I hope y'all don't mind if I combine two days into one day (or maybe it was a day and a half?)...because I thought there was only one day, but apparently I haven't blogged on two? So...yeah. I swear if I wasn't taking notes, I'd have no clue what was going on. Talk about educational immersion!!! Which was what I was looking for when I went on this trip, but still...it's a little overwhelming.
Okay! Let me show you what a sample of my notes looks like:
As you can see, they're a conglomeration of quotes, moments, notes, and other weird things that come up. I can't write fast enough! There's just so much going on.
We got up early to climb a hill to go to Trastevere. We were going to San Crisogono and Santa Cecilia, right? I failed to mention that we climbed a mountain. Like...seriously CLIMBED A MOUNTAIN to get there. And since we'd gotten back so late from the Colosseum the night before, I thought I'd bring my backpack on the trip, you know, to get some work done during our short breaks or something.
Ever climbed a mountain with a twenty-pound weight around your body? That's what I did. I almost cried when I had to show the St. John's security guy my ID...which was at the very bottom of my backpack. My torso was screaming.
On a brighter note, I'm definitely losing weight. I can see it in my face and on my arms. Goodness. It hasn't even been a week.
Here are some pictures from the top of the hill. It's beautiful. :)
I've said it before, but seriously, the flowers are some of my favorite things in Italy. There's just so much more of a connection with the natural world here than there is back in the US. Even the stone, which sometimes grates me (no pun intended) because it kind of eats up the pretty grass and trees and flowers, is awesomecakes (that's a word). It's more natural than cement, though I guess the thing is that since I live in the city, I don't really get to see the potential of a landscape to look all natural and pretty.
Then again, Houston was referred to by its earliest settlers as "the most miserable place in the world," and New Orleans is, well, a swamp.
The point of that rant was that I took pictures with flowers and you can see them!
On the way back from Trastevere, I saw bunnies!
LOOK AT THEM THEY ARE SO CUTE I LOVE THEM SO MUCH I WANT ONE I WANT SEVEN I WANT BUNNIES.
Here's some extra pictures from Santa Cecilia. I'm so excited because on this trip, I got to visit her, and there was this shrine to St. Lucy in...I think it was Maria del Populo, but I'm not sure. I used to pray to St. Cecilia because she's the patron saint of music to help give me courage to sing in front of people. I loved to sing when I was little but was very self-conscious. I got over that. :P I also used to pray to St. Lucy because my eyes started deteriorating around third grade and around fifth grade, they began to deteriorate really fast. And I just kept praying because I didn't want to have surgery or end up blind or something. My eyes finally leveled off. I believe the praying had something to do with it. This trip to Rome for me is kind of a faith journey as well as an academic one. It's a different taste in my mouth. Kind of like some of the more different (relative to me) kinds of gelato.
Let's move on to today. Or yesterday. Whatever. We got up very early again to go to the Vatican to observe the outside parts of it--we're not going insideinside (aka the crypt) until a few days from now. After lots of craziness with the dress code (a quotes page is coming, but not tonight, but soon I promise!!!), we headed to the Vatican to ascend to the top of St. Peter's Basilica. On the way, Jacob informed us that he had this awful blister on the bottom of his foot (an understatement--I seriously don't know how he was walking) and he was having trouble getting the Italian pharmacy to give him things for it. Apparently they all stock beauty cream. Oy. Dr. Bednarz and Elizabeth helped him out with that, and he stayed behind to rest as the rest of us went to the Vatican.
OH MY SHINY STARS. You know how big that basilica looks? That's because it is. Big. Huge. Ginormous. It was about eight hundred steps up to the top, and some of the stairwells leaned or got very narrow or winded (or some sick combination of all three). We climbed and climbed and climbed and made it to the top! And wow, is Rome beautiful!
We saw some lovely Nigerian women in line, and yes, this is where everyone hurried to cover their knees and shoulders. Reminded me of Catholic grade and high school all over again. :P I wore a maxi dress but covered my shoulders with a shawl (so I'm not as classy as I look--merely trying to hide my shoulders). Kristin put her leggings on in line. Dr. Sebastian zipped his convertible pants on (don't ask). And we were ready to go.
By the way, those stairs where it looks like I'm leaning? I'm not. The STAIRCASE is leaning. We all got a 101 class in Mindtrickery. Also, we got inside the huge dome of St. Peter's and outside onto this lovely veranda. But that wasn't all the stairs. We had more to go.
And seriously, if you're physically able and go and get this opportunity, don't be a pansy. Take the stairs. It's an experience.
Going back down was easier, in Lauren's opinion. I reminded her that it was worse because we got to see how far and how steep a fall we'd have to go if something happened, and she told me to shut up. :P
We had class on top of St. Peter's.
Let me repeat that.
We had class. On top of St. Peter's.
Today was my favorite day of class so far. Things finally started making sense! I did lots of research and asked lots of questions, and I may finally be getting the hang of this thing, which is good because as you can see from my entries before, I was freaking out. We learned quite a bit about the Old Testament and ways in which Roman pagan culture (which evolved from Persian/Etruscan pagan culture, which evolved from something else) was assimilated into early Christian culture.
- Allison gave us a review of columns so we could keep a look out for them on our travels: doric, ionic, and corinthian
- The remains of what we think is St. Peter was found in a wall wrapped in a purple cloth, which was definitely a discrepancy. There was a mark that said that Peter was there, and there were no foot bones.
- John almost didn't make it into the New Testament (I never knew this)
- Jews were not monotheistic--Yahweh was kind of like a high god, and his wife was Asherah. She was eventually written out then came back in as the Queen of Heaven, which later turned into Mary. Wow.
- The fish was the earliest symbol of the Church. The cross wasn't used until the 4th century CE (but then again, wouldn't you not use a sign of execution as your logo?)
- The Roman lares and penates were integrated into Christianity in the form of saints (and arguably, guardian angels). COOL.
I also got the opportunity to go to mass in St. Peter's today. I don't know how to describe that. It was beautiful--the church was. And then the fact that all these people were crowded in there trying to go to mass was beautiful. My favorite part was when we started to say the Our Father (and for the most part, people were following along with the mass parts in their native languages because they were familiar with the mass parts), and our group is saying it in English. The lady behind me is saying it in Spanish. About three people to the right of me are saying it in French, and over all this, the priest's saying it in Italian. It's the Catholic Church for the reason. It's universal. I was very happy and very struck by the beauty of such a thing.
Also, I need to learn more languages. This needs to happen.
Dr. Sebastian gave us a delightful lecture about Nicholas III and Jacopone da Todi, which was all about clarifying the rules of Franciscans in terms of poverty. I love the poetry, and I've mentioned this before, but now that I'm getting into the imagery of the whole thing, it does seem to be a very nice conglomeration of lots of things. I'll probably post on that more later when I get more into it.
We tried to get the kitchen today to make dinner (you can get spaghetti-making materials really cheap here), but the kitchen was out. We're going to try and use it tomorrow, as well as do laundry. Hopefully, if the food goes well, we can integrate meat and vegetables (cooked of course because of the E. coli outbreak), and hopefully eat well for a lot less money that we can spend on other things.
One last thing! Antonia and I have made a list of places we want to visit. Here's mine, which is a lot like hers but a little different (but she's going to be taking me everywhere because I don't have Rome quite figured out yet, so yeah, this makes sense):
- Playground!
- Gardens
- Piazza Navona
- Campo di Fiori
- Trastevere (at night)
- Maria de Trastevere
- Spanish Steps
- Cheap Gelato place (we spotted this the other day)
- Sant' Francesco Arippa (Assisi)
More will probably be added. We need to get our rest and energy up so that we can go exploring, now that the school thing seems to be working out. :)
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