had never really heard about before. I thought at least for a little that we were going to see Michelanglo's David, which is the most famous one, but that definitely was incorrect. Bernini's David is much more in the action of the moment, rather than afterwards when he is victorious. He is just about to throw the stone with his sling, so the slingshot string is taunt, and he is all wound up to throw it far. the very best part of the statue though, in my opinion, is his facial expression. He looks so concentrated and he is even biting his lip as though there were no one around to see him. or he wasn't thinking about how he looked at all because he was facing Goliath... I was so enchanted by the statue and especially his facial expression that not only did I buy a postcard to send to someone I like a lot (why waste such an awesome picture on someone who won't appreciate it?) but I also bought a poster of it. I can't wait to put it up in my room next winter! The other really cool Bernini statue that I saw while we were there was the Apollo and Daphne statue, but that one is more famous, and so I had seen pictures of it before. it was awesome seeing it in person and seeing how Bernini had begun to turn Daphne into a tree at a couple of different spots at once (my favorite was seeing her toes turning into roots) but I just didn't ooh and aah over it like I did the David. after that we were free to do whatever we wanted to. on our free day (was it only 2 days ago? wow!) we had wanted to go to the Museum of Modern Art, which was close to the Borghese Galleries, but we hadn't found it in time. so because we were close and we had time, we went to see it yesterday. we didn't have to check our bags at that museum, but we met Prof. Stanford there, and she said she had asked if she could take pictures and they had told her no. this was after, of course, we had taken a few pictures of the most awesome stuff already. My most favorite piece in that museum was in a room of awesome statues. I guess I like statues a little bit more, although that isn't to say that I didn't like the pictures I was seeing as well. I just like seeing the statues because they had to have taken a lot more skill than I know I have. all of my attempts at statue making have always turned out horribly. But the statue that I liked the most in the Museum of Modern Art was a statue of Diana. I think I kinda like her the best out of the gods and goddesses, although Athena is a close second. but this statue of her was amazing. the statues of all of the gods and goddesses in that hall of the gods was amazing, but I noticed it especially on Diana. The statues were made out of marble, and yet as you looked at them, it seemed like the fabric was almost real. like it would ripple if there were a wind, and it fell exactly like real cloth would if it were draped or hanging off a person. I just couldn't get enough of that statue or really of any other statue in that room. the other statue I really liked in that museum though was not classical in nature at all. it was a statue of a man on a pedestal of some sort, maybe some famous monument, but he wasn't standing on the pedestal. he was sitting on it with one leg up and the other leg hanging off of it, and he was carving his name into the top of it. He had already carved most of his name, but the artist left him carving the last letter, and again I loved the facial expression the most. he was so concentrated on what he was doing and yet had such an air of someone who wants to get done what they are doing quickly because they know they really shouldn't be doing that. I didn't look to see what the name of the piece or artist was, but I should have so I could look it up again. too bad, I'll have to just come across it in my searches some time. we went to one other museum yesterday where we had to check our bags again. it was a pretty cool museum, although it had a lot more church stuff than I am normally interested in. and I was really getting tired, or I think I would have enjoyed it more. But I know my roommate Brittany really enjoyed it, and it was a museum she had specifically looked up to go to, so I'm glad we made it. There was the gorgeous ceiling in one of the rooms that we wondered why it wasn't as famous as the Sistine chapel ceiling. it depicted so much, and yet with such great detail that it was almost endlessly entertaining to look at. There was also a somewhat gory picture of Judith and H.... I don't know his name, but the story is in the Apocrypha. But Judith is cutting off H...'s head, and the blood is spurting out. H... is making a funny face, but it is totally appropriate for the fact that his head is being cut off. although i think my favorite facial expression in that picture is the old servant of Judith. she is very old and wrinkly, and she kind of has her chin jutting out and is watching the entire spectacle of her mistress cutting off someone's head with almost complete indifference. it's just great to see how hillarious that is. but we are off to the Catacombs today. I hope it will be interesting, but it's going to be a long day because we won't get back til 4 ish, and that is about 4 hours later than she has been letting us free for a week now. but it should be good. oh, and pictures to come. I don't have much time to put pictures with my posts any more, but they are coming!