Hip Socket Soup, cheeky monkeys, and "weighing the fish"

Ciao!

I am going to write two entries for today - the first one based off of the 13 1/2 hours of Contact Improv I had and the second based off my weekend thus far.
I feel it's probably better to separate the two.

So basically - Thursday and Friday were two of the longest days. A guest teacher came in - Thomas Kampe. (www.thomaskampe.com) He's originally from Germany but has been teaching in the UK for over 20 some years. He is 51 and so insanely in touch with his body it puts most 20 year olds to shame. He did 7 hours of Contact Improv (mixed with acrobatics and the Feldenkrais method) with us on Thursday and 6 1/2 hours with us on Friday. I haven't been that physically drained probably since week one of the program - it was so intense. Claudia breaks it down simply for us; Thomas threw it in our face (in a good way). He had very high expectations and pushed us and our bodies to the limit - but by the end of the 13 1/2 hours I had learned SO much because I was forced to jump right in. To be honest, we covered so much that it's even hard to speak about it. I will say this: physical work like that commands the body to be present, ready, and willing and I was definitely present for the hours that I was in that room. However, strangely enough, while doing certain things I had very strange flashbacks to my childhood. I suppose this may make sense; Thomas says that the work that you do is just making you a child again. His theory is that, "Well, you did all this when you were little...rolling around...climbing up things...falling....now you are just a bit, well, bigger." He has really funny phrases while teaching (see Title of today's entry) and a hysterically energetic personality. He would tell you to do something (put your weight on somebody and lean into them using your pelvis) and then when you did it after a minute or two he'd be like, "Get off there, bloody hell, what are you doing? That's digusting." The only negative part about the experience was that my back started acting up during parts of it, but other than that it was fanTASTIC. I'm sad that we only had him for two days but I'm hoping that at some point in the future I can take another class with him.

Last night after the long day, a bunch of us went out for pizza at this pizza bar in Arezzo. It was delicious! The best pizza I've had in Italy so far :) I was exhausted though from the two days so I went to bed pretty early.

Time for post number two :)