Transition to Ferrara---My project and the town

One of the good things about keeping this blog is that it helps us remember what we've done--with such an extensive trip, I knew it would be hard to remember details, once we get home. We've been saving for this for about two years, ever since I knew that a sabbatic leave might be possible. I also started laying the ground work almost four years ago, when I started seriously studying Italian. Two and a half years ago, I received a travel planning grant from the Honors College that I used to establish collaborations with various Italian conservatories--a year and a half ago, Greg and I led a tour of USC students (many from the Honors College) on a tour of the conservatories and also of some other sights (including performances at La Scala and La Fenice). So, here we are!
The principle project is to compare student attitudes toward music and their perception of their home musical environment--the two variables are country and current status---Italy, Brazil and the US and current and past. So we are in Ferrara where I am working with two professors from the conservatory here. They helped me refine the Italian version of the survey instrument which is a combination of the Zdzinski instrument on students' perceptions of their parental involvement and their home musical involvement and the Fortney Attitudes toward Instrumental Music. The director of the conservatory helped by writing a letter of introduction which I attached to the email I've sent to as many of the students we could find. This week consists of trying to get as many of those responses as we can and also interview at least five students from each group. The latter will provide a qualitative element to the survey which I have found very useful in giving more depth and context to the findings. I will also video my collaborators here so that their thoughts about their system of music education will be presented in Beijing at our presentation at the International Society of Music Education conference.

So--this is not just for pleasure :)

We were planning to take the 10:15 train from Rome to Ferrara, but actually got to the station in time to take the 9:40 (how incredible to live in a place where you can get a train from one point to another---every half hour!) This was the Frecciarosa (or Frecciaargento) which are the fastest trains in Italy--we got from Rome to Florence in less than 90 minutes! When we changed trains in Bologna to get to Ferrara, I called our landlord, Luigi, and let me him know we would be there by 12;30--he had previously offered to pick us up from the station). We found the apartment on HomeAway.com---also where we found our apartment in Venice,

http://www.homeaway.com/vacation-rental/p170226

It is about the same price as a hotel (not inexpensive, because of the value of our dollar), but it does have a kitchen, laundry and internet---very important things when we travel. We spent less at the grocery store today on food for a couple of breakfasts, lunches and one dinner than we would have in one meal in Rome.

The apartment has tall ceilings--in the 'great' room (living-kitchen combo) there are beamed ceilings and a skylight. Beamed ceilings also in the main bedroom, A smaller bedroom (twin bed) serves as the study. The washing machine is in the bathroom--there are rarely dryers in European apartments, but there is a very large drying rack--we have to wash our clothes on the installment plan---wait until the first load is dry before we surrender clothes we may need.

Downside---it is freezing here and I really don't have the right outerwear---I brought an unlined raincoat with lots of layers because we are hoping it will get warmer but right now there are not enough layers in the world to keep me warm! Luckily, the heat works well in the apartment and we are (get this) right next door to the conservatory.

The main thing about Ferrara is that it was the site of the Este family court---one of the powerful families in Italy in the 15th and 16th century. There is more information than you may be interested in here, but you can see the castle that's thirty steps away from our apartment :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferrara