Devotissimo Suo: Day 27: Sundays are for Blogging and homework

It seems to be that my life here in Italy is broken up into two parts. Sunday through Wednesday is academic, lazy, early mornings and lectures all over town. The second half of my week is really Wednesday night through the wee hours of Sunday morning spent exploring, partying, traveling and being a goober all over the place.

Since last time:

Wednesday Sept 18:

Morning class was cancelled so I did not have school until 4pm. Attempted to go for an 'American Breakfast' at around 11am with the roommates. Failed. Got a great cappuccino instead.

After Italian class we had to attend a Colloquium on Social Norms. Snooze. Everyone was less than jazzed to be there, but they took attendance and I have to somehow work the content into my New Testament paper on the Gospel Mark (?).

No class on Thursday, so the roommates and I went to GBar (again) and Scholar's (again), where I ALMOST witnessed my first bar fight. Didn't happen though. Shucks.

Thursday Sept 19:

Both Rachel and I try to make Thursdays our exploring days because neither of us have class. We started the morning going to Santa Maria in Trastevere, the church we always walk past to go to the grocery store. The best thing about churches is that they are free to go into and are absolutely stunning. This one in particular is known for its mismatched columns and of course mosaics:

Santa Maria in Trastevere

From there we went to the Museo di Roma in Trastevere, which is crazy close to our house. This museum was a bit on the odd side, to say the least. Its main attraction are these mannequin sets of what Middle Ages/Renaissance Trastevere would have looked like and it honestly reminded me of a poory done Pirates in the Caribbean. Creeeeepy.

However, they did feature some modern photography that was right up my alley. Horst Stein's work Appearance was up (only until Sept 28) and it was really really well done. (http://www.horststein.eu) and got my brain back on the oh-yeah-im-a-visual-arts-major track. "The APPEARANCE series
deals with control and the loss of control, space and the loss of space, “static” versus “moving” images ... and narrative moments that can be randomly ironic, solemn, or melancholic. The series is organized in diptychs. By combining two fundamentally different types of photography in one piece, APPEARANCE also explores the relationship between “objective” and “subjective” criteria." This was my favorite one:

After the Museum it was obviously time for a gelato break and quest to find 'the ton of stairs on that one side street between our house and Aveda.' These stairs actually take you up to Gianicolo Hill, the "lookout spot" where you can see the Skyline of Rome:

We winded our way back down the hill and home for a lovely 2 hour nap. Once my roommate got home from her classes, we were too tired to make dinner and decided we should go out to one of the restaurants that my cousin suggested, Hostaria Romanesca in Campo di Fiori.

With a week full of classes and some inevitable roommate drama, Danielle and I kind of snuck out for what we are calling a 'roommate date.'

We shared a bottle of white wine, a caprese salad and each got a pasta dish. I ordered their specialty: Tonarelli di Cacio e Pepe (Cheese and Pepper) which was probably the best pasta I have eaten since I have been here. (Recipe).

We literally giggle about it whenever we talk about it because it was the best "date" that either of us had been on in a looooong time. We drank, we ate, we talked, we made friends with our waiter. THIS is how you are supposed to do an Italian dinner out.

We sat at this little table on the Restaurant patio until we were the last ones there. We talked about ex-boyfriends, classes, interests, life goals and most importantly our families. As the oldests, we are super similar. We talked about our siblings and pets, vacations and summers. We got to talking about our parents. This last year has been a tough one for my family, especially my dad. We talked about how we feel guilty sometimes, with both our parents self-employed, working their butts off, and here we are in Italy like its no big deal. We talked about how our moms are our best friends and know everything about our lives and how our dads are our soft spots. We sat at this silly restaurant and started crying over how much we each LOVE our parents. Crying to the point of giggling over the fact that we are two twenty year olds, on a Thursday night, in ROME of all places, sobbing over how much we love our families and how blessed we were to be where we were.

Maybe it was the wine talking, but we left that dinner feeling more in touch with who we are and why we were there than any other time yet in Rome. We totally agreed on how we felt centered, all of our priorities were back in order and reiterated to each other how unbelievably lucky we are to be here and how unbelievably lucky we are to have families that we love and love us as much as we do. We both agreed that if we could someday have relationships/marriages/families that were a fraction of what our parents are, we would be lucky.

As we were leaving, we made a pact to take one night a week to go to a different restaurant, just the two of us (not groups of 1672745 people) for our weekly 'roommate date.' So excited for next week's already.

On our walk out of Hostaria Romanesca, we were on top of the world. We wandered over to GBar, met up with some of our friends, and had a great rest of the night. :)

Friday Sept 20:

Not much went on during the day except that I kept making Proscuitto e Melone with the melon I bought at the store. De-lic-ious.

Friday night, Danielle and I experimented curling my hair with our combo curler/flat iron and it turned out pretty well. She also worked her makeup genius on my face which was mighty nice. We started out the night at GBar (typical) and then were planning on heading to Gilda, the nightclub near the spanish steps. Not too many pictures have surfaced from that night except the one with our new, 6'5" friends who happen to be brothers visiting from Amsterdam. I am on my tippy toes in this picture just to give you an idea....

Got to Gilda which turned out to be your stereotypical European dance club (with creepers galore), and had a great time. By 2am I was over it big time and wanted to get some sleep for our wine tasting tour the next day.

Saturday Sept 21: Wine Tasting Tour with Bus2Alps

Talk about early wake up call. We had to meet at Termini at 7:40am, which meant out the door by 7, which meant up at 6:45 after only going to bed at 3.. Rough...

But we made it and got on the 3 hour bus ride to Montepulciano and Altesino. The pictures are far better than the words on this one.

EXCEPT: *Dork moment alert*

Montepulciano, the first stop on our tour was the location for the ending of the second twilight movie. NO JOKE.