We also went to San Damiano... where st francis ran to to escape his father when he wanted to devote his life to God. He hid in a hole under their dining hall essentially. san damiano is a
lso where God spoke to him from a special cross and said to him "rebuild my church". upstairs we saw where st clare died. it was just a plain corner, marked off with an old rope, with a lit candle. one woman took pictures of it, which was really disrespectful. in most of the churches you cant take pictures and have to be silent, but in saint clares tomb, people were talking so much!! it was awful. her body is so cool/freaky... her bones are prefectly preserved, so unlike st francis', hers is laid out in a glass case and they put clothes and a clay face and feet on her... but you can see her body shape!One weird thing-- here in italy you often get fruit for dessert and you have to cut it with your silverware. even bananas! everything! its so funny. its taboo and in some places against the law to walk around the streets of a city just eating a cookie or whatever, shop keepers must give you a bag. but you will never see the italians walking and eating, especially biting into and an apple or taking a swig of water on the street. we were all so eager to get of assisi and get to rome, we had so much free time in assisi. but i was helpful to get adjusted time-wise and learn some italian customs before we were thrust into rome.
Here are 2 albums i put on facebook, which will work for people who don't have it too. you can see much more of what i did and saw, theres too much to write of here. i hope you guys like them! :
http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2012530&l=9488e&id=1571340282
http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2012551&l=63731&id=1571340282
i have yet to take a picture in rome (!! i know), because i wanted to give myself a couple days of just absorbing it all. im letting other people take the first pics, ill be here for a year! plus, i dont want it to get stolen.
ROME! we got here on sunday night. i caught a glimpse of the colosseum on the bus ride in. but at the first glimpse all of us got of an ancient ruin of rome all of us on the bus gasped. i dont even remember what it was. all of our jaws hung open for those first couple minutes and we all "yay!"ed when we saw the hotel. it is on the main street of rome. i had no idea, i was picturing it on a quieter street w/o traffic, kind of like our "campus" street, which is adjacent, with Pascucci's, the office, classroom, and library buildings, all inconspicuously scattered along the street. the hotel is so much nicer than i was expecting, at least the outside and lobby. our room is a quad (we were lucky enough to get one of the three available to us). im rooming with anne, maire (pronounced "mora'), and ashley. maire and ashley were friends before, like anne and i. the two pairs of us had never met, or even seen each other on the home campus though! funny, because its so small. they are all really nice and im so glad i got a quad-- its fun. we have 4 beds, but anne's is a cot, because i guess our room is normally meant for 3! its big enough though... at least for the amount of stuff that anne and i brought. we share on smaller closet, and the other two share a bigger closet that is stuffed to the brim. maire brought about 4 times the amount of clothing i did... which made me worry and her embarassed! lol.
sunday night, ms hoffman, the ra, showed us the campus street. then we went to get pizza- so delicious!! on the way to it, we ran into the pantheon because its on the same street as all our buildings. when we came upon the side of it, i wasnt sure what it was beacause it was so huge! i had no idea it would be so big. it was so amazing to see in person. i thought it would be a lot smaller and in a bigger space. nope! it was crammed into the middle of other buildings and streets, with a medium piazza in front of it, like everything else here in rome im learning-- the old and new together. some of us walked over several blocks to the trevi fountain which was... glorious. just beautiful at night. i went the next day and it just wasn't the same. we sat for a long time and just people watched and stared in awe at the fountain. we all decided to try and find another way back to the hotel, so we could get lost and see the city. it sure did take a long time, but it was worth it to be out and about in rome.
another culture note- if you are a woman, you cannot look men in the eyes when walking down the street. this is SO hard, especially for a person who likes to people watch. or a person who likes to be able to walk down a crowded street w/o bumping into people. but i think im getting the hang of it. you kind of half to walk down the street with your head pointed down, or look at people's stomachs. why, you ask? men take it a look in the eyes, especially suggestively, as an invitaion. well, walking home that night, one of my roommates accidentally looked at a man and turned back again, and he.... well... pretty much it was disgusting and im very glad that i knew what was going on so i could look away and runnn across the street. mind you, this was at a very crowded, well-lit intersection, not in some sketchy alley. dad- stop freaking out, we were all fine. although this was the extreme in cases of looking at men, it was pretty ridiculous that that happened our first night in Rome.
oh, also-- i wore my mom's boots that she got while she was in rome, which was so cool. i do need to get them repaired and given more of a sole though, because my feet hurt when we got back to the hotel!!
the next morning we went to pascuccis for the first time, where we get our other meals (1 at the hotel, and breakfast and either lunch or dinner at pascuccis during the week). very yummy. i got an amalfi frullato (smoothie), which was i guess a mixed fruit w/ lemon juice... it was good, but too apple-y, pineapple-y or something. the corneto da cioccolato (chocolate croissants) are really good. mom, where do you get ciambellos again?? speaking of, our director, who had my mom 30 years ago, said she remembers her very very well. she thinks we look nothing alike, which of course, having seen us both at 19 years old, we wouldn't really. she remembered she had "flaming red hair". when i told her how i cant picture my mom being the way she is now (cant stop talking), because she looks kind of shy in picture back then, she said "ohhhh no-- your mother was anything but shy!!" and laughed. i guess you havent changed much, mom :)
classes yesterday (monday): i had philosophy (with a priest that said our mass in assisi), it seems interesting, archeology (a younger-ish prof from new york), which is much more like art history than i thought, and moral theology (with the famous Father every talks about!), im so excited for that class. today i had italian, with a native italian woman teacher.
last night we had lunch (they call it dinner) at the hotel, which was SO GOOD. we got a ridiculous amount of food! it could have been 2 meals worth! we had a large heaping linguine with a delicious sauce w/ zucchini in it. the other plate was chicken with a side of really really good green beans. then there was bread, water, i got tea, and finally gelato!! ALL of this is stuff, and the food in assisi, is local, fresh, handpicked-- never canned. which is ridiculous. i mean how many restaurant can you go to in the US where you can get actual peas picked that day and not canned (like in assisi). all the sauces are homemade-- and you can tell. the pasta is just cooked perfectly, al dente, and is so much better than back home. even the gelato is made at the hotel itself-- amazing!! i tried fragole (strawberry), raspberry, frutta di bosco (mixed berry), and "surprise", which turned out to be watermelon.
last night anne, caroline, and i went out exploring again, in search of the vatican. we just had to walk down the main street. we turned a bit down one street b/c we saw something really beautiful and cool- which turned out to be castelo sant'angelo, when we looked in our guidebooks later. so cool!! we crossed a beautiful bridge over the tevere (tiber) river to get to it, and got a stunning view of the dome of st peters-- the largest dome in the world! we made our way leisurely to the vatican. wow i never thought id get to say that sentence. !! i have to say though,, coming right up to it, the actual basilica was smaller than i thought, probably because the row of semi-circled columns flanking it, over power it. i really liked the columns and the huge, empty piazza at night. from far away, the vatican looks huge though! it was such a wonderful night walk. when we got back "home" of coooourse i stayed up until 1 or 2ish reading about what i had seen that day and journaling. i was so tired, but what can i say, i must just be wired into me to stay up late, as everyone in my family knows :)
this afternoon, after my only class, italian from 9:30-11:30, brett and i explored the city in search of.... the colosseum! it was cool. i wish i knew more aobut it though, and the surrounding tons of ruins-- the roman forum?? ok, well the studying must begin! unfortunately. im going to go read for archeology and then get ready for another delicious dinner!! tonight anne and i will go off in search of the spanish steps. she went to piazza navona today. it is just so cool being able to day to people "oh, yeah i went to the vatican last night! where did you go?!" :)
