When in Rome... (our first trip and the weekend's update)

Quick catch-up of the last few days…

Thursday-
After dinner, we learned some Italian worship songs with Alessandro but the music didn’t stop there! Some friends and I headed to our favorite café (Caffe Cavour) to hear live music by a really great band from Orvieto. Each week a different band plays on Thursday nights, which we’re looking forward to. We met a girl named Hillary from Britain who is our age and teaching English here for about 8 months. She is excited to show us more of the town/what the young adults around here do. Up soon on the calendar: a jazz club that is close by in one of the piazzas on Friday and Saturday nights! Yes!

Friday-
The professors of the current class, Dr. Tal Howard and Dr. Agnes Howard, have 3 wonderful children who we are already quite attached to. I asked Ellie, the oldest, to show me around her favorite parts of town after lunch on Friday since it was our day off. She took a small group of us to the smaller of two public Etruscan caves that we were able to explore, followed by a large historic “park” area near the edge of the cliff that overlooks the lower landscape. It was an absolutely perfect day! The weather felt like spring so we were able to take our jackets off, and we had gelato after dinner which ended the day well.

Saturday-
ROMA! We left Monastery San Paolo at 6:15 in the morning in order to catch all the right buses and trains. It was so early but I was SO excited! The whole day was an absolute whirlwind because we were just getting a taste of the city, with the promise to return many more times through the course of the next four months. Yet, for our first visit we couldn’t have been given better weather! The sun was shining warmly on our faces, there wasn’t a hint of rain, and we even had to take our jackets off multiple times during the day. (Definitely doesn’t feel like February in New England! I heard you guys have a snow day today!) The first thing we did when we got into the city was hit up the National Art Museum of Rome to catch a quick tour of the Garden of Libia (a room full of a garden that is painted on all four surrounding walls and has such a fresh and lively quality), the rich mosaics, and famous Roman and Greek marble statues.

Next, we saw the Pantheon, had amazing gelato ("con pana," or with cream on top) as dessert before lunch. I had white pizza and “Diet Coke” for lunch, and my friend Lauren and I bought huge, fresh, juicy pears from the large open air market afterwards. Not sure if I told everyone yet but they don’t have real Diet Coke here! They have Coca-Cola light which is awful haha.

We saw many Roman fountains and learned a great fact from Matt (our program director and tour guide for the day, who luckily lived in Rome for a year and studied art history) about the fountains never being turned off in the city, as they are the source of life there. Also, when we reached the old Jewish neighborhood of Rome, we saw the beautiful earth-toned buildings that Matt called the “Banana Republic colors.” He reminded us that these are the colors that we see after much fading, and that Rome once was filled with the vibrancy of bright blues and yellows. Also, something wonderful about this part of Europe is that nothing is ever torn down. Everything is reused or built upon so that the remnants of ancient work are still visible and still very much a part of the present. It is that interplay of old and new that has given Italy (especially Rome) such cultural significance for so many hundreds of years.

Next… we toured the outside of museums I’ve only ever seen in textbooks, St. Peter’s square (designed by Michelangelo), the Forum, beautiful artistic basilicas and arches, ancient ruins, and of course the Coliseum (from the outside). One more important note from the day- the Howards’ middle child, Hannah came with us. Her mother had to return very early in the day to Orvieto with one of our classmates who wasn’t feeling well, but I offered to keep Hannah with me all day. Hannah has been to Rome quite a few times now, so it was neat to not only keep catching my breath from the grandeur of the sights around me, but from a 7-year old pulling my hand with excitement all day. My favorite moment with her was looking over a fence at the Forum together, and using our imaginations to pick out which pieces below us would create parts of a modern town (ie: a fireplace created by a pile of rocks, the large arch creating the “pulpit” for the preacher at the church, a rather orderly section of a broken column becoming a cemetery, etc.). I was so exhausted by the end of the day that I got 11 hours of sleep before church the next morning! I can’t wait to go back…

Sunday-
Here’s why I love Italy. My Sabbath day included the following-
A pistachio-filled cannolli for breakfast. Mass at San Giovenali’s. Pasta for lunch. A 3.5 hour nap (Matt tells me this is probably the final end to my jet lag). Some reading for class. A pizza party dinner in the monastery. Cappuccino and another pistachio-filled cannolli with my roommate Alicia and friend Sarah from Gordon at Montanucci’s (a café nearby) to finish up our reading. What a life…

And now, I find myself in the midst of a rainy Monday afternoon that is extremely relaxing. Not too much planned for the week other than continuation of our class and reading, and getting further settled in to our town. I’m off to go practice my Italian!