officially on-site

Roman Forum

Tuesday was my first experience of actually taking an on-site class. Verdict: it's freezing. but also abolutely amazing. The day started as usual with yoga and breakfast, then Kaylie and I took a new bus (81 WOO) to Piazza Venezia. Her on-site class was meeting fairly close to where mine was (she was at Capitoline Hill and my class was meeting at the Roman Forum), so we luckily didn't have to try out the new bus alone. We left suuuuper early - 8:15 for a 9:30 class - because we wanted to make sure we weren't late, and ended up being about 50 minutes early to our classes. Luckily there were lots of little bars nearby, so we stopped in one of them and grabbed capuccinos. After our yummy drinks we headed in our own directions.

walking to class - il Colosseo
at the end of the street

I still had lots of time to kill, so I wandered around Via dei Fori Imperiali taking everything in. The Colosseum was at the end of the street, and the Foro Romano was all down the sides of the street. I was amazed at how these ancient ruins were surrounded by everyday traffic, buildings, and lives of Romans today. Funny story: as I was busy taking lots of pictures and admiring the scenery, an Asian man came up to me and asked if he could take a picture, so I obliged, not really sure why I was being asked - apparently he was excited to be in Rome and see someone with blonde hair (all the while being carefully aware of my backpack - not trying to be pickpocketed this morning). His friend popped out of nowhere and took the shot, then the man quickly thanked me and said "so beautiful, thank you thank you" and was on his way. So if you see my face on a random international website with an Asian fellow, you know why.

Eventually made my way over to our meeting place, and spent the morning with my Roma Aternae class wandering the Roman Forum, learning all kinds of stories that made up the amazing place where I'm living these few months. I wrote down lots of them, so visitors - get excited! I'm definitely taking you there when you come and telling you all the insider info :) We got to see where Julius Caesar was buried, wandered through the Arch of Titus, etc. etc. etc. Absolute craziness. That was one of my favorite places I'd been to so far.

so many people have walked here. COOL

Rome is made up of layers...as the years went on the different periods just built on top of their old civilizations. They've excapated thousands of years of layers, and the level that we were walking through (slash the cobblestones we were walking on) were from about 2000 years ago - the Augustan Period. There were even buildings there dating back to the 15th and 16th century BC. THAT'S SO LONG AGO. And here we were, walking around what was left of the streets, the same thing people were doing thousands of years ago. Woah.

snack time

We took a little break on the steps of the Templum Veneris et Romae (the largest temple in the Roman empire), overlooking the Forum with the Colosseum at our backs. Our professor laughed at us and took out her camera. "Most people pose for pictures with il Colosseo, but here you are eating snacks on this beautiful day and the famous structure happens to be behind you perfectly. May I take a picture?" This of course started a string of cameras from different students (if someone tags me on Facebook I'll add it in here somewhere for yall). It was SO FREEZING that morning (by far the coldest morning so far), so my toes and fingers were completely numb, but it was clear skies and sunshine, so that made up for the cold.

After our snack we went to the Coloseum and I got to go inside it for the first time! It was so crazy. I can't believe this used to be the meeting spot for the Romans. COMPLETELY CASUAL. There are little box exhibits all around the stairs leading up the Colosseum with bones from animals found there, seeds from fruit, stone carvings, pillars, and even toothpicks the ancient Romans used during the games! We walked all the way around the upper layer (well, as "upper" as you can get nowadays), learned some more cool stuff, then class was dismissed. I walked back to campus (a 15- 20 min walk) with a few other kids in the class, grabbed a slice of pizza, got my (hopefully last) supplies at the art store, then headed to painting.

this doesn't do it justice.

Painting wasn't very eventful today. We're working on color, so after he lectured for awhile our professor but out hundreds of little sheets of colorful paper and had us put them in order from lightest to darkest value. It was harder than you'd think! The HUE and INTENSITY of the colors has nothing to do with the VALUE, so it was pretty tricky (capital words were our "words of the day").  I learned a lot, though! I feel like that'll be a cool class once we begin our projects. Homework: make a color wheel with our new paints. WOO!

We got out pretty early so I headed to Via del Corso to run some errands. Exciting news! I used the metro all by myself! After using it lots of times with the roomies, I realized that it's only really sketchy if you LOOK like a target. I haven't seen/heard of/had any problems with pickpockers or theives, I was completely confidant about where I was going, and it wasn't dark out yet, so I decided to go for it. It was a success! I got there and back home within an hour - way more conveniant than the buses. Still, I'm going to avoid it at night. Just in case.

The plan for the night was to go to an "ice bar" near the Colosseum, but that fell through pretty quickly. Hopefully we'll get to experience that at some point (perhaps when it's warmer out?), because it should be an experience. It's a bar completely made out of ice - here's the website for it: http://www.iceclubroma.it/. Instead, I went to a meeting about my Veneto trip this weekend, relaxed, ate an amazing dinner that Kaylie and Debbie made (pesto pasta baked with fresh mozzarella, chicken, and tomatoes SO GOOD), and got some good rest after a long and exciting day.