So of course these last days included many, many goodbyes. The first one started at Girasole (where I volunteered). They threw us a goodbye luncheon, it was really fantastic. We ate PLEANTY of food, and then we started a marathon of goodbyes with them. I have no idea how many cheeks I kissed that afternoon. They also sang us these beautiful Italian songs, songs that they sang to their family and friends when they would leave Italy to immigrate elsewhere in the world....terribly sad. We got many pictures, and I had one old lady literally attached to my hip for the [View Full Entry]

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For our second and last class trip, we spent the weekend in Naples. We made our first stop at the Naples Archeological Museum, getting ready for our visit in Pompeii. Straight after the museum, we headed to Pompeii. We spent the afternoon exploring the ancient city. My art and architecture teacher was with us, so she did a fantastic job showing us around the amazingly preserved Roman town. For those of you who don’t know, Pompeii is right near Mount Vesuvius, and when it erupted is killed many in the town, but also helped to keep it very well preserved. Pompeii [View Full Entry]

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This entry covers from November 4th to about the 19th. Sorry it’s a little unorganized, and not too many exciting pictures. America’s Election Day was a big deal over here too. I think it’s possible that my host mom was more excited to see who won than I was. That night at dinner, she had bought a bottle of wine to celebrate Obama’s victory, and we watched Italian news, all covering the election. It was a memorable way to celebrate such historic event. I met with Fr. Rob another time, this time bringing a friend to accompany me. We went to [View Full Entry]

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So getting a cheap flight to Edinburgh, Scotland wasn’t simple, it had to involve a 10 hour lay-over in Frankfurt, Germany. We got into Frankfurt around 1:30, and got a shock when we saw snow on the ground and felt the freezing cold air. Before that night, I had only worn a light jacket twice in Rome because the weather had been fantastic. With 10 hours to waste, we joined in with a surprising amount of people waiting in this tiny airport. Time definitely passed slowly, but finally it was time to fly to Scotland. Scotland was almost just as cold, [View Full Entry]

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So last minute, two days before leaving, me and 3 of my friends decided to spend the weekend in Florence. We decided to leave after a class trip for our literature class. For our class we visited the town of Tarquinia, where ancient Etruscan tombs are. It was interesting because they are all underground, and well preserved, so there was a lot still left to see. Our train from Tarquinia arrived back in Rome around 7 and we were on our train to Florence and 9:30. It’s definitely fun to travel spontaneously, but I know I couldn’t do that all [View Full Entry]

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My host sister had told me about this giant flea market that happens every Sunday, in a neighborhood of Rome. I finally got around to checking it out, and I have never experienced something so large. I started at one end of it and it took my 2 ½ hours to make it completely through it. It was an interesting experience to say the least. You have people shouting at you from every direction, trying to persuade you to buy their Roma t-shirt instead of the exact same one across the way. Or there are the popular dice games, which I [View Full Entry]

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I was lucky enough to have a great weekend in Tuscany, which our school took us on. Our weekend included 3 towns in 3 days, Siena, Arezzo and Assisi. After about a 3 hour drive we stopped in Siena for the afternoon. Here we saw St. Catherine of Siena’s childhood home, family chapel, and the church where her head is pleasantly on display. We had a walking tour through the town seeing many churches and stopped in a gallery, and then sat town in the town’s central piazza and had a mini-class. After some free time for lunch we left [View Full Entry]

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So my next few weeks were pretty mellow, and just trying to see as much as the city as possible. One of the sites I enjoyed the most was a church that has a crypt underneath, where a small domination of Franciscan monks is traditionally buried. The catch is that there is little burial space, and the dirt (dirt from the holy land) is so precious that the monks decided that it was better to be buried in the holiest soil for only a limited time than to never had been buried in it at all. So there is about room [View Full Entry]

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So a large group of us met up at the train station to meet up before our midnight train to Cinque Terre, we were there a little early so we were just hanging around. Before long we were told that there was a sciopere (strike) with the train, just for that night. So like the logical college students we all are, we decided to stay at the train station to either change our tickets when the ticket offices opened again, or hope on the first available train. So started our night in the train station. About 12 of us picked a [View Full Entry]

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My first week with my host family, and first week of classes went very well. The only mess was trying to figure out where my suitcase had disappeared to, I was told it was in Milan, Germany and then Milan again…who knows where it actually was, probably in Rome the entire time. Classes went very well, I have Italian five days a week for three hours for eight weeks…all I know is after that much Italian I better be a pro. Those classes go faster than I was imagining they would. I absolutely love my Art and Architecture class. For our [View Full Entry]

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