Tuesday.

Today was a pretty quiet uneventful day.

In class we discussed two paintings, The Ambassadors and St. Mark Preaching, and talked

about the Islamic and Eastern influences.

Afterward, I had lunch with Daniel and then went home to work on my presentations for tomorrow. I spent all day reading about Pope Paul III and Giordano Bruno. They are my homies now. Although they would have hated each other. XD.

Ooh, I made dinner with the girls in my apartment plus Molly. We made veggies (eggplant, onions, potatoes, asparagus) and chicken. It was delicious. It makes me want to actually cook next year at Stevens Court. =D

Afterwards... more Pope Paul and Brunooo.

I'm going to be up for a while. I want to finish my paper by Friday, so I can go to Florence this weekend!

Ostia Antica and Plinius Beach!

On Saturday (yes, I realize that my posts are way out of chronological order), we all went to Ostia Antica. This was one of the coolest trips, i thought (or atleast, it was until we went to the vatican today). We basically got to see and walk around in the ruins of the city. The bath houses and toilets were the coolest part. They had a hot room, a warm room, a cold room, a sauna etc. Just looking at the ruins, I can't imagine how they would heat the place or cool it down using technology from back then--especially cuz it didn't seem like they had any windows, so I have no idea how they kept any of the heat in? wahhh?

Oh! The toilet room was my favorite. It's just a bench with a bunch of holes to poop in about two feet or less apart from one another. Haha! It's like a pooping party--everyone's so close. XD.

After Ostia Antica, we all went to the beach! AMAZING. The beach was so blue and it was so sunny outside. I felt like I was in Hawaii or something. The water was suuuuper nice although a bit salty. And the sand burned my feet. But it was soo fun.

It's so easy to float in the Mediterranean Sea because its so salty. =D Lots of us swam in the water while Daniel and Shurui took creepy stalker photos.

Later, I dragged Daniel into the water with me, Bwahaha >:D.>

David is standing on my legs. =O

Oh, Engineers.

Vatican City~!

This morning was a pretty lazy morning. I did some of the reading before I got to hungry and sleepy to read anymore.. (haha, I always get sleeping while doing the reading, even if I just woke up). I stopped by the market this morning to get some fruit! I got 5 cute little apricots and some cherries =). I was so excited about them that I ate like three before I got home, and I just ate the last two. I forgot how much I love apricots. they're so perfect, and they rip in half so easily so you can just take the seed out. =D

Today, for art history class, we went to Vatican City! I traveled to a whole new country and back today! We almost didn't get in because apparently we had reservations for headsets but not for the museum itself? But the guard left, so we kind of just walked in. Phew.

The Vatican is possibly one of the most amazing places I've been. There's super amazing art EVERYWHERE--Packed into these rooms. The ceilings are amazing. All the walls are amazing. I was so awestruck this whole trip. Ooh. There's this one room where the ceiling looks like it has 3D reliefs sticking out of the ceiling; but it's actually all just a 2D painting. It looks so incredibly real that I wouldn't have believed it if Lisa didn't told us.

I think my favorite was Raphael's painting, the school of Athens. There were so many recognizable people in the painting and they were all so intellectual. It brought back memories from middle school and high school and learning about aristotle etc. Oh! I also like that Raphael put himself into the painting on the side, looking at the viewers. It's like playing Where's Waldo? except Where's Raphael!

Pretty much a mind blowing day.

Also, I really need to buy shorts... I can't stand being this sticky all the time D=.

The Pieta by Michelangelo. This is just a cast of the sculpture, but it's like one of my favorite sculptures.

Daniel and I at the Vatican.

Me and my apartment-girls, Mauna, Sydney, Emily, Carmen, and Christine.

I found Zinnia seeds at Despar!

I want to learn Italian now!

Today(June 27th) was a pretty slow day. I woke up pretty late, got up, and tried to work on my family presentation. I started getting sleeping again about an hour after I woke up. I think reading makes me sleepy. I will never need sleeping pills. =P

At about 4:00, I decided to get lunch. I've eaten everything that I own in our fridge except for a head of lettuce and some strawberries, so I decided to stop by the Forno that everyone was talking about to check it out. I got there and ordered my pizza and the baker tried to talk to me, which ended up being quite difficult because he knew limited English and I know no Italian.

Through a lot of gesturing and butchering of Italian, we established that I was from She-at-el and was an En-jin-eer-i of bee-ol-o-ji-a. And that I was a college student living in Trastavere. By then my pizza was ready and came hot out of the oven where it was being toasted. He put my pizza in a cute little take out box and then gave me two little pastries for free! Awww, so nice. =D.

Now I really want to go learn some italian and go back and talk to him again!

The Roman Forum

On our first day of class, we visited the Roman Forum. This place was amazing. I felt like I was in some foreign land--like I had just stepped into history. I felt like I just came out of a time machine into ancient Rome. The whole time I was there, I thought of Jurassic park for some reason, and half-expected dinosaurs to pop out and scare the crap out of me.

Everything was so amazing and tall. I swore I was going to need a neck brace after all the looking up at monuments. (haha, I feel like I'm always looking up in Rome while I walk--at either tall bui

ldings or monuments or statues. And, consequently, I fall into holes(where there's a missing cobblestone) or trip over things. ) David did his presentation on the Arch of Titus. Good job! =D First presenter. I would've been so nervous, haha.

Oh, today, I learned that in ancient times, all the statues would have been painting in color and the marble, so Rome would have been SUPER colorful! That seems so strange and different from what I imagine Rome looking like--with all the white monuments and

statues. (I guess I don't have to imagine... haha, I'm here!)

Christine also did her presentation today on the Colosseum! It amazes me how the Romans built this thing. There was some crazy engineering going on here. Some of the architechture of this building are still engineering mysteries today! What! Ancient Roman Engineers amaze me! Apparently, they used to have water battles in the Colosseum. This highly confuses me.

I think this was the day we cooked our first dinner in our apartment together. Yay for pasta with peppers, onions, garlic, zucchini, eggplant and pesto!

Favorite picture of Shurui!

=D!!

Getting to know the city

I'm terrible at keeping up with blogs, so here's the short picture version of the first few pre-studying days.

Day 1(Thursday) and Day 2(Friday):
We got in to the Rome center just in time for the meeting. The taxi ride over was interesting. The freeway is the same-ish as in the US, but once you get into the city, none of the roads are perpendicular, and people end up driving in roads that look more like alleyways. These are so skinny that I was amazed the taxi even fit through. Most people here seem to ride motorcycles or tiny cars. One time while we were crossing the ponte sisto, there was this huge, macho looking guy in this tiny smart car who whistled at us. XD.

Our apartment is super far away. It's a 20 minute walk atleast. Since none of the roads are at right angles, it's really hard to find the most direct route there. Half the time we tried to take a new path, we'd walk in a huge circle and end up exactly where we started. I think the distance is worth it though because there is a cute little market nearby where we can buy fresh fruit and vegetables 6 days of the week! =D Yay! Christine and I were buying from this one stand and after we picked out a bunch of fruit and vegetables(I got cherry tomatoes, other small tomatoes, one big tomato, strawberries, cherries, a head of lettuce, 3 plums an

d an orange), we were like "crap, do we have enough money!?!". She had 15 euros and I had 20. After they finished weighing out our food and totaling the amount, it ended up being 5.48 euros! So cheap!!! =D I'm gonna eat fruit everyday! They were super fresh too!

We also watched one of the world cup soccer games today at Magnolia, this cute little poopnhnnnn <--Shurui and Daniel did thispoop

I don't remember who played, but our whole class went with Lisa and had drinks and watched the game on these nice TV's. =D My first time watching a soccer game! I got a Bay Breeze, it was happy =D! The power went out in the middle of the game, though. So we sat there in the dark and talked.

That's all I remember. I have possibly the worst memory ever. D=

[Right now, Shurui is like NOOOOO F***** NOOOOOO!! because he lost his tetris game. XD. He is majorly addicted.]

Day 3(Saturday):

Today, Lisa took us to Trattoria Moderna to have our welcome dinner. There were appetizers, 2 main courses, and dessert (oh, and coffee afterwards).
The octopus and [fish] dish was surprisingly good. Everything that we ate at this restaurant was delicious. The vegetarian lasagna was super rich; the pork came with amazing spinach; and a baked peach and tiramisu to top it all off. After that meal, I was pregnant with yet another food baby. I swear, this time it was twins.

Oh! We also had wine. It was pr

etty good, I thought, although I don't know exactly how to drink wine just yet, or what I'

m supposed to be tasting for. Subconsciously, I think that if I drink more, it will just come to me. I had three glasses of wine.

After dinner, to stave off the inevitable food coma awaiting me, I had coffee! My first ever espresso shot. It was so good. The coffee was so rich and flavorful; bitter and sweet(lol, i put a whole sugar packet in), but not in

an awful way. It was suprisingly good. I admit, I was skeptical at first, because I tend not to like strong coffee drinks, but I really liked this. Plus, no dairy to make me sleepy. Yay, now I don't have to worry about being lactose intolerant and drinking coffee.

Since tonight was

our first real weekend, some of us decided to go out. I definately had too much to drink in a short amount of time. Oops. Atleast I have an interesting story to tell. =X

Planes, planes, and more planes

Packing could possibly be one of the most stressful tasks. The day before I leave for Rome, I begin packing. Terrible idea. It's not long before I realize that I have NOTHING TO WEAR. Or atleast when it comes to the lower half of my body. Italians wear shorts and skirts that are knee length or longer, but I don't have any shorts or skirts (that I would want to wear) that are that length, so I decided to just bring three pairs of jeans instead and maybe roll them up. Bad idea. Since it was 9pm by this point, I guess there was nothing I could do about it. By the end of packing I managed to fit all my clothes into a pretty small suitcase . I was proud. The 'rolling' method is by far more space-efficient that the 'folding' method (I fit more clothes into a smaller space than Daniel, ha!), although probably much less time-efficient because it was 2 am and I was still not finished. I decided to go to bed at the point and finish in the morning.

The next morning, I ran around packing all my stuff and within an hour, we were off to the airport. Daniel and I met up with David at the airport. Off to Houston, TX we go!

The 4.5 hour flight dragged on for way too long. It made me wonder how I was going to survive the 9 hour flight we had in store. When we got to Texas, it was surprisingly greener than I had imagined it to be--closer to a Seattle-green that a Richland-gray(atleast from the airplane view).

The 9 hour flight somehow seemed about as long as the 4.5 hour flight probably because I slept for most of it. The other half the time was spent trying to prop up Daniel's head with the pillow which kept falling over no matter where I put it. That and watching Rattatouille and When in Rome, both very cute movies.




Heathrow airport in London was huge. We had to take a 10 minute tram just to get to our gate. Once we got there, the whole area just looked like a huge Nordstrom with expensive perfumes, shoes, clothes, etc. I ordered a sandwich here with this strange vegetable called rocket which had a very strong taste.



The last flight was fairly short... see you soon, Rome!


Strange Airport Signs - Apparently all the women in London do not have arms and have enormous hips. Also, the 'gate' sign looks like a moose to me.




London Rome