The Arch of Kristin

Hello, world! We're on class day 3 and I might already be exhausted. But a few naps here and there and a cappuccino or two ought to fix that.

Our first day of class started bright and early as we walked to the Roman Forum and the Colosseum. After our group presentation (going over all of Ancient Rome in about 10 minutes--definitely skipping most of the unnecessary emperors) we headed into the Forum. It's gorgeous in ruin but incredibly difficult to imagine it at its height. And it's even harder to imagine the pristine, white marble buildings COMPLETELY PAINTED. Nothing was white in Ancient Rome--all those statues were bright and colorful and so was the marble coating every building. I hate to say it, but I feel like Ancient Rome was probably completely gaudy and over the top. Those emperors had to impress the people some how.

We spent hours wandering around the forum, ending with the Arch of Titus. Why is there not an "Arch of Kristin"? If I'm ever emperor of the world, I'm going to change that.

Conveniently, the weather decided to stop cooperating after our time the forum, meaning we had to eat lunch in the rain. At least the rain got rid of some of the ants--I don't like bugs and they were definitely uninvited picnickers.

As it kept raining, we weren't going to waste the 12 euros it costs you to get into the Forum and Colosseum so we crossed the street and saw the Flavian Amphitheater in all its glory. (Flavian Amphitheater=Colosseum, if you're confused). It's still massive with ridiculously steep stairs to get to the seats. I feel like some of the 50,000 spectators definitely got trampled in the rush to exit the Colosseum. If you fall on those steps, you're basically toast. But with its 76 exits, it reportedly only took 5 minutes to clear out the entire stadium. Way to go, Ancient Romans. That's efficiency right there.

After those two tours, about 5 hours had gone by and it was time to get going on Tuesday's homework. SO MUCH READING TO DO. I miss my math classes that lack this craziness. But, am I that good of a student that I would start reading right away? No. We went and got gelato which was a much better decision. After that, we spent some time hanging out in the Campo waiting for the stores to open up after the siesta so we could grab a few necessities (like napkins--toilet paper is an ineffective substitute). Finally, we got home and did quite a bit of reading, cooked dinner, did more homework, and I probably wasted time of facebook. Monday was a long time ago at this point and I'm not going to try and remember the rest of the insignificant details.

Tuesday morning dawned bright and early (again) and our usual morning cafe was CLOSED! It was a tragedy! They already know us there and get very excited to see us every morning, so the fact that it was randomly closed on a Tuesday morning crushed my soul. Regardless, we got to class and took a bus to the Joe Nafuma Refugee Center in Rome, on which I met a definite bus creeper but oh well. Father Michael, the man running the center, gave us a very interesting talk on its history and the people there even though he did talk for entirely too long, in my opinion.

Basically, the center is the only place of its kind in Rome. It typically has about 200 refugees or people seeking political asylum. Most of them are from Afghanistan but quite a few are from Iraq, Sudan, the Ivory Coast, and most places around the world. And most of them are just kids! Some are like 15 or 16 and are living homeless in Rome because their parents paid some traffickers to get them here! At the center, they can get breakfast in the morning and standard supplies, things like razors, toothpaste, and some new clothes. It's all run by donations. They have ping-pong and foosball and tv to watch but a lot of them seem to use the center as a safe place to sleep. Us, as a herd of bright, shiny Americans with cameras and expensive purses, definitely seemed a bit out of place. But, I'm volunteering there (more about this a few paragraphs down) so it's an adventure.

After that, we had just enough time to grab some lunch (insalateria!) and head back to the Rome center for our second class of the day, discussing Italians and their craziness with their scandalous Prime Minister. And their lack of young people. And the lack of motivation of their young people. The moral of the story: Italy has issues.

We had a few hours after that to head home and make dinner and that gave me enough time to straighten out my life and get ready for my presentation Wednesday. But, we did have a mandatory movie at night for one of our classes so we made the trek back to the Rome Center and watched Facing Windows, a depressing Italian movie. And I'm still unsure how it relates to class. Regardless, after the movie, we went to celebrate Emily's birthday by (doing what else) getting gelato! What a fantastic idea, as always. After some birthday shenanigans, bedtime was too late and Wednesday morning definitely came early (again). But, our cafe was open this morning so life was better. We chatted with our friends and found out one is from Brazil and they didn't exactly understand the concept that there is another Washington other than DC but oh well! They like us anyways.

A few of us met up to go volunteer at the refugee center, so after another much less creepy bus ride, we found ourselves waiting outside for Tauna, the volunteer manager/barber. I ended up teaching an English class! It was strange. How do you explain what "learn" means to someone?? Someone asked me what "matter" meant and it was very difficult to define. Someone even had an English dictionary and was just asking me what random words meant. My limited Italian and their limited Italian didn't help the situation. But, I stood at the chalkboard for about two hours, teaching verbs, sentence structure, objects, and answering their random questions. But they listened! They took notes! I was at the front of a room full of people actually paying attention to me! You could see how much they wanted to learn English and how valuable it was to them. Mostly they only have people who volunteer to teach Italian but all the refugees think English would better help them. It was definitely an experience, especially since they all seemed to really really like it. They were upset when I had to leave and all wanted me to come back tomorrow! Unfortunately, we have class so I probably can't make it back until next Wednesday but after they understood that I'd be back next week, they lit up a little more. It was definitely not what I expected.

Sometime during the English lesson, our art history professor, Lisa, had texted us all, changing the time of our class so she could be back in time for the soccer game at four. Thus, we had to hurry home, grab some lunch, and scramble to meet her and the rest of the group but luckily we were on time. Being late doesn't jive with Lisa.

Once we were all assembled, we made the ridiculous trek to Augustus's Ara Pacis (Arch of Peace). I'd never heard of it before but it's only really been open for viewing since 2006 so it's alright. Basically, it's something Augustus built to epitomize himself as "Roman" and tie himself to Rome (and separate himself from Marc Antony who was off gallivanting with Cleopatra). The whole point of the thing was to do sacrifices on. They even had drains in it so they could just "hose it down" and clean up the bloodiness. It was really cool, though. It's inside this really modern building that I thought was really pretty but the Italians really hate it, apparently. And not because it's modern but really just because the architect was American. Anyways, I thought it was cool. And then, on the side of the building, Augustus basically has a wall of his accomplishments, his "resume" as emperor. It just lists all the cool things he did, places he took over, stuff he built, etc. And it's just a giant inscription on a wall! Again, if I become emperor of the universe, I'm building a wall to commemorate my accomplishments and my fantasticness.

We rounded out our class with a trip to the Pantheon and, since it was my monument, I got to present it to the group. It's already been established that the Pantheon is awesome, so I'll leave it at that.

Finally, class was over and I skipped out watching the soccer game to come home and take a much needed nap. I really should be doing our reading for tomorrow or finishing my Pantheon paper, but I chose to blog instead. I seem to have lost motivation and it's only the third day! But it feels like we've been here for weeks because we do so much stuff in the day! It doesn't even feel like I went to the refugee center this morning--it seems like that was days ago. Tomorrow we only have four hours of class so hopefully it can be a relatively laid-back day.

Anyways, I really need to go read "A History of Italy" for tomorrow because, by the name, I have a feeling it's going be about a zillion pages long. Italians have entirely too much history.