Due

Due

Pronounced doo-aye. Remember that.

What a freakin week! I am going to try to go chronologically, but I am just so excited about everything that is going on, I don’t know if I am going to be able to contain myself, so just bear with me.

First, classes. They started Monday. They are awesome. Photography, we’ve had 2 photo shoots…not only do I feel like a real photographer, but I also feel like a model since everyone in the class has to pose as well. Today, I posed in the Piazza Navona. Very cool. Rome through the Ages, my teacher is so cute and has the best accent! He is also very smart and knows lots of cool stuff about Rome (very appropriate). Today we went to the Roman Forum. I HAD CLASS IN THE ROMAN FORUM. I mean, Neville is cool, but THE ROMAN FORUM. History of the Italian Mafia, a very cool class. Today we learned about how they kill people. Suffocation, poison, guns, etc. Just kidding..but I’m hoping that will be a future class. Italian, I don’t really like..I know, what the heck, its probably the most useful thing I’m doing, but its just kind of boring. I would rather practice on real Italians. Even when they laugh at me.

Last week, I did a lot of running around trying to buy books and notebooks. Regular, spiral, lined notebooks are very hard to find. It was rather frustrating. I also spent a lot of time being lost. Seriously, I got lost going to school, from school, going home, basically, wherever I went. BUT, I always found my way and I am very proud of myself. I am the master of public transportation. UM, not really. I definitely got fined 50 euro for not stamping my bus ticket on time. Yeah, that sucked a lot...but lesson learned. In my defense though, I had only been on the bus like a minute. And no one ever stamps their ticket! Whatever. The busses and the metro are amazing when you know what you’re doing, they are running properly, and you have at least 1 and a half to get where you’re going. So pretty much, I walk A LOT. But its cool because I like to think I walk off all the amazing food I stuff my face with everyday. Today, for example, I had at least a loaf of bread…by myself. With olive oil. And then the rest of my meal. And gelato. But it’s a lot of walking…

Thursday night I went to the most ridiculous “jazz” concert I have ever been to in my life. Seriously, it was terrible. Apparently it was “experimental jazz.” We didn’t learn that until afterwards because we couldn’t understand the Italian introduction. Anyways, it was so bad…it was like monkeys banging on trash cans. But it was so entertaining because 1. all the musicians were really really into it. 2. Everyone I was with was either sleeping or looking around like, wtf? Is this for real. You kept thinking it was going to get better..but it never did…it got worse and worse. And just when you thought it couldn’t get worse, one guy started playing notes with the spit in his trumpet..and then another started yelling/moaning in gibberish.

So, Friday to celebrate the opening of the Olympics, we had a party! We all represented a different country and watched the opening ceremonies. I, of course, was Japan. We were supposed to dress accordingly, but with a limited budget and no Italian goodwill around, I only had a white shirt and a note card with a red dot in the middle of it. It was kind of sad, but I tried.

Saturday I went on a very extensive walking tour of Rome. A group of us wandered around Tratesvere (sp?) and found this really cool park with confetti and statues and real grass (theres not much here) and ducks. It was great. The walking part ended up being way more than we anticipated because there was a riot or something and all of the bus lines to our apartment were shut down. So, we hoofed it back and as a treat, we stopped at Old Bridge gelato by the Vatican and it was seriously the best gelato I’ve had since I’ve been here. And as you can tell by my pictures, I’ve had quite a lot. I think the Pope blesses it or something. I wonder if the Pope eats gelato? He should. That night we went to a soccer game, Lazia (the local team) vs. some other team we never learned the name of. Of course, we were hardcore Lazia fans, even though it ended up being a tie. We had to leave early though because my roommates and I had to leave on a midnight train to…Georgia. JK…a train to the OLYMPICS!!! That’s right, 7 hours later we were in Torino!! And it was sooo cool! Literally, it was freakin freezing there! We got there really early and had to wait around on things to open up but we went to the OLYMPIC village and the official OLYMPIC store and saw the OLYMPIC torch and rode up to the Swiss Alps to look at more OLYMPIC stuff. And to end the day, we went to a women’s OLYMPIC hockey game and saw USA kill Germany 4-0. It was very exciting. There was passion living all over the place! “Passion lives here” is the Olympic motto or something, and it was everywhere! I thought it was really funny, so I took lots of pictures. Check it out. Then we took another overnight train back to Rome, got in at 7:30 and I went to class at 9. The ride back was better than the ride there though because we figured out how to work the heat. The way there was miserable and freezing. But it was ok because it was worth going to the OLYMPICS! For anyone interested, it makes me happy when both the US and Italy win things.

Tonight, we had some boys cook chicken parmesean for us. It is completely backwards over here! JK…they were really just using us for our kitchen, but whatever…it was really good. My cooking so far has consisted of sticking bread in the oven and heating up tortellini on the stove, so I was most grateful. We watched Olympic ice skating on TV, and were like, oh yeah, whatever, we’ve been there. Russia won in case anyone missed it.

Anyways, that was my week. More adventures to come this week, I’m sure. We’re going somewhere with a lot of fountains on Friday (the name escapes me right now) and then just hanging out, doing touristy stuff on the weekend. And the weekend after that, I’m going to Barcelona! Let me know if you know of any cool things to do in Spain. Other than just being there, because I think that is pretty freaking cool. Anyways, until next time…ciao ciao J