Insert Creative Title

So I'm sure you've all been wondering what the delay has been all about in my blog posts.  Well, to put it accurately, as time has progressed on this trip, I am getting lazier and lazier when it comes to blog posts.  Yes it's true, half of my laziness comes from lack of desire and effort on my part, but in my defense, the other half is because we are so busy everyday!  Quite often I will leave my apartment in the morning and not return until it is dark outside.  It wipes a person out, enough that my brain can't handle the task of remembering the exact things that are keeping me so busy!  But alas, I'm feeling the desire to post, and I promise to document as many of the important things as I can for the rest of my trip.  Now, let's see what I can remember from the last time I blogged...

As an apartment, we do our best to eat most of our meals together.  This has been one of my favorite things here so far, simply because I really enjoy spending time with people.  Also, the food is top-notch quality.  One of my roommates named Kate, bless her heart, really enjoys to cook.  And when I say cook, I don't mean whipping us up a couple of sandwiches.  She gets really creative.  Examples you may ask?  Well, she has cooked us a lemon-chicken pasta, pasta with not just red sauce but red sauce with MEAT, chicken alfredo, french bread pizza, and tonight she is making gnocci.  Last week she came up with an entire menu for dinner that week!  A lot of these things she is creating for the first time, and every time it is delicious.  Like I said, God bless her heart...I know she loves cooking, but we owe her so much.  At least a few nights a week we give Kate a break, one of those nights being a night when we eat out at a new restaurant.  One of my other roommates named Ricki had her brother suggest us a place near Piazza Novana - a calming little plaza filled with paintings, fountains, tourist trap restaurants, and sidewalk musicians.  The restaurant was called Monte Carlo, and it was excellent.  Here in Italy, I've gotten pizza so many times and I am still not sick of it yet.  Every single time, it is so great.  I usually get the Margarita (basically cheese pizza) so yeah, call me boring, but I like to call myself cheap instead :) it is always the cheapest buy!  From 4 to 5 euro, you get a pizza with the diameter of approximately a ruler.  They call these personal pizzas, and it's like triple the size of my face.  Even though these are incredibly generous portions for one person, I find myself being able to put it down no problem.  Just like at home, it never fails that I am the last person done eating, but I'm just doing like the Europeans do - aiming for a 3-hour meal ;).  This week, our out-to-eat dinner plans included going to a new area of the city called Trasavere.  This area has an incredible market on Sundays - the street is lined with tents going on far past what the eye can see.  You can pretty much find anything at this market.  We had heard from our program director that this was a great place to find cheap, 3-course meals and we were like ummm yes!  We left around 7 and took the bus to the place where the market was.  And we walked.  And we walked.  And we walked a little more.  Strangely enough, we weren't spotting any restaurants.  We pulled out a map, got back on track, and worked our way back over to the area we thought was correct.  At this point, we decided to ask the pharmacy where good restaurants were.  He pointed us in the right direction, told us to go left and we'd see restaurants, we turned the corner and......no restaurants.  We even hiked up a random staircase that was so big we all started laughing.  Finally, we pulled over at a restaurant and got some good food at 9:15.  It only took us 2 hours to work up an appetite so that was good.  We are going to go back to the area and explore a little more, since we've been through the mistakes already :).  In addition to dinner, we also spent an evening in the Villa Borghese, a huge beautiful park.  We rented bikes for an hour and explored.  We loved the beautiful fall colors, and we found a gorgeous overlook to watch the sunset.  It is now one of our favorite places, and one we hope to spend more time in.

Taylor, Ricki, Kate, and I

Jen, Kate, and I

Riding bikes!

Lion King-ish Sunset

I think I mentioned this before, but another favorite of mine is seeing the sunrise at different parts of the city once a week.  Last week, we ventured to the Spanish steps - a long stack of steps leading up to a church that are always PACKED with people.  During the day, the are truthfully completely full with people.  Well, it was pretty amazing to see them totally empty at 6:30 in the morning.  I take that back, they were totally empty besides our little friend from Tokyo.  When we reached the top, this little man approached us with his camera motioning for us to take a picture of him.  We did so, and he proceeded to bow to us, thanking us over and over.  He then motioned to take a picture of us, and we were like, "Yeah!" thinking he would take one with one of our cameras...well, he took it with his.  We are wondering if we are going to end up on a billboard in Japan.  He even got a little creative, showing me how to squat down to take a picture of him and the other girls I was with - they were all staggered behind him, making it look pretty awesome.  He was so grateful to us, bowing over and over again.  We got such a kick out of it!  This week, we went to St. Peter's Square for the sunrise.  I looked at the temperature before we left, which said 40 degrees.  I didn't think that would be that cold, but when we got outside, we were freezing the entire time!  We are going to be wimps when we get home if we can't even handle 40 degrees.  Even though it was cold, we saw a beautiful sunrise and got to see the Vatican Streets lit up before daylight broke.

Spanish Steps

Sunrise, ooooooo

Jen, Lauren, and I on the empty Spanish Steps!

Hello, Vatican

Another favorite of mine: the activities our school organizes for our group.  Since I last blogged, they have had a few more events for us.  One of which was a visit to Cinecitta, the biggest movie-making complex in Europe.  That was a pretty great experience to see how they make a movie come to life.  We got to see many different sets, one of which was the set for Gangs of New York.  We also went to a set that was filled with copies of ancient Roman sculptures and buildings - they looked like marble but when you touched them, they were clearly hollow plastic.  We got to see how they add sounds and effects to a scene as well, which was very cool.  The other event we had recently was our Nutella and Crepes night. This was perfect for the cool nights here in Rome.  We each got a crepe filled with chocolate or white chocolate nutella (or both) and one topping.  Then we got to sit in a little cafe in a square to eat them, complete with fires to keep us warm and a random guy playing guitar.

I also would like to inform you all that our history professor is somewhat famous.  Not only has he been on the History Channel with a show about Ancient Rome, but he also has been on house hunters with his wife to find a house in Italy.  Now, if you knew our professor, you would believe the History Channel bit but the house hunters would definitely make you laugh!  This guy is incredibly interesting.  I still can't decide where he is from.  Our history class consists of us trying to keep up with his brisk stride as he spits out enough information to make your brain explode.  He is also interesting because he likes to pick on people for fun.  Even though he seems pretty intimidating and tough, he has a soft spot.  The other day after class, he volunteered to walk a few of us to his favorite bakery.  We thought that was nice enough, but then he bought us some of his favorite Italian cookies.  We couldn't believe how lucky we were!

Last weekend, we spend our time in Pompeii, Sorrento, and Naples.  First impression of Pompeii - I could not believe how big the ancient ruins were!  The ancient city seriously went on forever and ever.  We were lucky enough to have a really great tour guide to explain things to us.  The most amazing thing to me were the body casts that they recovered during excavations.  These casts were thousands of years old!!  You could see parts of the skeleton as well as the expression on the person's face as they were buried by the volcano that destroyed the city in 79 AD.  Amazing.  We then spent the night in Sorrento, getting a chance to simply explore the town.  We found an awesome lemon grove, streets lined with shops and Christmas decorations, and Twix gelato.  The next day, we went to Naples.  Our same tour guide took us into the museum to show us some of the objects from the ancient city of Pompeii we saw the day before.  We had the rest of the day to explore.  My biggest surprise - how crowded it was!  We went down a street that was known for Christmas nativities and decorations.  You would not believe how crowded that street was, and how long it took us to simply reach the end of it.  We also went to a famous bakery to get some pasteries, and that was busting at the seams with people!  We sure are getting a lot of experience of how Italians have no personal bubbles.  Also, we got some pizza naturally, since Naples is the birthplace of this tasty food.  And yes, it was the best pizza I've ever had.

This weekend, we spend our day today in the Vatican Museum.  Normally, I don't need to spend too long in a museum (like 2 hours max).  Yeahhhh we were there for 5 hours!  You definitely get your money's worth.  We were able to get a student discount with our Greek student IDs which started off the day perfectly.  We then saw all of the incredible sights that the museum has to offer, leading up to the Sistine Chapel.  How incredible is it to actually see this place in person.  I am astounded with not only how beautiful it is, but how difficult it must have been for Michaelangelo to paint.  Wow.  I was highly entertained by the guards they have in there.  I understand that it is a Holy building and that they don't want people talking or taking pictures, but I had to smile watching them "SHHHH" at people so harshly that they were probably spitting all over the place and yelling "NO PHOTO" at the guy across the room who is not taking his photo sneakily enough.  I have a cold currently and was sneezing multiple times, so there was not much I could do about being quiet.  Sometimes I get this urge to misbehave, and I had a strong desire to mimic the SHHHH and NO PHOTO, or to just yell really loud to see what they would do, but I refrained.  Needless to say, the museum was amazing, a place that everyone has got to see someday.  We, of course, ended our Vatican day at Old Bridge Gelato, our favorite gelato place in Rome.

Well, I think I have certainly written enough for now.  Stay tuned for many more wonderful adventures coming up.  Hang tight, because I don't have that much time left!  Also, you best hang tight, because if time is moving as fast for you as it is for me, you'll know what I mean!  I have more pictures for you all to see, but my photographer is currently working on editing those, so more beautiful pictures to come!  Hoping all is well with you!

Peace and Blessings,
Laura