A few days later

Hello friends! So, I've been slacking and haven't posted anything about my life since our Florence trip.

Actually, the real reasoning behind this is that I haven't been slacking at all! We basically have everything due for the whole course in a week. So I've had shit to do, including but not limited to:
1) Research immigration to Italy
2) Look up the current political situations in multiple countries with people who immigrate to Italy
3) Try and figure out how said people get to Italy
4) Make serendipitous discoveries about Islamic/Italian relations
5) Actually put more time and effort into researching those relations
6) Read a lot about churches
7) Read a lot about popes
8) Visit a lot of places to learn more about popes
9) Upload pictures to facebook
10) Find time to blog so my mother knows I'm still alive

But really, studying abroad is going well, we've just almost reached the end of our time in Rome and have to do something to get our 15 credits. So we're busy.

However, tonight I have been solidly working for the past almost 3 hours with minimal facebook time so I decided I should take a break and blog.

Backtracking to Sunday, my roommates and I wake up to discover the lack of food in our apartment after our Florence trip. Actually, let's correct this: they woke up to discover this. I slept until 11. It was the first time I've slept past 8 since we've been here so it was necessary. And Catherine went to our usual cafe without me and our cafe guys missed me! Basically, we're all good friends now. They invited us to the beach with them! Have I mentioned that already? I'm not sure. My blogs and conversations all run together in my head.

Anyways, since we didn't have food, we went out to both lunch and dinner. We explored Trastevere and found out there was this hill right behind us with a very majestic fountain/waterfall (which turns out to be someone's monument for art history.... who knew??) and beautiful views of all of Rome. It was gorgeous! Except it was 90+ degrees outside and there isn't really much shade at the top of a hill. We got lunch after exploring and came back for an epic afternoon of..... HOMEWORK! Maybe not so epic. But we had copious amounts of reading and researching and group projects. After a long afternoon, we went out to dinner to this delicious little place near our apartment where I got some fantastic ravioli. Since Italians take their time with everything, we didn't get home from dinner until after 10 so after a little more reading, it was bedtime. I don't think I've been sleeping enough in Italy. Tiredness is beginning to get to me.

Regardless, Monday dawned ridiculously hot (again) and began with an attempt to volunteer at the refugee center. Since that's my project for one of my classes, it's quite crucial that we actually spend enough time there to get enough information for our projects. So, we got up early on our day off (they gave us Monday off for the fourth of July!) to bus it to the refugee center only to find out that it was closed. Why? I have no idea and neither did the guy who came to the gate. So it was a fail of a morning and a waste of time as we took two buses and did nothing. After that, we spent some time in the lovely air-conditioned Rome Center working on everything again and trying to coordinate group project meeting times. It was not incredibly eventful.

But, that evening, our professors were throwing a (late) fourth of July dinner for us! So, all 20-some of us went to their apartment where they had some restaurant bring it the most fantastic lasagna EVER. It was so much fun to actually have time to sit and talk with everyone else because we really don't get much of that at all. We heard some life stories and the tales of the most depressing pet owner ever and spent a very long time just hanging out. And, after spending a few hours together, what better thing to do than go get gelato together? Great idea. So, we went to our new favorite gelato place (which is actually kind of far away, but definitely fantastic so worth the walk) and I ended up getting home much later than I wanted to but it was fun! So I guess that's all that matters.

Getting up this morning was not so fun, though. I couldn't sleep last night because of the ridiculous heat and an unnecessary flare-up of my weird chest pain. But I'm in Rome! So I'm ignoring it and ibuprofen and I were best friends today.

We met with the rest of the group for a tour of the largest synagogue in Rome and a tour of the Jewish ghetto that used to be there. The synagogue was very pretty but both tour guides (for the synagogue/museum and the ghetto) were difficult to understand and said almost exactly the same things so we probably could have combined the two. And the Jewish ghetto was demolished a long time ago so we just wandered aimlessly at what used to be the edges of it. It was cool but it was also very hot outside. And we were hungry.

After a much needed lunch break, we were back in the classroom for our Islam class where we finished discussing Trickster Travels and learned a lot about Islam. I'm really excited to go to Istanbul now.

We had a two hour break after that so for some reason decided to walk back to our apartment even though it takes a very long time to get back here and it really only left us with an hour or so which is not enough time for me to be very productive, let's be real. But I did get my art history reading done, so that was a plus. We hurried back to the Rome Center for Kasaba's guest lecture (he's our Islam professor if you haven't read anything on my sidebar) and it was really interesting. And they had snacks. And, to top off the evening, the movie we were supposed to watch after that lecture was cancelled because it wouldn't play! Woo. So we actually had time to mosey back to our apartment, stopping at the crepe place for dinner. I'd only heard good things about this place but hadn't actually tried it and it ended up being wonderful. I got a crepe with cheese, tomato, and some sort of mysterious salami/ham something or other. And it was delicious. After getting home, I seriously did homework until I took a break to write this.

So it hasn't been an incredibly exciting few days (hence the lack of blog posting) and I don't even have my camera handy or many good pictures (we couldn't take pictures in the synagogue or anything!) so you don't get to see any pictures in this post! Sorry! But tomorrow we are touring a Roman mosque, volunteering at the refugee center (hopefully for real this time), and seeing at least three art history sites so it should be more eventful!

I hope you're all having fun and had a wonderful fourth of July!