Epic First Post

So. BLOG. I have been meaning to start this for a really long time! I need to get started somewhere... so to get myself warmed up, I'm going to do a super-quick summary of everything so far! (Yes, everything!)

August 29: I start out the whole adventure 30 minutes late (go figure, it's me) because I slept through all my alarms. I woke up at 5:30, finished last-minute packing, left for the airport late (surprise), took stuff out of my suitcase because I was afraid it was too heavy, said bye to the family, saw Linda at the terminal before our flights took off, flew to Washington DC, waited for 6 hours, got on the 777 plane to Fiumicino, and slept for most of the plane ride. Whew. There was a map on the screen behind every seat, so I always knew where I was, which was neat. I saw mountains one time from the plane when I got up to stretch my legs- so pretty!

Big plane!

August 30: Plane lands in Roma!! By this point I am tired, hungry, and thirsty, but I really don't care because I'm so excited and my nervousness has been gone ever since I got on the plane to Rome. I found the API people and started meeting my roommates. My first meal in Rome was lunch at a trattoria, and the waiter didn't speak hardly any English but he was really interested in all of us! After lunch my roommate in the hotel, Tori, and I took a much needed nap before heading to the API meeting and welcome dinner. Afterward, we walked around and stumbled across what I now know is Piazza Navona!

Piazza Navona at night

August 31: In the morning we had our monuments of Rome tour, which was so incredible it was almost surreal. In a matter of hours I saw the Pantheon, Colosseum, Arch of Constantine, Column of Marcus Aurelius, the Palatine, the Roman Forum, the ruins of Caesar's Palace (the real one), the Theater of Marcellus, and the Circus Maximus. It was amazing- all these major historical monuments that I've been learning about existed in my mind as a picture in a book or as a mythological place in a story, but I saw them all one right after the other with my own eyes- and the whole time, brilliant me is thinking something along the lines of "whoa... it's real!!" I really cannot explain how crazy it is. I'm kind of tired now and this is coming out as mumbo jumbo. In addition to my ancient monuments, I also saw the Trevi Fountain, Piazza Navona again with the Fountain of the Four Rivers, Campo de' Fiori, and the Piazza di Saint Ignazio. Also, during the tour, I got my first real Italian gelato! Completely blew the Colosseum out of the water. Just kidding. I bought a cell phone and went to dinner with a bunch of people, then hung out at a piazza with my roommates.

It exists!

September 1: Move-in day! Started out kind of stressful since my other roommates called Tori and me at 8:24am and we had to be on the bus at 8:30am or it would leave without us and we would have to get a taxi to take us. Thank goodness they called us, and we were able to throw all our stuff together and make it to the bus on time! Our apartment is beauuutiful, I love it!! Here's the video tour! We have 3 bedrooms, a kitchen, two balconies (one of which is connected to my bedroom), a living room, and 2 bathrooms! My awesome roommates are Kate, Catherine, Tori, Liat, and I am sharing a room with Claudia, which was decided because she wakes up early and I... don't wake up. For anything. Anyway, I especially love the view from the kitchen balcony- I love hanging my laundry out there because I feel like such an Italian! I went to lunch and the supermarket with my roommates, and later we cooked dinner all in the apartment- a gourmet Italian meal of spaghetti and bottled tomato sauce. We still have the noodle on the ceiling from when we were testing to see if it was al dente! It was a really fun day and I enjoyed spending a lot of time with my roomies!

View from the kitchen balcony- many pictures stitched together

September 2: We had our orientation at JCU which was relatively uneventful... later that night Catherine, Kate, Claudia, and I went to visit another apartment in the Vaticano neighborhood. It was a longer trek than expected, including a ton of stairs to get up to the apartment- we definitely need to find a different way to get there next time. We practically ran all the way back in order to get gelato before they closed, and when we got back we just hung out in the apartment which was fun.

Running down the stairs with Claudia, Catherine, and Kate to get to the gelato place

 
September 3: Around noon we had our Christian Rome tour, and we went to Castel Sant'Angelo and Saint Peter's Basilica. I enjoyed these a lot more than I thought I would- Saint Peter's was incredible. It was so ornate and beautiful, and of course I took a million pictures.

Bernini's Baldacchino in Saint Peter's

September 4: The only thing I remember about today was Catherine's now-famous dinner... the waiter came out and served her pasta out of an enormous hunk of Parmesan cheese. Enough said.

September 5: Sperlonga beach day! My roommates and I went with a tour group. The whole town was absolutely gorgeous. I wanted to spend another couple of days there just floating around in the water looking up at the town. I would love to live there- there's not much else to say about it other than just repeating how beautiful it was, so if you really want to know, proceed to my Facebook and take a look at my ten million pictures.

I didn't know which way to look, toward the town or out toward the ocean- both were so pretty!

September 6: Since I have no Monday classes, I had a pretty relaxing day. I went to the open-air market, made the video tour of our apartment, and walked to the John Cabot campus (which took me an hour and five minutes!). 

No other pictures for today, so I guess I'll put up this one of my lunch after the market!

September 7: First day of classes (and Laura's birthday!) First was Ancient Rome and its Monuments from 9:30am-12:15pm. We walked to the Circus Maximus, the Palatine, and the Roman Forum. At each stop, my teacher talked about the monument/area and its history. I am really excited for this class, and I wish it wasn't just on Tuesdays! I went back to the apartment for lunch and then was 10 minutes late for Italian (2:15pm-4:05pm TR) since I waited for the 271 bus for like 25 minutes... stupid phantom bus! The teacher kept speaking to me in Italian which was basically awkward because, um, I don't speak Italian, so I kept staring at her blankly with no reply. Thirdly was Literature and Society in Ancient Rome, 5:15pm-6:30pm TR. Claudia is also in that class, and we love the teacher- elderly kooky Classics professor!

On-site Monuments class- legend says that Faustulus found Romulus and Remus washed up under this arch by the Palatine Hill!

September 8: First Politics and Power in Ancient Roman Architecture class (1:30-4:15 W). We met in a classroom since it was the first day and went over the syllabus and et cetera, but I am really excited for this class! On the way back to my apartment, I stopped by the open air market in Prati (my neighborhood) and all of the people who work at this one stand were talking about me... there was one guy who could speak English who asked how old I was. There was much gesturing and chatting and I figured out they were so surprised that I was 20 since they all think I look 15! It was pretty funny but awkward... they were referring to me as "bella signorina" so I was pretending to not understand that and then skedaddled away as soon as they were done weighing my food. (By the way, at the supermarkets, if you don't bag, weigh, and price-sticker your own food, they get annoyed... I think they also charge you if you don't have exact change, but I don't really know!)

The peaches here are the best ever!

September 9: Italian teacher continues to speak in mostly all Italian, so I got kind of confused. In Lit. and Society, the teacher gave a brief history of pre-Rome, which was cool- I am loving this history thing.

September 10: We left in the morning to go to Sorrento! During the drive, I saw signs saying Naples and Salerno... so close to Colliano, where my family is from. Hopefully I will get to visit them! We drove up Mt. Vesuvius on the bus. Picture this: thin, winding roads, and European drivers on both sides. After a somewhat precarious drive up, we stopped and hiked up the mountain- everyone was dressed for a hot day, and it was super windy and cold! Nevertheless, it was beautiful and exhilarating. I very much enjoy the outdoors, and a nice chilly hike up a dormant volcano with a view of the bay of Naples was pretty sweet. At the top, my roommates and I all took silly posing pictures on a rock, which was fun, and we got some good pictures! After we hiked back down, we headed on to Sorrento. I had the Sorrento-style gnocchi for dinner, which was highly recommended to us, and then we wandered around the town going into little shops for the rest of the night. Oh, and some awesome gelato from another shop that was recommended to us!

September 11: It was kind of weird being out of the US for this day. In the morning, we took a ferry to Capri, and if I thought that was beautiful, the boat tour around Capri was breathtaking. I took a million pictures and still had plenty of time to put my camera down and just enjoy the wind and the smell and the views. It was probably my favorite part of the day- the ocean and islands were gorgeous, the weather was perfect, and the boat was fun! After the tour, I tried finding the Venetian steps, but the people I asked either spoke Italian and probably knew where it was, or spoke English and had no idea. I ended up finding some random steps and walking up to Capri town, which was cool because I saw a lot of pretty entrances to houses. I can't imagine coming home every day to one of these beautiful villas overlooking the water. In Capri town, I met up with people and had lunch and then wandered around the shops. Capri has beautiful ceramic stores and I wanted to buy everything. Back down at the shore I put my feet in the ocean... the water was so clear, I just stood there enjoying everything until we had to take the ferry back.

Capri!

September 12: We checked out of our hotel and went on a tour of Pompeii. The city felt so real; I could really sense that it was once a thriving town full of real people. It was amazing how there were intact frescoes and tracks on the road from chariots. Eheu, Caecilius, Metella, Quintus, Grumio, Clemens, and Cerberus... I wanted to stop by and say hey but I couldn't find them. Going into one of the villas might have been my favorite, since I felt like I was seeing all the things I first learned about the Romans in Latin I- triclinium, impluvium, cubicilum... hehe!

Chariot tracks between the stepping stones- don't get your toga wet when it rains!

September 13: I went with my roommates to the supermarket and the open-air market... now the guys at the open air market are all calling me Sabrina, so I am confused. The last time they asked my name and pronounced it Si-VAH-nah, so maybe they forgot? Later, I finally made it to the bookstore by the Spanish Steps to get my textbooks (all but one... gotta go back I guess). I wandered around the area and found this awesome pasta place and omg. Pasta is like my favorite food and this place was full of different kinds of pasta, so it was heaven, or at least would have been if everything wasn't so expensive! Disney pasta, little Mexican hat looking pasta, black squid ink pasta, Christmas pasta, and... not sure what to call it... genitalia pasta? For real. And it's not the first time I've seen it, either. For dinner, I experimented with making eggplant. It turned out pretty good, except I cut my thumb AGAIN while chopping... really, I never do that at home, but this is the second time in like a week where my thumb has been bleeding profusely and I ran to Claudia asking for a Band-Aid. Tonight was my first night of doing homework- it was fun to be doing homework again (yeah I know, I'm a dork). My classes are all so interesting!

l'emporio della pasta

September 14: I walked to the Piazza del Popolo for my on-site Ancient Rome and its Monuments class and actually made it on time without any problems. We met by this huge Egyptian obelisk and then proceeded to a museum where we talked for the rest of the time about Etruscan artifacts. It's really neat learning so much about the Etruscans- it's so important for Roman history because the Romans got so much from the Etruscans! I could go on but I don't want to bore everyone... after Lit. and Society in Ancient Rome, I learned of Claudia's groundbreaking (teehee, there's kind of a pun in that) theory- after the teacher talked about how important water was for the Romans (their cities are all around water sources and they were experts at getting water into the cities- hello, aqueducts) she told me that obviously, the Romans were water-benders. I agree completely. In fact, she continued to inform me that Moses was the avatar. Red Sea, burning bush, etc... so true.

Funky angle yet not the best picture, I had to stop and take notes... hundreds of tons, brought to Rome by Augustus in 10BC

September 15: Dude, this is TODAY! Awesome! I am finally caught up in my blog! On Wednesdays I only have one class, Politics and Power in Ancient Roman Architecture. It was awesomeee! Well, first of all, I should have walked, because Google maps said 46 minutes walking and it took me about an hour taking the metro. Still, it was really odd being like, “Ok, I need to get off at Circo Massimo after the Colosseo stop” and there being COLOSSEO really big on the walls in the metro station! I was 10 minutes late and had to call my teacher- she gave us her phone number in case we couldn’t find the location so we wouldn’t miss the whole three-hour class. I finally found where we were, and it was pure amazingness from then on. (History nerds, continue reading.) We talked about the Roman triumphal processions, and then walked the route that Roman triumphs took. We started were the Porta Triumphis used to be, a huge gate that only opened for triumphal processions. We walked through the Circus Maximus- I asked the teacher if the processions actually went through it, and she said yes- the Circus Maximus was made for having thousands of spectators, so the triumph would go through with thousands of Romans cheering them on from the stands. We walked along the Via Appia to the Colosseum, where we imagined we walked under the Arch of Constantine (walking under the arches isn’t allowed anymore in order to preserve the monuments). The arch straddles the Via Sacra, which we followed to the Arch of Titus, through the Roman Forum, and to the Arch of Septimius Severus. Because we already had our tickets for getting in the Roman Forum, my teacher wanted to end class there, but the ending place was very close and I have been there before with my other class: the triumphs would stop at the base of the Capitoline hill, kill the captured slaves from the conquered side, and then ascend the hill to the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus. At each monument, she would stop and talk and we would take notes. SO cool. A bit more nerdiness here, and then I’ll be done: the Roman triumphal processions were not only celebrating the emperor, or the army, or the victory, but also romitas- “the quality or condition of being Roman” (the dictionary term) aka what I think is about feeling superRoman- no wonder the Romans were so proud! When I first went on the monuments of Rome tour, with my little plastic earbud in my ear, chasing after my tour guide with a mob of other tourists, I was awed and impressed. I can scarcely imagine how Romans, especially those in the triumph, would feel being on this same path, except for everyone is screaming and cheering around these same monuments that signify Rome’s other victories. Wow, sorry, this was a really long ramble- apparently my posts will get longer when I’m writing about things that happened earlier today rather than weeks ago! Anyway, after class, I wandered around the Forum for a little over an hour and really really enjoyed it. I got stuck on the Palatine for a bit, but then I found a bus stop and made it back to Prati. Claudia is awesome and made dinner for all the roomies- I need her to teach me how to make eggplant (and not cut myself…) then I finished typing this blog! Whew! Now I need to go read book III of the Livy!

The Forum Romanum and the Colosseum