Rome Weekend

This past week I’ve been doing pretty poorly. My cold has turned into a sinus infection, and I’ve been sleeping during most of the day and night. Friday I had a class fieldtrip to Rome. My Early Christianity class was going to look at some churches from the 4^th C – which is the time right after Christianity became legalized (313ad). Our class has about twenty-five kids in it, and our teacher, Alessandro. My friend Becky nicknamed him Indiana Jones; if you saw him you would understand why. So we had to be at the bus station at 7:30am Friday morning to get on this chartered bus taking us to Rome. So, being in Italy, the bus didn’t arrive until around 7:45am, and we hopped on. I slept for most of the trip. Oh, I also realized it was time to switch out my contacts. Bad idea since my stash of contacts for the next 2 months are wrong, and everything is blurry. Great. But we got to Rome around 10am and spent the day walking around looking at 4 different churches – including Saint John’s the cathedral of Rome. For whatever reason, I had no idea that St. Peter’s is not the pope’s main church. The pope is the bishop of Rome, and since St. John’s is the cathedral of Rome, the pope’s main church is St. John’s. My parents were in Rome for the previous week and for that weekend, so I decided to stay in Rome for rest of the weekend with them. But when my fieldtrip was over, they still at the Vatican and wouldn’t be done for a couple of hours. Luckily, there were about 3 other girls staying in Rome so I hung out with them on the Spanish Steps for about 30 minutes before I made my way to my parent’s hotel to drop my stuff and then to an internet café to register for my classes! Most of them look very interesting, and I’m taking at least 2 of them with some friends so that will be really nice, especially since both girls are rooming with me next semester. Makes studying for the tests much easier! When I was done checking email and class registration, I made my way back to the hotel where my parents had just arrived. They were tired of big crowds since this weekend was an Italian holiday, and it seems like the entire country decided to come to Rome. We powwowed in the hotel room for a little bit and then went out to dinner to a Sicilian restaurant. It was delicious! I had penne al salmone. As much as I’m looking forward to Mexican food, sushi, and a Philadelphia cheesesteak, I am also going to miss such good pasta on an everyday basis. The next day I felt miserable, but we had a tour of underground Rome which we were going to go to. At breakfast that morning sitting at the table next to us was a couple from Chevy Chase, Maryland, so of course I had to say that I went to school in DC. The man who we met actually works at GW and is teaching a class there next semester. He works for the Elliott School in the global health program and was being very helpful with trying to get me an internship with Doctors without Borders and other health related organizations which would have been all well and good if I was even remotely interested in entering that field of international development. But they were very nice, but we had to rush out of breakfast to get to our tour which was very interesting. We went under some churches and museums and saw remnants of buildings from the BC times. The tour ended just in time for lunch where I had a ham pizza. Also delicious. Across from the ristorante was a very beautiful Jesuit church, so of course we had to go in and look around. No matter where I go, somehow I also manage to run into something Jesuit. We spent the majority of the late afternoon on some of the big shopping streets looking for some boots while going to look at the Ara Pacis (Alter of Peace) and Augustus’s mausoleum. If anyone needs a guided tour of Rome, I am pretty confident in my ability to give one about anything up until the Flavian period in 81AD. Just pay for my plane ticket and I’ll tell you everything I know and even some stuff I don’t know. To no avail did we find boots that night however, but again we ate some very good food and one of the best chocolate cakes ever. I also witnessed my first thief in Italy. This youngish man was being chased by this older man. If the older guy had made a sound, my mom said, she would have tripped the guy stealing from him. The older man did manage to get his backpack back, but the thief got away with a folder/briefcase thing. This morning my mom and I went on an adventure to some markets. She thought there was a market that was only once a month, but sadly, she’s the only one that has heard of it so we instead went to a weekly market that was amazing. I found some boots, but they were too big. However, I found a great purse for cheap-ish. After the market it was time to reconvene with my dad and to head to the train station. On the way to the train station, my dad told me some good news (for me). My cousin and his wife are pregnant which we have known about for some time, but we didn’t know if it was going to be a boy or a girl. On that side of the family I hold a very high position with my grandfather since I am the only girl granddaughter. I was especially excited to hear that they now know the sex of the baby – it’s a boy!! My parents decided to come back with me to Perugia and stay for a couple days before they fly back to the States. After putting all our stuff ‘at home’ (Perugia is almost starting to feel like home to me…almost), I got a little bit of homework done before we went out to dinner at a very good little restaurant near the Church. They had amazing pumpkin soup and zucchini pie with cheese sauce. If anyone knows how to make zucchini pie with cheese sauce please please send me the recipe. They also had some great chocolate cake and apple pie. Yum! Tonight the Colts play the Patriots which I am very sad I’ll be missing. Too much homework. Plus the bar showing the game is more than a 30 second walk outside, and it’s cold tonight! I only hope the Colts win. By the time I’m able to post this blog (I’ve found it’s easier to write in a Word document and transfer it over since the computer lab always seems to be closed when we need internet) I’ll already know the score and who lost the game. But…GO BLUE!

11/5: I don’t know if it’s hit the news in the US or not yet, but last week a British girl studying in Perugia was murdered. We were told that this is a once and a lifetime thing in Perugia; the police seem to be going crazy, especially since it was a foreigner that was murdered. They have some leads, but no one has been pulled into custody yet. Apparently, the story is all over BBC so in case it makes it to US news, just wanted to tell you I’m fine and what’s going on with the case.