A day in the life

Well, I've been filling you in on the epicness of every packed day we've had so far. So, you might ask, what did I do with our very first free day in Rome? Peruse my photo journal of today!




Step 1: Wake up after SLEEPING IN until 8:45 (yeah, not that late, but it's when I woke up). After blogging and facebooking, get coffee!

Step 2: Head to the Rome Center to get some work done! Read some articles for art history and Trickster Travels. Trickster Travels is a required book for one of our classes and is a historical account of one guy from Africa in the 1500s. And it goes on FOREVER. You think you're almost done because it really doesn't make a point but then you find out you have 1200 pages to go. Well, not really, but it goes on for a long time. The main guy was Muslim and traveled all around Africa but then was captured by people and forced to become Christian and then wrote books about Africa for Europeans. Super exciting, right??

But really, did I read Trickster Travels? More accurately, I was on facebook. Let's be honest here. But since the time here is 9 hours ahead of the rest of my friends, there was no one to talk to online! So I had to get back to reading.






Step 3: Get lunch! Sandwiches today.





Mine had prosciutto and mozzarella, I think. But then again, this was hours ago so I'm not really sure. Regardless, it was a good break from reading. Except it was super hot outside today so we ended up just getting lunch and taking it back inside because we were melting outside.









Step 4: Work on my paper about the Pantheon..... "Work" might also entail uploading pictures to facebook...... But I that was important too so it is completely justified in my mind! I just need to review my editor's comments (thanks, Bennett!) and submit it and then I'm DONE with my first art history project! Which will be very exciting.




Actually, I'm just impressed that I've already written a legit research paper. I don't really write papers. I've written one in the past two years. So this is an accomplishment for me!










Step 5: Read Trickster Travels. "Read" begins to be used very loosely.












Working hard, obviously. But this book seriously goes on forever! And it was warm and sunny and it might have just put me to sleep. I even tried read sitting in an uncomfortable chair so I would stay awake. But this book, with its constant stream of names and places (the main guy is referred to by like 3 different names) just lulled me to sleep. We went home from the Rome Center soon after this and I tried to continue reading but I decided to lay on my bed to do this and I was asleep in about 10 minutes.







Step 6: Go out to dinner! Plumbers don't work Sunday either, so we still can't use our kitchen. We went to this cute little restaurant where I got a mysterious pasta/potato/cheese thing that came in a giant french onion soup bowl. It was delicious. And we got serenaded by the restaurant people. They found out we were from Washington (even though I think they thought we meant DC) and decided to sing us a "special" song. They sang New York, New York for us but put in "Washington" instead of "New York". It was basically fantastic.





Step 7: Get home from dinner. Oh, what to do with the rest of my Sunday night? Trickster Travels is calling my name.... I only have about 30 pages to go!

Overall, it was a good day, except for there was a lot of Trickster Travels mixed in there. I wouldn't suggest reading it.

Internet FAIL

So, I meant to post my last blog last night but our internet decided to die right as I clicked "publish" so it was basically an epic failure. I had to wait until this morning when we had internet again.

Life is so disconnected without the internet. I missed it.

My sun hat has finally made an appearance!

Today, I swam in the Mediterranean. As I have been told, my life is epic.

But, let's backtrack to yesterday so I can fill you all in on the epic-ness. Friday started off slowly (cappuccino, anyone?) with the knowledge that we'd be having TWO art history classes, instead of just one. In the morning, we finished up our discussion of Ancient Rome with a trip to Trajan's column/forum/market which we had seen a few days before. Trajan's market, still mostly intact, was the world's first shopping mall! It's basically a massive brick building, multiple stories in height, with about 80 bazillion shops inside. Way to go, Trajan. You were kind of fantastic.

After that, we trekked back over to the Colosseum to see the Arch of Constantine. Basically, Constantine stole a bunch of cool stuff Trajan and Hadrian and Augustus made, scratched out their faces, and put his in. This seems completely unnecessary but hey, he was the emperor so whatever he did was totally fine. I want to be an emperor! Anyways, this took a few hours of the morning so we went back to the Campo for lunch (pizza today) and hung out there until our next class. I learned that tetris IS NOT THAT COOL waiting around for class to start.

For art history lesson number two, we just skipped forward in time and started talking about popes. Emperors are way cooler than popes. They have wars and statues of themselves and are super cool while popes (back in the day) had relations with small boys and hired all their family members. I would much rather be an emperor than a pope.

Regardless, there is a super cool store by the Pantheon that sells pope clothes! Well, at least they sell all the clothes that high-up important religious people wear. Except apparently you can't go in there if you're not a high-up important religious person and I really don't fit those specifications. I might have already mentioned this, but it's still cool.

Anyways, back to class! We learned about popes and their crazy Latin inscriptions on everything saying how fantastic and amazing they are. And how they just really liked art. Enter Michelangelo. We walked another very long distance to the church San Pietro in Vincoli, or Saint Peter in Chains. They have the chains that were supposedly used to bind him in prison at the church and an entire set of matched columns stolen from Ancient Roman architecture. It's a pretty cool church overall but most importantly, they have Michelangelo's Moses, a piece considered by many to be his best work. And Freud really liked it, too, even though he was crazy. He psychoanalyzed the statue. Personally, this seems like a waste of time, but I think Freud really liked wasting time, so it's alright. It's a cool sculpture and you can definitely see that Michelangelo had skills.

Then we wandered back across Rome (with a class gelato stop, obviously necessary, where I got NUTELLA GELATO. Why this had yet to enter my life, I don't know.) to see Michelangelo's suckiest sculpture that's still 12000 times better than I could make. We saw his sculpture of the Risen Christ, ridiculed for its proportions and large butt. But, like I said, it's way better than I could do and when you look at it from the "right" direction, it looks totally legit! So those critics should probably just be quiet and less jealous that they aren't as cool as Michelangelo.

We didn't get home from these escapades until about 6 and then I had to work on my paper and then I tried to blog but couldn't think of much to say. So I skipped that and left it for today and went out and enjoyed our Roma Friday night.

I woke up Saturday morning (this morning) to our sixth day of class this week. After grabbing some fruit at the market (7 nectarines and an apple for like 2 or 3 euros.... legit), we went to our cafe and found out the Brazilian cappuccino maker is actually a student here in Italy studying economics. Hopefully they'll start to give us discounts soon since we are basically all friends now. After meeting up with the rest of the group, we took the train to Ostia Antica, the ruins of an ancient port town. It's still very intact and it's completely fantastic because you can TOUCH everything! You can climb up all the steps of the ruins of the buildings! You can climb on the buildings! We even took a sketchy staircase down below the ruins of the bathhouses and explored the underground passageways. It's really, really cool. And not many people know about Ostia so it's not crowded at all and we could literally just run around the ruins. It was a good class.

After class, we hopped the train again and went to the beach! It seems like it's the first free time we've had since we've been here. Some of the sand was black and I might have burned off the soles of my feet but it was completely worth it since I got to swim in the Mediterranean! And I got to wear my sun hat! And I have tan lines, which is pretty impressive. I'm starting to get freckles on my hands from all this sun! (This is big news for me--when I was in first grade, this horrible person told me I was an alien because I didn't have freckles and I started crying because everyone else had freckles and I just might have believed him. BUT Rome has given me enough vitamin D to bring out a few! SUCCESS!)

A few hours of sun later and a train ride back, we were home in our apartment, which is having some strange issues today. The water from our kitchen is backing up in to one of our bathrooms and we're not really sure why. It's not like we've put anything mysterious into the kitchen sink. But if you run the water in the kitchen, you see it gurgle up into the shower and then it gets all over the floor. Calling our landlord Enzo did not solve the problem, either, because this is Italy and they don't have emergency plumbers. Well, I'm not sure if they have those anywhere, but the moral of the story is that it's not going to be fixed until Monday. So basically we're just going to avoid the kitchen this weekend.

My roommates and I went out to dinner for the first time since we've been here because of our mysterious plumbing problems and it was delicious! We did the whole Italian courses thing and even got dessert (in my case, panna cotta with chocolate sauce, also delicious) and spent like two hours at the restaurant but it's all okay! Why? Because WE GET TO SLEEP IN TOMORROW. This is our first day of having nothing planned! I'm actually very excited. But, we have plenty of homework to keep us busy so I'm not sure how "free" of a day it will be. Example: I have to read Trickster's Travels, an incredibly slow book with entirely too many names to keep straight and a completely unnecessary amount of "maybes" and "perhapses" so you just can't keep anything straight, actually. Oh well! For now, I'm not going to think about that and will just enjoy the fact that I can sleep in past 7:40. Which is fantastic. Also, it will be a good thing to breathe before next week which is even more packed than this one.

Get excited world, I should have some epic blogs for to read in the near future!

"To judge Christ by his posterior is a serious infraction of decorum"

I never knew so much about art history. In the reading I've been doing for the past couple of hours, I learned that people build cool things to immortalize themselves (ahem, Arch of Kristin!) and that they believed circles were magical in Ancient Rome. Like passing a partridge egg three times around a woman's chest would prevent her breasts from sagging. There's my fun fact of the day. Also, it's inappropriate to judge a statue of Jesus by his butt. Look at how much I'm learning in Rome!

But seriously, I am learning a lot. Today we had "real class" in an actual classroom, unlike our art history class that mostly entails wandering around the city. After our usual stop at our favorite cafe (this morning they set out our cappuccino cups and pastries as soon as we walked in the door), we headed to our "Islam and Italian Cities" class where we proceeded to discuss the entire history of Italy in about an hour and a half. Italian history is ridiculous. They weren't even a united state until 1860! Ancient Rome is by far the coolest part of their history, let's be real here.

After class number one, we went to lunch (insalateria, again) and tried to sort out some phone issues with the crazy people at the phone store whose English is very limited. Anyways, soon it was time for class number two, "Migration, Markets, and Minorities". We again just talked about how crazy Italians are.

Finally, when class was over, it was almost time for the Italy/Slovakia soccer game! Italians are VERY in to their soccer (it's one of the few things that unifies the country, apparently). We had just enough time to go grab some gelato before heading to our usual soccer game cafe. Here is when I had a revelation. They make BLUEBERRY gelato. I thought it was a pretty pink color so, having no idea what flavor it was, ordered it. And then it was blueberry! Basically the most fantastic part of my day.

The soccer game was depressing because Italia is out for good now! They put up a good effort, despite their main guy kicking the Slovakian goalie in the stomach for no apparent reason. But they lost, crushing the spirit in the cafe.

After the game, I headed home where my roommates and I cooked dinner as usual and then procrastinated for a while until I realized how much reading I really had to do.... It's done now but my two papers are definitely not. Oh well! Things will get done, eventually. Hopefully.

Overall, it was a pretty uneventful day, aside from my blueberry discovery. Tomorrow we have two separate art history lessons so I have a feeling it's going to be a long day, meaning I should get to bed soon before I have to become dependent on cappuccino to function.

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.

Hadrian, you were a strange emperor.

Today is our fourth day in the beautiful city of Rome and the first day that it rained on us! And it wasn't normal rain, but big fat drops that would attack you for thirty seconds or so and then mysteriously disappear for another few minutes. We were walking from our apartment to the UW Rome Center when this was happening and it took us about twice as long as usual because we had to keep running into shops or under overhangs to avoid getting drenched in our sundresses. Tomorrow we're going to the Colosseum and the Forum so I'm really hoping that it doesn't rain anymore because that would be completely unnecessary.

Anyways, since I didn't blog yesterday, I guess I'll go back in time to yesterday morning. My roommates and I got up early to explore our monuments that we have to give our presentations on. My presentation is on the Pantheon, basically one of the coolest things in existence. I've had to do a lot of learning about Hadrian, the emperor responsible for the current one, and he was pretty much one of the most ridiculous people EVER. I mean, he had sexual relations with a 13 year old Greek boy then had him sacrificed. And he gave parts of the Roman empire that the previous emperor had conquered back to the people he had conquered it from because it was just too much for him to handle. And he was in love with the previous emperor's wife. So basically he was ridiculous. Regardless of that, we went to go see the Pantheon so I could figure out what I want to say to about it and admire its fantasticness (that thing has been standing there for almost 2000 years! and is still completely intact! let's be real people, that's pretty fantastic). After that, we wandered up to the Capitoline Hill and the Campodoglio and to Trajan's Column and Markets and Forum, my roommates' monuments.

We were wandering around for a while and then decided to head back to the Campo and get some lunch, after which we just hung out with other people in our program for a while. It was a pretty exciting day, overall, and I got lots of pictures to use in my paper on the Pantheon! So it was successful, I would say.

This morning we got up ridiculously early to meet one of our professors and head to a flea market in this super sketchy neighborhood of Rome. I was expecting random antiques and things that you'd find in a normal flea market but this was basically like a Good Will exploded over multiple blocks of Rome. There were people selling shower heads mixed in with naked Barbies along with chainsaw vendors and quite a few places selling cheese. It was a bit overwhelming so a few of us left after only about an hour there. Most of the rest of the day has been devoted to homework (class starts tomorrow!), the group presentation I have tomorrow, and just hanging out with the rest of the program. And surviving the rainstorm. We did watch the Italy-New Zealand soccer game and, even though soccer is maybe not that cool at all, the atmosphere was really exciting because the Italians were really into it.

After making dinner tonight, I still have a bit more to do before my presentation tomorrow and my other presentation on Wednesday so I really should stop blogging and get to work so I can actually sleep well before our first day of class!

So, goodnight everyone, and happy father's day, dad!

Day 2

I slept for 12 hours last night. 12 whole hours! I guess traveling for a day and half with minimal napping will do that to you.

Anyways, today was our first full day in Rome! One of our professors, Lisa, gave us a walking tour of the area near the UW Rome Center (basically we went in a giant circle around the Campo de Fiori) and pointed out all of her favorite places to go so afterwards we went and stocked up on bread, cheese, fruit, and all sorts of deliciousness to keep in our apartment.

We also tried out the first of many gelaterias around our apartment and it was quite delicious, but I doubt that any gelato around here would be not delicious. Our group of 24 students also took over the back room of a restaurant to watch the US/Slovenia soccer game but the power to the Campo went out about 40 minutes in so we sat confused in the dark for quite a while.

Regardless of that, my roommates and I attempted to cook dinner but discovered that only one burner on our stove actually works and our "quick" dinner plan ended up taking about 2 hours. The homemade pasta we bought was still good, it just took a ridiculous amount of time to boil the water to cook it in. Actually, the water never boiled but we were hungry and impatient and thus cooked it in non-boiling water. Hopefully our fantastic maintenance help guy, Enzo, will stop by tomorrow and help us out.

Overall, it was a very eventful day (I even got started on my HOMEWORK already! But I do have a presentation and a paper due next week, so I guess it's valid...) and I'm tired from all the sun, so it's time for bed soon. Tomorrow we have a free day so are going to explore the city and check out the sites we have to give our presentations on and probably eat more gelato.

Oh, and even though I've posted on this thing two days running, it's probably not going to be a daily occurrence, even though I'll try to be regular about it.

Also, I'm getting TAN ALREADY and it's only been a day! This bodes well for me.