Dear mom, I am back from Florence!

Well, it certainly has been a long time since I have had the opportunity to update this. Even though these past few weeks have been full of adventure and new experiences I am afraid that at the moment my energy is dwindling and I will only be able to update on this weekend.
This weekend we went to Florence! We spent two nights and three days walking and walking and walking all over the city and having a wonderful time. It was particularly interesting visiting the city after spending so much time in Rome because despite the number of tourists I encounter on a daily basis in Rome, I have never seen so many Americans in a non-American city before. Everyone spoke English. It felt like everyone was studying abroad.
We first arrived Friday morning and walked to our Hotel. We just so happened to stay at the same place that Monica and I stayed when we visited three years ago. After taking some time to relax we jumped right in to what the city has to offer. Here is a list of the sites we saw this weekend:
Santa Maria del Carmine and Brancacci Chapel
The Duomo
The Baptistry
Museo dell’Opera del Duomo
Bargello Museum
Basilica San Lorenzo
Uffizi Gallery
Galleria dell’Accademia
Each day was interspersed with stops for drinking delicious coffee and walking in and out of charming shops. We had two "Fam Din's" while we were there, and both nights we had my favorite...steak!
Although I am thrilled to be studying in Rome, I wish I could have spent more time in Florence. As a small and walkable city with a ton to offer the weekend provided a nice vacation from the ever-bustling Rome. I think my only regret from this weekend is that I didn't get any gelato. What was I thinking?? Well, thats all for now. I will add photos when I get the chance.

Dear mom, there is so much to catch up on!

So I will try to start from the beginning.
We spent last weekend in Castellammare! Castellammare is in the region of Italy called La Campagnia. La Campagnia is the region just south of Lazio, which is where Rome is. So, early friday morning we hopped on a bus that took us to the relatively small town of Castellammare. It was a beautiful small town on the bay of Naples with a great view of Vesuvius. We were staying at an institute which exists to excavte the ruins of ancient Stabiae so a few hours after we arrived we went on a tour of their excavation site.
The villas at Stabiae supposedly were places that the Roman elite would visit during the summer and they were absolutely amazing! We were able to see bedrooms, bathrooms, dining halls, roman baths, and beautiful gardens.
After the tour Danya, Avery, Dan, and I took a walk into the town of Castellammare. On the way we stopped into a bakery that smelled absolutely delicious. After gawking at all the pastries for a few minutes the woman who worked their gave us each a huge meringue for free! After that, he son came out from the back and gave us each one of his favorite cookie for free! We then each picked out what we wanted to buy and on our way out they asked us to return sometime and gave us more cookies for free! They seemed so pleased that we had gone into their small bakery, it was quite fun. Then we continued to meander around the town until it was time to head back to the intstitute for dinner. After dinner a few of us along with the young American woman who worked at the institute went to a wine bar where we sampled three wines native to the area. It was a fun day, but very long and very tiring.
The next day we woke up early and headed to Pompeii. We had a great tour guide who showed us a lot of the city and then we had time to explore on our own. On of my favorite parts was seeing the area where the school for the gladiators was. After that we went to the villa of mysteries and then headed back to Castellammare. Once we arrived in Castellammare almost all of us took a tram to the top of one of the mountains in the area. The tram ride was 8 minutes long and very scary, but totally woth it once we got to the top. The view was amazing. We took a walk around the area and found a heard of goats. We heard them coming from a ways away because of their bells. It was so neat! That night I was so exausted that I just stayed home and slept. We had to wake up early to go to the Naples museum and then we took the bus home. All in all it was a fun and successful weekend away from Rome but it was also very nice to get back to our dorm.
The rest of this week has been pretty regular, nothing too exciting has been happening because we have had a lot of work. I am getting very excited to go to Vienna and Bratislava this weekend. We made plans to see the Vienna Philharmonic and other than that we are just going to explore. Let me know if you have suggestions!

Dear mom, what a relaxing week this has been.

I realized I hadn't updated this in a few days and I think it is because this week has just been so relaxed that I didn't think there was much to say. It is thursday afternoon and I am done with classes for the week. Tomorrow morning we are waking up bright and early to spent the weekend in Pomeii, Stabiae, and Naples. I am very excited for this trip because I have never been to Pompeii and I haven't left Rome at all since arriving so it will be nice to be in a different part of Italy for a change.
Like I said this week has been great. All of my classes are going well and I feel like this week has given me the opportunity to take care of non school things and just hang out with friends. Danya and I had two particularly fun adventures this week. The first one, randomly meeting the mother in law of the Brazilian Ambassador to Italy and having her invite us over to tea! The second one, going to get our vaccines for Morocco and meeting some tourists from Hamburg.
We have not yet made our tea date, but hopefully that will happen when we get back from Pompeii. As for the tourists from Hamburg, we met the couple while waiting at the bus stop after our doctors visit. They asked how to get to Piazza Navona so we just took them right there. It was really fun to talk to them because they had never been to Rome and they had come on whim, so we were able to give them a lot of advice as to what they should see and do.
Another thing Danya and I finally had time to do this week was to play some music. We have been working away at the duets in the farm and wilderness string band book, and hopefully before it gets cold we will play some outside just to get our first experiences with busking. We figure if everyone else in Rome can do it, we can too.
So the fun continues, although there are not too many distinct stories to tell, I am sure there will be post-Pompeii trip.

Dear mom, dad, and Susanna, what a weekend!

This was one of my first weekends in Rome without a huge amount of homework to do, and I think I really took advantage of it. I will try to give you the play by play, but I am tired so if my details start to dwindle please forgive me! Alright....here we go
Friday:
On Friday we had a group tour of the Roman Forum. Our tour ended up being about three hours long but we have a brilliant tour guide which made it a lot of fun. The guide was an architect so he spent a lot of time helping us visually reconstruct what the ruins would have looked like when they were complete. Considering the complicated history of Roman rule, he did a great job of breaking the history down into periods and laying out the major changes in rulers which therefore changed the architecture. The strangest thing about this tour was that our guide looked a lot like dad! He even dressed like dad. But all that really did was make me more excited to show you all around what he showed me.
From the Forum we walked up to the Palatine Hill. The Palatine Hill is an area that was settled beginning in the founding of Rome. It is also an area with ancient palace ruins, so it was very fun to walk around and see the contrasts in living spaces between the people and the elite. After this part of the tour we were starving, but because the area is SO touristy the cafes and restaurants were so expensive that we convinced ourselves to check out the Colosseum and then head home for lunch. One good thing to know is that the ticket for the Roman Forum and Palatine Hill also gets you into the Colosseum, so its a good idea to just make a whole day out of it!
After all of that we headed home and I took a long nap. It was a wonderful but very tiring morning/afternoon. That evening a group of us decided we needed a break from Italian food so we went on an adventure to find an Indian restaurant that had gotten a good review. After a few wrong turns we managed to find the place and it was wonderful! The food was so delicious and it was great to explore a new part of the city along the way. The restaurant was right in the neighborhood of the Vatican so on our walk home we stopped by just to see what the Vatican was like at night. It was beautiful to see the whole thing lit up and we found these really neat viewing points of the Piazza. We stopped to get gelato at our favorite place on the way home and then just went right to bed.
Saturday:
Saturday morning Danya and I woke up very determined to go for a run. We woke up around 9 and it seemed like no one else was up so we quietly left and walked to the Borghese Gardens. The Gardens are about a 15 minute walk north of where we live, so even though it is a bit of a walk it was totally worth it. The park itself is beautiful! You walk up a huge set up stairs to get in and immediately see an amazing view of Rome, then you continue into the park and see hundreds of people just hanging out. Whether riding bikes, sitting around, or walking their dogs, this is definitely the Roman equivalent to Central Park, and I missed Central Park! Our run was very plesant. There is an area that looks a lot like an ancient track, although I have no idea how ancient it actually is, and we ran for a while and then headed home.
After we came home and did work for a while a large group of us went to this store called MAS. Mas is an everything discount store...but when I say everything, I mean EVERYTHING. It was one of the most insane stores I have ever seen. It was 5 floors of just crap, the kind of place where if you need something for really cheap its perfect, but otherwise you kind of just want to scream "get me out of here!!" I am glad that I went though, because I have heard it reffered to as a right of passage into living in Rome. Good to know about, but I would happily not go back.
That evening Danya and I made dinner, and just did some work and went to bed, a good end to a long day.
Sunday:
Today was a long and kind of intense day, but I am feeling good now which is nice. This morning we woke up and went to a good coffee place (although not our favorite because our favorite is closed during the weekends.) After coffee we worked for a while and then decided to take a walk and explore the Jewish quarter. The Jewish quarter is quite small and it wasn't the best idea to explore it on a Sunday because a lot of the stores were closed, but it was fun. We happened upon some ruins and realized we live a lot closer to some things than we thought. I have realized that just wandering around helps me understand the layout of the city better than when I try to figure it out with a map. So, we walked around that area for an hour or so and then walked in and out of a few churches. Walking in and out of churches here is so fun because they are always so surprising. Some are more decorated than others but it is fun just to check them and out. We headed home after exploring and did some work until we had to go to Fam Din.
Fam. Din. tonight was amazing. We went to a tiny actual hole in the wall place in Trastevere that I highly recommend. Here is a link to a NY times article about the place:
http://travel.nytimes.com/travel/guides/europe/italy/rome/74649/da-i-2-ciccioni/restaurant-detail.html
The food was amazing, and the setting itself was just so fun, it was truely an experience eating there. Afterwards we stopped to get gelato on our way home and now I am finishing up work and getting ready for bed. It was a jam packed weekend filled with lots of new experiences, all of which I am glad I can so easily tell you about via this blog. However, I think now it is time for me to slow things down a bit and go to bed.

Dear mom, today I went to the Necropolis!

So far this week has been exhausting! We all had a huge paper that was due this afternoon...so finally things are beginning to settle down. Right after we handed in our paper we went on a trip to the Necropolis at St. Peters. The Necropolis is the area right under the basilica where St. Peter was buried. The tour was really amazing. The area isn't advertised because they don't want the site to be destroyed by too many visitors so they limit the number of people allowed to enter the site a day to about 200. On top of that, we were sadly not allowed to take any photos of the site, so I will try to describe it as best as I can.
We entered the Vatican City and went through a side door to the church. There was a small staircase that seemed like it would just go down into any basement, but as it turns out St. Peters doesn't just have a basement, it has a catacomb. We were suddenly walking down what had once been a street lined with mausoleums, but the street was leveled and filled in to build the original church. We saw many ornate mosaics that were very old and cool to look at, and then we were taken up into the area with all of the smaller chapels. Every wednesday the Pope has a viewing so the chapel area was quite crowded. We were able to see the monuments to the Popes and get a sense for the beauty of the place.
All in all it was a great tour, but I am really excited to go back to the Vatican to see the museums and just to explore the church itself. Hopefully I will get pictures for those entries!

Dear mom, today my good friend Charlie turned 21.

Today was a great day. We all went on a tour this morning of the Palazzo Massimo, another branch of the National Museums of Rome. I've thrown in a few pictures of my favorites from this museum. I did not particularly like the layout of this museum compared to the other ones we have visited, but the art was beautiful. There were a ton of mosaics and frescos which must have been stunning when they were first completed.
After the museum a bunch of us picked up pizzas and headed home, and by the time we got home we were so exausted from the heat that almost all of us took naps.
After our luxurious nap Danya and I spent the afternoon/early evening playing music and then we got ready for our friend Charlie's birthday party. I suppose turning 21 in Italy is not quite as exciting as it is in the U.S. but we decided to throw Charlie a party anyway. 16 of us went out to dinner at this wonderful little family restaurant in Trastevere, and that is what the photo is of. The food was delicious and the owner was very appreciative of our business. It was a great end to a lovely day. We came home and played music for a little while longer. Danya and I have been trying to perfect one of the songs from the F&W string band book. Its a lot of fun and everyone seemed to appreciate hearing it. Well, I think this weekend is going to be very busy work wise so I think I am going to head to bed.

Dear mom, oggi siamo andati ai Musei Capitolini Centrale Montemartini

Translation: today we went to the Capitoline Museum's "Centrale Montemartini."
Last weekend we went to the Capitoline Museum, but the collection we saw today is housed at a separate site. This museum is in what was once the first public electric plant in Rome. As you can see from the photos they have taken the old industrial building and transformed it into a beautiful exhibition space. The collection of pieces housed in the museum were all excavated in the same area at the turn of the nineteenth century when the main train station in Rome was built. They are all beautiful representations of Roman art from the Republic up until the Late Empire, and the museum itself creates such an interesting contrast to the pieces.
For some reason it seems like you have to know about this museum in order to visit it, its not just something people talk about. On the outskirts of the city I didn't expect to find such an amazing collection of art housed in an old industrial building, but it was beautifully organized. The exhibition makes you question your definition of art when you begin to notice how detailed an ornate the 40 ft high machines are. I couldn't help from wondering: who was the genius behind that machine?
As the first public electric plant in Rome the building holds a bit of precious Roman history. When the plant opened in the 1890s Rome was lit up for the first time, a night that I imagine would be totally unforgettable to those who experienced it. Although now I don't imagine power plants to be the most elegant places this power plant turned museum is just that. The machines and sculptures display great Roman achievement from different time periods. This thought brought me right back to the idea of the eternal city.
After seeing the museum I went home and started reading a book for class called "The Fires of Vesuvius." We are visiting Pompeii in about two weeks which will be the first time I have left Rome since I've arrived. I am very excited, especially because so far the book is fabulous. So many good adventures to come...