Today, I am sad. We are leaving Rome tomorrow. We get on a bus at 8:15 and drive away to the airport. We are going to Istanbul so I'm excited but I'm not ready to leave Roma! If it wasn't this hot, I might run away and not go with the group to Turkey. I could go be a bum and get a puppy, like the one that lives on our street. He has TWO puppies. And they are adorable.
Anyways, moving on. I just realized that I haven't blogged since Saturday. We've done a lot since then but not much of it was super interesting. We have had a lot of projects and papers due this week and I'll be honest here--I HATE GROUP PROJECTS. With a passion. I seriously detest them. And all the presentations were group-based and some people really don't understand how to make a powerpoint or that a 20 minute presentation with 5 people means you each talk for FOUR MINUTES. Not 12.
All in all, this week has been frustrating.
Sunday, I basically worked on homework and projects and nothing too exciting. Monday, we went to Saint Peter's. It was cool but, again as I said for the Vatican, I think you only need to see it once. And I've already seen it. It was pretty but I still think the baldacchino (the giant bronze thing at the front altar) is not very attractive. I personally feel like the bronze is too dark and heavy of decoration AND they stripped it from the Pantheon where I'm sure it was a much more beautiful addition to the dome coffers. Pope Urban VIII, your Pantheon destruction was unnecessary. After that, we had presentations for our Migrations class. A few groups went and, although these presentations were only supposed to be 20 minutes, each group talked for at least 30. And then we discussed in typical honors fashion so the class went overtime. I had a group presentation the next day so we stuck around to make sure everything was in order for that. However, my group for our Islam class (for which we had presentations on Wednesday) somehow got it into their heads that it would be a great idea to change our topic. With less than two days to pull off everything for it. I think our new topic was much more interesting and was able to complete my part Monday night, however, some of the rest of my group members were....not so motivated (here begins my frustration).
On Tuesday, we had a presentation by our Islam professor (who happens to be Turkish) about what to expect in Istanbul and some Turkish history. The Turks made it mandatory for people to switch from Arabic writing to our Roman alphabet in the 1920s. How inconvenient would that be?? Parents wouldn't know what kids would be writing down and kids wouldn't know what their parents would saying and that would just be entirely too complicated. After that presentation, we had more presentations in our migration class. My group went and we talked about our time volunteering at the Refugee Center and showed off these cool maps we made and I made a really good powerpoint for the presentation without excess text and with lots of cool pictures. There was even a picture of a camel and it was completely relevant. So that went very well and it was a definite relief to be done.
After that, I started working on stuff to finish up that class and to get ready for my Islam class presentation the next day. My group had a complete FAILURE of a meeting about it and I ended up staying there, completely finished with all of my stuff, until almost midnight waiting for them to get their acts together. Most of my group was great, just a couple people....not so much. Anyways, more on that in a moment.
Wednesday started off entirely too early and we had some art history presentations at a little church (I'm going to be honest--I'm tired of seeing churches. They all look THE SAME to me at this point and I've completely stopped caring about them) and another presentation about the Talking Statues, which was actually interesting. Basically, people would write things on statues as political jokes and satirical things back in the day. They'd make fun of the popes a lot. After that, we hurried back for our Islam class presentations. I was incredibly unimpressed. I had prepared and knew what was going on but certain people had definitely not put ANY time into the presentation and it was completely obvious. I felt very embarrassed to be standing there as some people were speaking. Hopefully we don't get graded as a group because I'm pretty sure we would fail. Again, I hate group projects. And this was frustrating. We still have to write a group paper on the topic and, although I'm done with my part and we talked about trying to finish it before we leave, I have a feeling that's not going to happen. These people really don't understand that some of us aren't going to have copious amounts of free time to work on projects after the trip is over so even if it's not due until the end of July, they need to get their acts together now. Coming home Wednesday night also left me very irritated.
Things got a little better when my roommates and I went out to dinner. We went to this little, cheap restaurant in our neighborhood and everything we got was really delicious. So that made me a little happier. But then, that mood was ruined when there was some complications for a different project and I might have to completely redo what I've already done.
Anyways, Thursday dawned and I was not in a very good mood from lack of sleep and irritation at people's ridiculousness. I am still not in a very good mood. We had art history class where we listened to three presentations and had to stand in the heat and it was just not a very fun time. I think we're all a little art-historied out.
Once we got home from class, we stopped at a bakery near our house for some lunch and they gave everything to us for free!! Perks to it being our last day here. Once we were actually home, we started packing everything up and cleaning our apartment. Our landlord is coming for an inspection at 3:30 so we had to get everything tidy again. Hopefully everything goes fine so we can get our 100 euro deposit back.
Now, we're just waiting for him to show up and I came to the realization that it's been a long time since I've blogged. So I decided to do that to pass the time. I have a headache so maybe I'll try and nap after this.
Tonight we have our final Rome group dinner at a very fancy restaurant so that should be good. I'm still irritated but hopefully that will make everything a bit better. I really, really don't want to leave Rome but I want to leave group projects behind forever.
Anyways, my suitcase is packed so the next time you hear from me, I'll be in Istanbul!
(Hopefully. In reality, we actually have every day packed from pretty much early morning to late at night so I might not have time to blog a lot. And sorry there are no pictures in this post--maybe I'll add some in a few days. Also, sorry for my frustration.)
