i just booked our reservations at the hostel in interlaken switzerland!!!! i am soooooooo excited about going. its sounds ridiculous to want a vacation from rome, but its going to be so nice to be able to relax and not have to take notes on teh places we go and to be out of a city and see trees and birds that arent pidgeons. ah. we're staying at balmer's herberge (www.balmers.com). And i get to ride a train all the way through the appenines and the alps!!!!! i've never been on a train before besides like the dirty metro trains here [View Full Entry]

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as much as wednesdays suck, tuesdays are awesome. Today we went with Emilio to the Museum of roman culture or something. It was all models and casts of sculptures. The big thing we saw there was the hall with the casts of the scenes of Trajan's Column. Apparently this is never open to the public and Emilio told us to take as many pictures as possible because it might not open again. So i did. I took a billion. Then the last exhibit was a huge model of what the city looked like in the olden days of rome. That must [View Full Entry]

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Well sort of. more or less. This morning, Sarah, Keri and I walked up to St. Peter's Square because we heard that the vatican museums are free on the last sunday of the month. BUT everyone else in the world has heard that too adn there were tons of people there. But we got up to the square and worked our way up as close as we could and we heard the pope talking and saw his face on the big screens. But i'm pretty sure that it was just a satellite feed from somewhere else. Its still cool though. Then [View Full Entry]

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So yesterday we went to Ostia for class with Davide. The four of us girls had already been to Ostia, but the beach we went to is a lot farther out than the ruins of the city we went to. We took the train there which was kind of gross, but the city was really nice. The weather was nice for once and it had beautiful scenery there. it was a lot longer than i had anticipated though, or i would have brought a lunch with me. The whole place smelled like mint because there's a lot of mint that grows [View Full Entry]

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yesterday we went to pompeii. we got up very very early and left at about 7 am. keri and i were planningn on getting some coffe and croissants on the way to school, but aparently nothing in rome is open before like 8 or 9 in the morning. this is crazy to me. but we got a nice bus for the ride there and the scenery on the way there was gorgeous-lots of mountains and hilltop towns. pompeii was really interesting, but it was also very very hot that day, so we were all melting by the end. they actually had [View Full Entry]

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ahhhhhhh! i am soooo hot right now. and sooo sunburned. my feet are falling off of my ankles and i am very tired. I've been walking around rome since 8:00 this morning. (its 5 right now). so what is that? like 9 hours walking around in the very hot sun. ouch. I dont even remember anything that davide and francesco told us. i couldnt concentrate on anything but the agonizing heat and tiredness. This morning we woke up and went to the Capitoline museum, the one with the marcus aurelius statue in the middle of the piazza. Then davide took us [View Full Entry]

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I just went to an Italian high mass at St. Andrew of the Valley with the Quinns. I was so confused. Even though I've been catholic all my life, I still had a difficult time figuring out what was really going on. The priest was newly ordained and this was his very first mass. That was pretty interesting. I felt nervous for him. I bet Megan and Keri were even more confused than me since they've never been to a Catholic mass at all. That church made me miss the cushioned pews and kneelers at St. Jude's. I think my knees [View Full Entry]

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I think it rains every day here. but its like florida rain. it rains for a little bit then clears up and then rains and clears up. i only got stuck in the rain once walking home from school without my umbrella. now i carry it everywhere. Anyway, we were supposed to go on a tour of the Colosseum but Keri and i walked over there in the rain and when we showed up, Davide told us that the Colosseum was closed for "technical reasons" and he didnt want to make us tour the Palatine Hill in the rain so we're [View Full Entry]

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We've been in Rome now for 5 days but it feels like we've been here a month because we've done and seen so much. I love our apartment. It's so cute and close to everything, but the road that its on is still very quiet and nice. We did have a flood though our first night, because aparently, the air conditioner drains into this can on the floor that we didnt know to empty. so we woke up the next morning with a pond under the bed. unfortunately for keri, she had put all of her luggage under there, so everything [View Full Entry]

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So I have 10 days until I leave for Rome. I'm getting really nervous about it because it feels like I still have so much to get done before I leave. Hopefully everything will get done because I know I will put it all off until the very last days. One of my friends was studying in Germany this summer and hearing about all the stuff he did made me really excited about going. I'm just afraid I'm going to go crazy first. [View Full Entry]

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