I'm king of the world!

So through school we get to go on sweet adventures for free, like the gelato crawl.  This week was climbing to the top of the dome of St. Peter's Basilica. 

The Vatican has some pretty strick dress codes.  Basically don't be a ho and conver you shoulders and knees.  But some people didn't quite understand this.  I'm talking to you, girl with the Daisy Duke booty shorts.  No wonder you couldn't get in with our a makeshift sarong. 

There are two options for getting to the top, 720 stairs or and elevator and 300 stairs.  We opted for the lift.  But since our chaperone dude bought all our tickets, we didn't have individual one and crabby Italian man wouldn't let us up until Andrea (Ahn-drey-ah) came and persuaded him that we weren't trying to rip off the Vatican and we all did pay for tickets. 

We packed into the elevator and got our on the roof of the basilica.  Such a beautiful view even from there.  We started our climb.  The staircases are really narrow and barely big enough for me to fit through.  I can't imagine what it was like for a couple of the guys on my trip that are linebacker-sized.  When you get closer to the top, the halways slant becasue you're actually in the dome (it's built with two shells, one inside the other). 

When we got out on the top it was amazing.  You literally had a 360 degree, arial view of the city.  I forgot how big Rome is, but it reaches all the way to the mountains.  We went up at around 6ish so the sunset was just beginning when we were up there and that made the view even better.  It was packed though!  So many people trying to get close to the edge and look out.  I was pretty nervous that my precious camera was going to fall over the edge as I was taking some shots so I had that thing wrapped, double wrapped, and triple wraped around my wrist. 

We had to come down becasue the dome closes at night, but even being on the roof of the basilica was amazing. 

We ended the night with a "Girls Night" with our director's daughter, eating stuffed peppers and playing some highly entertaining games of MASH.  I forgot how fun that is :)  Mental note roommies, MASH will be a recurring phenomena when I come back. 

Grapes and Graves and Geeks, Oh My!

So this weekend a whole bunch of people we planning on jetting off to other Italian locales, but  I looked at my calendar and saw that this weekend was essentially our last free weekend in Rome and I thought to myself, “Rachel, you’re study abroad in Rome, don’t you think you should spend some time IN ROME?”  Why yes self, I should.  So this weekend I stay pretty near the city and checked some stuff odd my Rick Steves list of must sees. 

On Friday, a couple of people piggybacked on another trip through school to a vineyard about an hour outside Rome.  We got there and hike through the field and then stopped at a row of vines and the owner handed us some sheers and said we could snip away. 

Here’s the professional grape harvesting technique: You have to hold on to the bottom of the bunch and then snip the stem.  This ensures that the grapes don’t fall on the ground and get lost or gross. 

A professional grape-picker will harvest about 24 extra big milk crates in an 8 hour shift.  The 25 of us got about 20 done in an hour.  I thought that was impressive, but we we’re still working under speed. 

After the harvesting bit, we learned about how wine was made and saw all the equipment.  I learned that the production difference between red and white wine was that red wine grapes are crushed with the skins on and the white wine grapes aren’t.  That’ll earn you $200 on Jeopardy. 

After that, we headed down to the restaurant that this guy sells his wine to for lunch.  It was sooooo fancy!  We’re talking 50euros a head fancy.  And here were 25 sweaty, stinky, dirty, and underdressed Americans walking in.  Needless to say, they stuck us in the basement.  Some may say that it was because there were so many of us, but I know the truth. 

They served us lots of really good bread.  I ate 6 pieces.  Our appetizer was this modified Caprese salad with the best pesto I have ever tasted and this spicy cheese spread and seasoned tomatoes.  It was delish.  Then they served us Veal with this pureed vegetable cake that tasted like squash, bust was completely green, so I was very confused.  And since we had spent the entire morning harvesting wine, they served us some of that too.  And not just a taste that you’re supposed to spit out, but 4 big glasses.  By the end of that meal, everyone was feeling a little tipsy.  Side note: this meal began at 1:30 and we finished at 4.  That’s Italian time for ya!

We we’re all so stuffed that we went to this little medieval village about 20 minutes away and walked the meal off.  Then we piled back into the bus and headed home.  Now, I was sitting next to my director’s 11 year old daughter.  I’m feeling a little loopy from the wine and we’re driving over uneven cobblestone so I’m getting car-sick.  I spent the majority of the ride back focusing on maintaining my composure until my stomach settled and the wine wore off all the while trying to keep up on our conversation about Glee and classic rock.  

The next day, my roommate Molly, Michele and I decided to go to the Catacombs of St. Sebastino and have a tour.  Since our usual Mama Duck was in Venice this weekend, I took the charge and found directions (all of which worked!) and we hopped a bus to get to the very outer limits of the city where the catacombs are.  It took us a good hour and a half to get there.  Our history professor Jan (pronounced “Yawn”, he’s a very tall, angry Belgian who walks faster than the Flash) would have been so proud that we knew that the burial grounds had to be located outside of the city walls (Paestum if we’re getting fancy) for sanitation reasons as well as that there wasn’t enough space within the city. 

We bought our tickets for the English tour and scoped out the museum, gift shop, and chapel before our guide rounded us up. 

I was geeking out.  Hard core geeking out.  Combine my love of historic things with my love of spooky things and you get a giddy out of control Rachel that was half way between a 4-year old after an espresso and my roommates when watching The Orphan.  Plus our guide looked a little like a vampire and spoke with a accent that I convinced myself was Transylvanian. 

But actually the catacombs are holy ground.  They were respected even when Christianity was illegal in Rome.  Apparently the 40-somehtings in our group missed that memo.  Us 3 20-somethings were the most respectful people there.  The other (all couples) were getting way too handsy for a holy space.  And really lady, a mini dress? A grey leopard-print mini dress? Not to go all Stacy London on you, but come on. 

After we left the catacombs, we had to ride around on the bus for another hour and a half (the story of my life) and then Molly and I wanted to find the sculpture St. Theresa in Ecstasy, so we went in search of that. 

I brought Angels and Demons on the trip because it’s set in Rome and I thought it would be fun to read in Rome.  It was.  Dan Brown sucked me in and I finished that book in less than a week.  Then Molly stole it and finished in under 10 days.  So now we are on a quest to find all of the markers on the path of Illumination.  We checked off the 4 Rivers fountain during our first week here and the West Wind plate and the Vatican on Monday, so all we had left were the markers for Fire and Earth. 

It was pretty darn sweet.  I can totally see why it was a little to risqué for the church (they had it moved to Santa Maria della Vitoria because they were so uncomfortable with it).  But it was cool to see none the less. 

After that we wandered home, but stopped at a little bakery that had a whole bunch of cookies.  Apparently I’ve been getting a little homesick because I started crying in the bakery because it smelt like Christmas cookies.  So Mom, you’ll be getting an email about the cookies I just want to eat and the one I want to help make. 

Even though I didn’t do anything particularly exhausting, I fell asleep at 9pm, while reading, with all the lights on.  And I missed my roommates going on a late night gelato run.  I must be half lemur. 

Ole, Ole, Ole, Ole!

So Europe is another culture.  Shocking, I know.  But I hadn’t fully comprehended that this would apply to sports.  That means no Twins all soccer, or futbol.  In order to fully immerse ourselves, and have a real good time, a bunch of us decided to get tickets to the AS Roma futbol game vs. Bologna last Sunday. 

Now, I was raised on baseball and curling.  I have some knowledge of futbol thanks to being coerced into watching the World Cup this summer (just kidding Ev), but other than knowing some lingo, I’m out of the loop.  But the people here live and breathe futbol.  They are hardcore!  They have jerseys that cost 100euro (mine cost 10), know half a dozen fight songs and all of the information about every player down to what kind of cereal he eats in the morning.  I was quite out of my league to say the least. 

One thing about futbol tickets is that the seat assignments are more of a suggestion and if you actually want to sit in your assigned seat, you better be at the game at least 2 hours ahead of time.  We tried, but considering that it took us almost 2 hours to get to the stadium, that didn’t really happen.  We were lucky enough to find a row of seats that hadn’t been taken yet (probably because there were some very scary looking Italian men on either side) and persuaded them that we were actually cheering for Roma and weren’t some filthy Americans trying to infiltrate their sport.  Problem was that there were still too many butts for the number of chairs, but everyone stands during the game so we just squished in. 

The game started right on time.  None of this “it’s says they’ll start at 3, but really it’s more like 3:15” business.  And AS Roma scored at minute 7.  Then all hell broke loose. 

Now, we’re standing on top of the chairs which are like rollercoaster seats, preformed plastic with little backs.  As soon as the ball went in the net the guys in front of us start thrashing around like fish in the bottom of a boat.  It was 10 times worse than the most epic mosh-pit I’ve ever been in.  There are limbs flying everywhere and I’m hanging on for dear life to anything that looks stable.  The girl next to me gets thrown backwards by some dude and ends up in the row behind us.  She about took me with her, but the guy behind me grabbed my arm and held me up.  All this went down within about 15 seconds and continued for a good 3 minutes.  I ducked for cover, feet firmly planted on the concrete. 

Unfortunately the rest of the game was a little boring, right up until the last 15 minutes when Bologna scored twice to tie.  It was just to be there.  One dude would start singing some song and all of a sudden there would be 300 people singing with him.  Pretty cool.  There were a lot of flags too that people had brought in.  It was also fun just to people watch.  We were in the hardcore fan section, but there were people ranging from us American college kids to a couple of grandparents jumping and screaming right along with the rest of us.  One more thing about Italian culture, security id very light and it is possible to sneak lots of things into a futbol stadium, like pot for instance.  There were no less than 4 people lighting up within a row of us.  One can only hold her breath for so long and all of us were felling a little dizzy from the secondhand smoke.   

If we thought the treck to get there was rough, the one to get home was even worse.  Almost 3 hours from start to finish ending with a marathon bus ride with a whole bunch of wet (it started to rain), smelly, soccer fans on a packed bus.  We were all so hungry, tired, and gross afterward that all we wanted to do was shower and stuff our faces.  This was the version of me my parents got to Skype with :)

The Motherland

So this weekend was our first programmed excursion to Subiaco, the CSB|SJU/Benedictine motherland.  Friday was spend running around town and doing homework so it was nice to just hop on a bus and leave for the day.  We met at school at 8:30 and hopped on the most massive coach bus I have ever seen.  This thing was literally the size of a double decker bus, but there was only one level.  Huge I tell you.  And apparently, side note, all of the busses in Rome cost the same and are all giant-sized.  Not the yellow school busses I‘m used to for field trips.  But anyway, we made the drive to Subiaco which was only supposed to take 1 hour, but the driver didn’t speak English so it was really hard for Elaine, our director, to give him the directions so we got lost.  Let me rephrase, we got lost on tiny, twisty, roads built for medieval modes of transportation.  And we’re trecking up the side of a mountain in a bus built for Andre the giant.  We end up having to back up (in the bus) and take different turns 3 times in our quest to get to this monastery, but we finally made it to the top.  From there it was a good 5 minute walk up a path with an incline of at least 35 degrees before we actually got to the site itself. 

Now, on a historical note, Subiaco is important to us Benedictine kids because it’s where St. Benedict went when he left Rome (because it was falling) and lived in a cave for 3 years before leaving his cave of wonders to found 12 monasteries in the area.  The monastery that’s there now is pretty much the original.  There hasn’t been a whole lot of modernization or even preservation done to it.  And the building itself is built directly into the cliff face and uses some of the cliff walls to for structural support. 

In this tiny little building there are 2 churches that are on top of the actual cave where St. Ben lived.  The frescos on the ceiling and walls are incredible.  Most are from the 12^th through the 15^th centuries (to put this in perspective that’s at least 300 years older than America) and in impeccable condition for their age.  They aren’t even roped off!  There is some pretty humorous graffiti on them, though.  Including an inscription made by a Pope.  And all the floors are made from marble taken from Nero’s villa that used to stand in the area.  So cool.  I’m history geekin’ out. 

During our few hours at Subiaco, we talked with Father Luigi who was fascinated, as were we, by the difference in lifestyle between himself and the monks of St. John’s.  The work of the monks of St. Ben’s is hospitality.  There calling is to welcome people to the top of this mount and share the history of the place.  Some keep bees, garden, farm, or something like that.  Fr. Luigi was just floored to hear that the OSBs of SJU pretty much all have Ph.D.s, teach rigorous class schedules, have the internet, and walk around in plain clothes (that’s another thing, the ecclesiastics in Italy still dress as if it’s pre-Vatican II). 

We got the full tour by an SJU grad serving with the Benedictine Volunteer Corps and then headed down the mountain for lunch at the sister monastery, St. Scholastica.  THIS LUNCH WAS AMAZING.  Enough said.  But truly we had a bruschetta appetizer followed by incredibly pasta with pesto and tomato sauce and then potatoes and honey glazed pork and dessert.  Yummmmm.  It was so good to eat good meat and potatoes.  That’s one thing about Rome, meat is quite expensive so I haven’t been eating much of it in my apartment. After we had all digested a little, we toured the monastery at St. Scholastic and then hopped the bus back to Rome.  We were all in massive food comas so no one really talked on the way back and I passed out hard core and my legs fell asleep.  And with my contacts out of whack and no feeling in my bottom limbs, I stumble back to my apartment and promptly fell asleep.  So much for life in the eternal city. 

The Love of my Life

How do I love thee?  Let me count the ways. 

1. You are sweet.

2. You make me happy.

3. You comfort me when I am blue.

4. I’ll never get sick of you.

5. You’re a cheap date.  I like it.

6. You just show up when I don’t expect it and brighten my day. 

There are a million more, but I’ll just say it.  Gelato, I love you.

Thursday was quite possible the best school-sponsored activity I have ever experienced.  A gelato crawl.  We hit two gelato stands and a Italian coffee shop in our march around the city.  And the best part?  Completely free.  Or “included” as my mother would say. 

The first place we went to had 125 choices.  125!  We were all completely overwhelmed!  I wanted to eat them all.  Just sit there and eat till I puked and then eat some more.  I ended up getting a 3 scoop dish with coconut, banana, and chocolate gelato.  Pretty darn good.  The only weird thing was that You could feel the texture of the fruit in the gelato and the mushy banana was weird with the flaky coconut, but I won’t complain.  It’s called Della Palma if anyone wants to fly over and try it out.

From there we went to Obama’s fave place and it is literally the best gelato I have had or, I’m convinced, will ever have in my life.  I got dark chocolate and pistachio gelato on a chocolate dipped cone.  Yummmm.  The waiters were a little crabby, but hey, they control the gelato so I’ll put up with it. 

We had to walk around for a good half hour to get rid of the disgustingly full feeling, but it was totally worth it.  We’re all still gushing over that gelato.  So much so that we’ll be heading out in approximately 2 hours to get some more.   I wonder what kind I’ll get this time?

UPDATE:  dark chocolate and pistachio gelato is definitely the best combination ever. 

North Shore Weekend

So this weekend was one of the only ones during our time in Rome that doesn’t have any planned excursions, meaning it’s one of the few chances to explore a little around Italy. A bunch of people on the trip, myself included, wanted to go up to Cinque Terre (chink-way – tear-ay) in the northern part of Italy. After a little bit of difficulty with group dynamics and planning, we got hotel reservations and train tickets to head out early Friday morning. Now that plan sounds all fine and good except that the Vikings opener was Thursday evening MN time which means the game didn’t start until 2:30 am Rome time. Being the hard-core footballer that I am, I went to Scholar’s, an Irish pub in Rome, with a bunch of other Roman-Grecoers and watched part of the game until the bar closed and we had to leave. That means Rachel didn’t get back to her apartment until 4am and then had to get up at 8 am to catch a bus to catch the train.


After an impromptu, but totally worth it, Skype conversation with best buddy and fellow Bennie Kara, I ended up being late out the door, forgetting my sunglasses on my bed and not being able to eat before leaving. Now, my dad will tell you that sleep deprivation, hunger, and stress is a lethal combination when you’re talking about me, so the first few hours were a little touch and go as far as politeness is concerned. But really, I couldn’t hold back when we stopped to get espresso when we didn’t actually have our train tickets yet and our train was leaving in under an hour on a platform we didn’t know how to get to. C’mon.

Once we did get on the train, things were much smoother sailing and I could rest a little, but not sleep unfortunately. We decided to stop in Pisa since it was on the way, but since the train we were on was not a direct train, we had to stop multiple times along the way and ended up not getting to Pisa until 2:15 when our next train left at 3:36. So we had precisely 81 minutes in Pisa to run to the tower, take pictures, and run back and it’s a good 25 walk to get there. Needless to say, we were rushed, but it was totally worth the stop to see the tower. Pisa is beautiful by the way. Lots of little colorful houses all squished together.

We finally did get back on the train and rode for another hour and a half to La Spezia. From there it was a 15 minute ride on a regional train to get to Monterosso, the 5th of five towns in Cinque Terre. A couple of the people I was traveling with decided to get off at Rio Maggiore, the 1st of five towns, and hike the whole way back, but I was still tired and decided I’d rather see the town a little and explore and then do the hike the next day.

We checked into our little hotel called Hotel Souvenir which was completely adorable and only 25 euro a night! We all crashed for a good hour before going out to find a good place to eat dinner. We ate at a place called da Andrea. I ate spaghetti. A boring choice I know, but I hadn’t had any yet! Molly and Kyle had sea bass stuffed ravioli in a seafood sauce with calamari and octopi! I tried a bit and it was delish!

We were wandering around looking for a good place to eat gelato and ran into the night-hikers. They went off to eat dinner while we got gelato and then we met back at the hotel, but the reservation desk had already closed for the night so we ended up squeezing 6 people into a 3 person room. It wasn’t actually that bad since we had a king size bed and a set of bunk beds, but Steve and Ryan ended up cuddling on the bottom bunk. Note for future reference: when guys ask to crash at your place ALWAYS ask if they snore. We ended up with three snorers. One sounded like and angry cat (grrr, grrr, grrr), another like a balloon letting out air (wheeeeeezzeeee), and the third was just a loud breather (heeee hoooo). They fell asleep instantly while us three girls laid awake giggling at first and then growing more and more irritated as we couldn’t fall asleep. We finally did fall asleep around 1am only to be woken around 5 by a rooster. I kid you not, a rooster. And then about two hours later our very loud neighbors woke up and decided that yelling was the only volume at which to speak.

We checked out early that morning and then got breakfast at a little place down the way and headed off to the beach. The sand there was so different! It was flat and sparkly like glitter, but there were some big rocks in there too. I dug a pretty big hole and swam around some too. There was a little outlet of spring water from the mountains that ran into the sea and it was freezing! But the sea itself was pretty warm.

After the beach we took a regional train down to Vernazza the 4th town and ate lunch. Sienna, Mikala, Ryan and Steve ate at this place that was a lot like where I had eaten dinner the night before and it was a little spendy so Dan and I headed out in search of some pizza and found a little place. I had Margherita pizza and this little pastry thing that was covered in sugar with melted chocolate on top. It was fantastic! I’m still thinking about that little ball of deliciousness…..

I explored the harbor a little bit. It’s like Artists Point on crack! So beautiful! And then you turn around a look up and there are all these little colored buildings going all the way up the mountain. From there we hopped another train to Cornelia and then hiked all the way back to Rio Maggiore from there. It was a pretty smooth hike and not very many hills.

We stopped to swim a couple of times. At the first place we walked down to the water and then climbed up on this rock that looked like the one Ariel sings on in Little Mermaid (Ellen!). We jumped off a couple of times and saw a dead jelly fish. Then we walked further down and found another place to swim and jumped off some more rocks.

By the time we got back to Rio Maggiore, we had missed the train to La Spezia by 2 minutes and had to wait another 50 before the next one came along. At La Spezia, the ticket office guy told us that if we took the same train back to Pisa as we had before, there was no guarantee that we would get back to Rome that night, so we had to shell out 46 euro for a fast train ticket that had a lot fewer stops. We were all pretty depressed at the cost so we drowned our feelings in Big Macs.

We got into Rome at midnight. The last metro train runs at 11:30 and the last regular bus leaves at 12:00 sharp. Apparently barely missing transportation was the theme of the day. So we had to navigate the night busses back to our apartment building and got on the N7. And let me tell you, that driver needed to get somewhere in a hurry! We flew down the roads in the center of Rome and he drove right by the stop we thought we needed and so we just got off at the first one he actually stopped at which happened to be the stop where the N4 picks up and that bus drops us off right at our door.

So we ended up getting in a 1:00 am. I took a much needed shower and crashed in my bed. It’s weird, by getting back to Rome felt like home. But Dan and I agree that after spending the weekend in crisp country air, home smells like a sewer.

This week has lots to look forward too. Lots of site visits for classes and a weekend trip to the Benedictine motherland of Subiaco on Saturday!

Travelers are like Animals

After 21 years of traveling with mainly my family, I have become quite accustomed to their way of traveling.  And as annoying as they may be at times ;) I know how they opperate.  Traveling with new people, some of whom I've only known for 10 days, is quite different, but I have come to the conclusion that regardless of who you travel with, there are four main types of travelers.

We've got the Mama Duck.  Boy or girl, this type of travel companion always needs to keep her ducks in a row.  She's got the plan and everyone else is supposed to follow.  She's made the reservations, read the maps, checked the train schedules and knows where we're going so y'all better keep up.

And if there's a Mama Duck, then there have got to be Baby Ducks.  These chickies follow blindly wherever Mama may go.  They didn't make reservation, check schedules, or even look at a map before heading out the door.  They're just along for the ride.

Then there's the Lone Wolf.  Similar to the Mama Duck in that he/she knows what's up and where to go, but isn't necessarily interested in making sure that others are following and is more inclided to shoot off ahead and let the rest be damned.  This can lead to high stress levels when the Lone Wolf discovers that she is lost in a foreign city and completely alone and also makes the Mama Duck stressed because one of her chicks has flown the coop. 

Then there is the Sloth.  This traveler lags behind, wlkas slowly, takes entirely too many picture of the same rock and is more inclined to complain than any other of the travel animals.  They are the bane of Mama Duck's existance since she is obligated to wait for the Sloth and make sure that he is still within in sight and alive.  But, Sloths are also often the best conversationalists, when they have the energy to talk that is, and are less stressed than both the Mama Duck and the Lone Wolf. 

More insights on travel companion dynamics to come I'm sure, but I thought this analogy was particularly clever so I thought I'd share.  A complete recap of my weekend to come, so stay tuned!

Since this is school...

Since this is STUDY abroad, I thought I should probably do some academically minded posts while I'm here.  One thing that I've been noticing a lot is the different gender structures in Italy.  A couple of guys on our trip have run into a little trouble with this.  If a couple is walking down the street and another guy looks at the girl, her boyfriend/husband will immediately put his arm around her and pull her close and have been know to start fights over it.  There seems to be this need to mark territory when it comes to romantic relationships. There's a general theme of women as possessions here that I haven't encountered so explcitly in the States. 

As a younger lady travelling abroad, I got my fare share of lectures pre-departure about safety abroad thanks to my parents watching the movie "Taken" ealier in the year.  But I'll tell you, the best way to feel safe in this city, I hate to say it, is to travel with a boy.  There is such a dicotomy between how I get treated if I'm say riding the bus with a guy on my trip as opposed to riding with a group of girls.  I'll pretty much get left completely alone by native Italians if there's a guy in the group (even if it's like a 10:1 ratio), but get caught without one and the onslaught of derroggatory language and permiscuous invitations begins. 

Being a rather independent person, this bothers me more than a little because I like my time alone and don't want to be confined to my apartment if there isn't a man to escort me 'round town.  But given the choice between spending the afternoon peacefully on my terrace or getting gawked at and hit-on by Italians who don't understand my polite attempts at evaison and I'll pick the terrace.  Good thing my roommates are up for adventures so I'll never have to go alone. 

I Hate Dirty Feet

So we've been doing A LOT of walking around Rome the past few days.  It's been hard to distinguish between jet lag and just plain tiredness.  Especially because the sun is so strong and that just takes it out of you anyway. 

We went on a walking tour with our Lit professor and couple of nights ago and hit up some of the major sights of downtown Rome including Piazza Navona and the Pantheon.  A couple of my roomates and some of the guys who live in our building decided to head down to the Trevi fountain last night when it was a little cooler and lit up.  So we hopped trusty, but illusive, bus 62 down to the city center and walked a 100m and turned the corner and BOOM there it was!  We took lots of pictures and threw our 1 euro cent coins in to ensure our return trip to Rome. 

The fountain was amazing at night.  I'd been there earlier that day, but seeing it with all the lights was unbelievable.  There were quite a few Americans at the fountain too and we found a nice couple from New York who took our picture as a larger group.  Their son had sutdied aborad and loved it and they were jealous that we get to spend 7 weeks here and really experience the city.  I'm looking forward to all of the things that we get to do too!

I've learned bery quickly, however, that as much as I try to blend in to Italian culture, I'm am instantly identified as an American.  Maybe it's the blond hair, or the decidedly in-Italian features, or my nature sandals, I don't know, but multiple Italian dudes have stopped me at bus stops and asked if I was American and people at the grocery store and at stops immediately begin talking in English when they see me.  It's a little disappointing, mostly because I can't tell the difference between natives and tourists myself, but also because I want to blend in becasue I'll be living here for almost 2 months. 

This morning I woke up at 11:15.  Something about this city makes me sleep till incredibly late hours of the day.  Even though I am a lemur, I don't usually sleep past 10, so this is strange and a little annoying because I have routinely been spending my mornings in Rome asleep.  But we decided as roommates to make the hike out to the coast and go to the beach.  At school this means cathching the link and walking 3 blocks to Lake Sag, but here it entails a bus, the metro, and a train plus about 6 blocks of walking and takes over an hour and a half.  But we made it there around 2:30 and spent time lolling in the water and reading on the beach.  FYI, there are a lot or big, pointy rocks in the sea here.  I didn't know that and went running in only to trip on them and come crashing down.  Now I've got a lovely scrape on my leg and maybe a scar to remember this day by for the rest of my life. 

We walked and read and played around in the water.  It wasn't as salty as I remember the Pacific Ocean being, but I could definitely taste the salt on my lips and see it on my skin.  It dried out my hair to the point that it felt like Barbie's, but it was definitely worth it.  I found some shells in the sand as I was digging around and grabbed a worry rock to bring back home for my grandma. 

We stopped for gellatto on the way back and let me tell you, it was delish!  My first gellatto experience of the trip :)  I got choclate and it tasted like frozen brownie batter.  Mmmmmmm!  There were a lot of other flavors that I want to try next like banana, pistachio, and peach.  I'm even dedicating a page in my visual journal just to gellatto and documenting all of the different flavors that I eat and places that I get them. 

We were all exhausted on the way home and opted to take as many forms of transport as possible to avoid any more walking.  Everything ranging from metros and trains to elevators and escalators.  It was a great way to spend my last official day of summer as classes start tomorrow, but hopefully the weather will hold out and we'll be able to come back within the next couple of weeks. 

As I said, classes begin this week and I've got History, Art History, Literature and Abroad Seminar, so it should be enought to keep me busy especially when we've got field trips outside of class too.  This weekend, a group of us are headed off to Cinque Terre in the northern part of Italy.  It's a group of towns built into the cliff sides overlooking the water and looks incredible!  Lots of hiking trails to enjoy :)

Ok, so the title of this post is "I Hate Dirty Feet" and as I have previously said, I'm the queen of sweaty palms and apparently that extends to my feet as well.  Somehow my feet attract all of the fith of Roman streets and trap them in my shoes to make this disgusting goop.  I hate it.  I've had to stop at multiple places, including restaurant bathrooms, just to wash my feet because I can't stand it anymore.  Yuck.  I cringe just thinking of it.  Hopefully this problem will resolve itself when the weather cools because I don't think I can put up with this for 3 months!

So this is why people move here

Marble floors, 12 foot tall celings, bedrooms the size of small garages, wrap around terraces that overlook the city.....sounds like the good life, right?  Yes.  Definitely not student housing, right?  Wrong!  It's my apartement in Rome!  Plus we're one block from the grocery store, the bus picks up right outside our door, and we can walk to school every day.  Incredible. 

Plus, the view from my window is absolutely spectacular! 

We've been spending a lot of time out on our terrace too, playing cards and enjoying the weather.  We even made our own "beach" on Saturday. 

We've got two bathrooms too which is great when you have 7 girls living together. 

The windows are my favorite part of this apartment, they're so tall and we have views on both sides and at least one window in each room.  And none of the windows have screens!  It's just open air all the time.  Hopefully no birds decide to invade our apartment!

Stay tuned for adventures from the Trevi Fountain, Piazza Novana, and the beach! 

Thoughts on International Travel

So yesterday I made my way to Rome to begin my study abroad adventure. My parents dropped me off at MSP for my 11am flight to Chicago. There was surprising less anxiety on my part than I had anticipated, which, coming from the queen of sweaty hands, is saying something. I even avoided crying at the airport, save for one moment of blubbering in line ar security which I stealthfully hid from most everyone except for a little baby who kept staring at me.


The flight to Chicago went well, a quick 55 minutes. But one piece of advice to you travelers out there, a wooden rocking horse does not count as carry-on luggage. It's true. Some lady brought a full on rocking horse on the plane for her granddaughter to play with. Next time, pony up the $50 and check it.

From Chicago, my travel buddy and I quick bought some pizza and then ran to our gate expecting to have some time to eat since our flight wasn't due to leave for 45 minutes, but they were already boarding so we scarfed an entire personal pizza each and took what we couldn't shove in our mouths on the plane. And this was one of the sweetest planes ever! Especially if you were sitting first class. Seats leaned all the way back and there were personal flat screen TVs and blankets and pillows. Livin the sweet life. My seat was pretty good too. Accidentally being bumped to Preferred Economy got me an extra 2 inches of leg room.

A side note about travel fashion. Wearing 6 inch, platform heels to the airport is probably not the best idea. neither is wearing a skirt that will get you arrested in 48 states. If you really have to be somewhere right after you deplane where that is the proper attire, then please throw on some flats and pants, sitck your Lady Gaga shoes in your humongo purse and get on the plane. Waiting for some girl to teeter her way down the tarmack at the speed of mollasses is not pleasant for all of the stressed and tired travelers flying with you. Rant ended.

From Dulles in Washington DC, we hopped our direct flight to Rome. Flying time was only 8 hours. i love flying and how easy it makes it to bop from one place to the other, but considering my flight time to another continent was only and hour longer than it took my dad and I to drive to the cabin two weeks ago, it makes it hard for me to realize that I'm actually in Italy.

When we finally did get to Rome, we decided to take a shuttle bus to the the main metro station, Termini, and then hop at train from there to near our apartment. Doing it this way saved a bit of cash and earned us some major points in the hard-core category. Our bus driver obviously hated his job as her was kind of crabby. He then proceeded to text the enitre 40 minute drive and dirve like a mad man. The driving style I don't think can be attributed to his demeanor, however, because Romans all drive like mad. He did manage to almost run over a man in a wheel-chair, though. We did get to drive by a whole bunch of ruins and the Colloseum, so that was worth my 15euros.

After our interesting bus ride, we got into the Metro and the right line and the right train. Thanks Mom and Dad for taking us to WDC this summer becasue I figured out the Metro map and the ticket machines in a snap. Ticket were also only 1euro, which was great. We took the B line train to Rebbibbia and got off at Policlinico. Our metro cars were pretty empty so I didn't have to be super high alert about people atealing my stuff. When we got out, the station we were at wan't equipped with elevators and all of the escalators were running donwards, so we had to ahul all of our luggage up literally 7 flights of stairs to leave. I had my hiking pack on my back, my school backpack on my fron (yes, I was that kid) and a rolly suitcase behind me while Mikala had two rolly suitcases and a backpack to haul herself. We were soooo sweaty after hiking all that way and we had to take multiple breaks on the way to catch our breath.

Finally when we got to the surface, we weren't sure what way we had to turn, so we had to locate someone who spoke English to ask directions, which was surprisingly easy. From there it was only a couple of blocks to our apartment and wo both jumped with joy when we saw that we had elevators. Well, it was really more of a hop, we were really tired.

More to come about this FANTASTIC apartment, but now it's back to orientation!