so its mid term week! two down and two to go! but the one today was not bad at all... thats the upside of taking all cultural classes.... all the questions are vague and open ended! luckily i dont have any tomorrow, just Contemporary Italian Society on Wednesday and History and Culture of Food in Italy on Thursday. it will be so nice to get away for a week when they are all done! we are going to go to Florence now on Thursday night because of the transportation strike and then our flight to Barcelona is on Saturday out of Pisa!

so this past Saturday Carson and I went to Siena with our Contemporary Italy class to learn about the Palio. I actually learned a lot even though we were only there for an afternoon. Siena was beautiful and the weather was perfect, i wish that i had more time to explore the city. so the Palio is the horse race that occurs twice every summer in Siena. Each Contrada (neighborhood) trains a horse and a jockey and then there is a lottery and only 10 out of 15 of the Contradas are allowed to compete at each race. one Palio is in july and the other in august, on certain holy days that are for the Saint of the Virgin Mary. the trophy for winning the Palio is a silk painted banner that some way depicts the Mary. This is something that has been going on in Siena for centuries. we met in the Piazza del Campo in the center of Siena where the actual race takes place and we met a woman from the city who talked to us about the history of the city and the Palio and then brought us to the headquarters of her Contrada, Acquila (the Eagle). there we watched a video clip of the last time that her Contrada won the Palio (1992) and saw alllll of the banners from previous Palios that the Contrada had wone through out history. there were even ones from the 1600's. and many other artifacts and outfits from the jockey's and priests of the Contrada church and much much more. each Contrada has an arch rival Contrada (the Eagle's was the Panther) and for your rival to lose the Palio is as good as winning it yourself. Also there is a captain of each Contrada who deals with making alliances to increase chances to win the Palio or corrupt it. they are also the ones who choose and pay the Jockey's (it is not known how much exactly but approximately $400,000per race!) it is all very very serious and deeply embedded in the logistics of the entire city. the people who we spoke to at the Contrada museum told us that while it is possible for relationships to occur between Contrade, it is not common. I can't even imagine living my life with such passionate rivalry! the only thing that i could imagine it being like is if the yankee fans and theredsox fans had to live together in the same city! times 10!

anyways, all in all it was really fascinating and i definitely saw a part of the Italian culture that i had never even known about. i would have liked to see more of the city and visit other Contradas and hear more public opinions on the whole Palio but we did not have time to do that. check out the pictures! they are absolutely un real!!!