ROMA days 32-42

Sorry I’m absolutely terrible at updating this blog but here’s the rundown with the highlights from the past 10 days.

Wednesday-Thursday: these were just normal class days. Nothing really special went on here to be honest. Just plain old classes.

Friday Alex and I we didn’t have class for the first Friday since we had been in Rome. Alex and I decided to take this as a chance to go to Verona and Bologna. Verona was so beautiful. We went to Juliet’s house and took turns taking our picture on Juliet’s balcony. It was so much fun. We stopped and got some pizza at a little café before we did some window shopping down the shopping street. We ended up taking an earlier train to Bologna that we expected so we got the chance to see a church there that has been unfinished for over 300 years! It was so cool. We also took this chance to see if we could find the University of Bologna. We ended up finding it and I was not really impressed with it to be honest. We had a nice sit down dinner off of the main piazza because Bologna is famous for their food. I had tortelloni and Alex had lasagna. They were both fantastic and the workers there were fantastic! It was all in all a fantastic day

Saturday we had a trip to Palastrina and Tivoli. This involves going to a museum that was a house and then getting some lunch to go before we had one of the highlights of my trip so far. You know the part in the Lizzie McGuire Movie where she goes to the gardens with Paolo well you guessed it WE WENT THERE! It was so fantastic! I felt like I was Lizzie and it was amazing. All of the girls were having a field day with it and I think even the 3 guys had fun there. After that we went to the sanctuary of Fortuna Premigeria. This had been transformed into a museum but there were still many of the main parts of the shrine present like a well. Professor DeSena told us that when you came to the shrine you would confront a priest with a question and in order to answer it they would lower a young boy into the well and when he was at the bottom he would grab a wood tablet with an answer on it. They would then bring the boy back up and the priest would answer the question according to what the tablet said. When the question was answered they would when send the boy back down the well to put the tablet back. He followed up telling us this with turning to one of the guys in my tour group and asked if he was ready to go down in the well. It had to be one of the funniest things I had ever seen. The professor did a fantastic job with making jokes with the group. He was fantastic.

Sunday my roommate Caitlin and I spent some time together. We got up and got so lunch together then walked back to our room. The walk there and back was full of wonderful conversation about our lives in general. It was a great time to get to know her. After lunch we got to studying for out anthropology midterm hardcore. We were both so worried about it and we worked our tails off studying. We went to mass together that night and got some food to go on our way back to our room. I finished off the day with a wonderful skype date with my family. That is the highlight of my Sundays. I love the weekly skype dates I have with my family. We usually talk for around an hour and a half and I get the chance to talk to both of my parents, my sister Madeleine, and if I’m luck my brothers Jon and Thomas. That is always a great time.

Monday I had my anthropology midterm but before we get there I got my philosophy midterm back and I got an A- on it! I was so proud of myself. Well the anthro midterm wasn’t as bad as it could have been. I mean it was hard but I feel pretty confident about it right now. I also finished up and printed out my notes for my two presentations I had while I was going to be in Southern Italy. That night I went to a vigil mass for the Holy Day, All Saints Day, with my friend Jenni and we got some dinner after. This was followed by a much needed gelato date with my roommate Caitlin and Jenni to de-stress about the anthro midterm. It was a good time. When Caitlin and I got back to our room we packed with Alex and Lindsey for the next 5 days. These days were going to be spent in Southern Italy. Caitlin and I had a huge laugh attach and we went to bed. Waking up at 6 the next morning was going to be rough…

Tuesday we got up at 6 to start our journey to southern Italy. The main event for Tuesday was going to Pompeii, and my first of 2 presentations. Pompeii was amazing! I had always wanted to go there so I guess it was a plus that we got to go there. The only thing that made it better was the fact that we had my favorite professor for the tour: Dr. Hansen. She is amazing! I have never wanted to be so much like someone in my life. And I’m not the only one; everyone in the class feels the same. She is just so cool. She makes anything interesting whit her sayings. For example you could be looking at just a simple portical hallway (columned hallway with a roof) and all she has to do is call that portical “dead sexy” and it’s that much better. My presentation went really well and Dr. Hansen was really pleased with it. That made me feel really great about it. After seeing all of Pompeii we piled in the bus to go to Naples where our hotel was. We would not know our roommates there until we got there and they knew how many of each room there was. I ended up rooming with 2 girls, Allie and Grace, who I didn’t know really well but I was really excited. They were both really sweet. We got dinner with 3 other girls and it was a fantastic pizza! Then everyone who we got dinner with went back to our room to just talk for a while. It was a great chance to get to know some of the girls better. By the end of the night I felt like I knew Allie and Grace for years.

Wednesday we were supposed to go to the Naples Archaeological Museum but it turns out it was closed for the day. So we went on to what we were going to do in the afternoon. We drove about an hour and a half to Cuma which is where the Aneid takes place. I have never read it but the students in the mythology class did and some of then gave presentations about the story. This was ok. I wasn’t really into hearing about mythology because I don’t really like it but it was a cool place. We took tons of pictures when we got up to the top because the view was amazing. When we were done at Cuma we went back to Naples via the Santa Lucia waterfront and had our free afternoon we were going to have on Friday. That was fun. I went with some friends into an old castle right on the water’s edge. The best part of it was the face that it was free. I then went with some friends to find the way to the train station then back to our hotel. Why did we find the train station you may ask? Well that is because Grace had to take a train back to Rome because on Thursday morning she was going to fly from Rome back to the states for her brother’s wedding. She was a little stressed out about traveling by herself but I told her if I could do it she could do it. And I think that helped her some. Once we dropped her off at the train station we went to the fruit stand across the street and bought some fruit and then to the grocery store down the street from the hotel to get some bread and nutella. We then went back to our room and had a feast of bread, nutella, and grapes. It was so good. And not to mention how cheap it was. We then had another fantastic chat. These nightly chats were probably the highlights of my nights in Naples.

Thursday we had the most beautiful drive of my life. We drove the entire Amalfi coast with one stop for about an hour and a half for lunch. This drive was so beautiful. I’m pretty sure I took about a hundred pictures of it because of its beauty. It was amazing our bus made it through all of the twists and turns of the coast. After we drove the entire Amalfi coast we went to Paestum. Paestum was pretty cool. It had a lot of ruins from temples and houses and anything else you could think of. After we walked the ruins we went to the museum that was by the ruins. The museum wasn’t really interesting but it has some cool parts. After the museum we got back on the bus. When we got back to Naples it was time for dinner and Caitlin and I decided to go eith some other frineds to the pizza place where they filmed a scene from the movie Eat. Pray. Love. We were so excited and it was a lot of fun once we found it and in the same fashion as Julia Roberts we ate a whole pizza each. It was fantastic! After dinner we went back to the hotel and I got back to my room in time for our nightly chat.

Friday was our big museum day. We started off by going to the Naples Archaeological Museum where I gave my second presentation. It went a lot better than I thought it would but I’m not completely sure how well it went. After we finished in the museum we had about 2 and a half hours of free time. This made me and a few other girls mad. We had packed a lunch and it was on the bus which we couldn’t get on the bus to get our food so we sat in the museum for some of it and walked down the street for a while before we just sat on the steps outside of the museum and waited to get on the bus. After that we went to the next museum. This was the Capodimonte Museum. This was a house that was converted into a museum. It was really pretty cool. It had a ton of paintings in it and when you got onto the first floor it had some of the rooms still set up how they would have been back when there were people still living in the house. After we finished there we went back to our hotel and I had another fantastic dinner on bread and nutella and fruit with some of the girls. We then had the longest chat we had had all week. It was such a fantastic time. I love the life chats I had with these girls because it makes me feel so much closer to them. It was just a great time and way better that being on the sketchy streets of Naples.

Saturday we were supposed to go to Capri but when we got to the port we found out that there was a huge storm on the way to Naples and they were not allowing any boats out of the port for the entire day. I was a little bummed that we weren’t going to get to go to Capri but on the other hand we got to go back to Rome right then. We got back to Rome by 10:30 and spent the entire day in out room back at Rome. It was a great time to relax before the next week. Now time to work on my paper that’s due on Thursday and to study for my Art History misterm on Wednesday. 

Ciao bella!!