“In perfect Italian style, we do exactly what we shouldn’t.”

Our visit to Rome was incredible! The history of Italy literally slaps you in the face! It was unreal to see the coliseum and Arch of Constantine. From there we continued walking all around the ruins seeing capitol hill with a great view of the Roman Forum. We also saw Circus Maximus, hopefully it was more impressive in its day because now its just a dog walking trail. We also stopped at this church that had started to build an addition and discovered the oldest in ruins in the whole area. Our guided tour with Marco ended at the Pantheon, which is another site that fully lives up to all the hype, absolutely breathtaking. From here our large group split and I went with a group of the girls to head up to St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican. To get there we walked along the Tiber River and snapped many pictures of the beautiful bridges. The Vatican was pretty neat looking, we decided not to go inside this time though so we had time to hit up the other sites. I’ll be back in Rome showing my parents all the same things when they come at the end of the program so I figured I could wait to see the inside when they’re here, and they’ll pay my admission. From the Vatican we caught the Metro which dropped us off near the Spanish Steps. They are not very impressive, just a flight of stairs where we rested our legs. The Trevi Fountain on the other hand was awesome! I threw about a month’s rent in and it was most definitely worth it all. For dinner we stopped at a cute little restaurant to rest our legs and sip some vino. We finally headed home on the 9:45pm train back to Orvieto with most all of our other classmates.

The day after our Rome trip we went back to Zeppelin (restaurant where we had our cooking class) for a wine tasting. The lady explained a lot of stuff to us, most of it over my head because I'll drink wine right out of a box, but still had fun chatting with everyone. Our usual Saturday nights are seeming to be spent at Beer House with our whole group. That night we met some of the Arizona students, most of them are Communications majors, also studying at Centro Studi.

With all the traveling and side projects we’ve been doing, it’s hard to find time for our normal studio work, which is a nice break from K-State. We spent two class times touring different neighborhoods in Orvieto, many of which I had not seen yet. The first day we did this, the weather was so beautiful that we spent our lunch break on the roof top terrace at some of the girl’s apartments. I’ll take that over a foot of snow any day. Later that evening we went to Pizzeria Charlie’s. Delicious. Besides the fact we couldn’t read a few words on the menu and a few people were surprised to find shrimp and french fries on their pizza.

After the second day of tours one of the girl’s apartments hosted a pot-luck dinner for our whole group, faculty included. We ate Gnocchi, salad, bruschetta, little cheeseburgers, salad, and pork. My apartment was in charge of dessert and since we don’t have an oven we found these sponge cakes at the store and made three different cakes. One with nutella and banana, another with a home-made cream cheese icing topped with oreos, and the final one had carmelized apples on top. They turned out delicious considering we pretty much had to wing it! So we ate dinner, threw confetti all over their apartment and headed to Beer House. Confetti is the thing to throw over here, it litters the streets most evenings. I’ve heard it is in celebration leading to Carnivale.

Another developing routine is making dinner with the guys every Thursday before our early field trips on Fridays. This week we traded french toast for biscuits and gravy.

  My second Friday field trip with Marco was to Assisi! I cannot rave enough about how beautiful and fun this little town is. It also happens to be Marco’s hometown so he had many stories to share. First we took a private bus through some of the best landscape I’ve seen yet for the hour and a half drive there. The first stop was St. Francis’ Basilica. This is an awesome church where the tomb of Francis is below the alter to keep it from being robbed. Above the crypt is the lower basilica covered in frescoes that tell the story of his life. Above that is the upper basilica with some of the oldest stained glass in Italy. It is also much brighter inside than most churches of that time. Next we made the trek up to castle. I had so much fun running around in the tunnels and rooms and towers that reminded me of Tunnel Town from my childhood. Another cool thing about Assisi is the color of the stone is more pink than anything else I’ve seen thus far. All in all, a beautiful little town and a great Friday!

The girls at Santa Chiara told us about a chocolate festival happening in Firenze (Florence), so it’s not even a question where we went to the day after our Assisi trip. My first impressions of Firenze were that it was pretty dirty and covered in graffiti (might be because I just witnessed the beauty that is Assisi though). When we finally made our way to the chocolate festival, we witnessed a riot happening in front of Santa Croce. Apparently they were protesting the Prime Minister. Then we met up with the Santa Chiara group, it was so good to see those girls again!

Super Bowl Sunday was a beautiful day in Orvieto! I decided to go for a run around the trail that spirals down our little hilltop town. It was an intense trail but I made it, kind of. My roommate Katie is from Chicago and a huge packers fan so she was bound and determined to find a place to watch the Super Bowl that night. We found that we could get the game on the tv at our house but the picture was fuzzy and bouncing so it was hard to watch. So at halftime we found a little bar that is open 24 hours and turned on the game. So yes, I did miss a good portion of the laser light show by the Black Eyed Peas that I’ve heard so much about. We were up until around 4:30am cheering on the Packers!

The next day we headed to the valley (often referred to as downstairs) to grocery shop at the Coop (instead of Co-Op, Italians pronounce it like my name. Score one to Italia). At the Coop we bought the fixins for a mexican feast which satisfied our cravings for something besides pasta and pizza.

Wednesdays are now referred to as Franca Cake Day because our landlord bakes us a cake/pie while our apartment gets cleaned.  In studio, Katie and I taped the guys’ supplies to the wall and wrapped string around their desks chairs and through their back packs after they messed with Katie’s desk earlier in the day. Revenge. Then the roomies and I made some dinner and went for gelato.

I have a lot of exciting events coming up: tomorrow we are going ‘downstairs’ to a cemetery  with a great view back up at Orvieto, Friday Marco will take us to Firenze, Saturday I go back to Rome for the Roma vs. Napoli soccer game, then Sunday there is a chocolate festival in Perugia.

In case this post isn’t quite long enough here is an interesting tid bit. In Italy, if someone leaves a door open they say, “Do you live at the Coliseum? Shut the Door!” Similar to our expression, “Were you raised in a barn?”

I bet my mom is the only person who made it to the end of this post. Sorry for the novel.

Ciao!

Rachel