Because I knew you...

..I have been changed for good.

I'm pretty sure I'm making this my last post, guys. It's been a pleasure writing to you all and hope someday to be reading about your experiences abroad. Cuz EVERYONE SHOULD STUDY ABROAD. THERE ARE NO EXCEPTIONS TO THIS FACT. Just putting it out there :)

Last couple weeks were filled to the brim with studying, writing papers, and preparing for presentations - all of it went amazingly well and I don't need to bore you with the details lol. We finished school stuffs Thursday (my last exam, Greek, finished around 4:30) and had all of Friday and Saturday to hang out, be sentimental, say our good-byes, and eat our last Roman meals. Thursday night all 15 kids from the dorms went to our favorite restaurant at Vito e Dina to share the most amazing bruschetta, carbonara, and house wine in Italy - the restaurant is super close to the Vatican metro stop at Ottaviano and I highly, highly recommend it to anyone who visits the area. Friday I spent babysitting for our professors (who themselves had a final faculty dinner) and generally napping/packing during the day. Saturday, I went to St. Peter's to do my own little good-bye and walked a bit around the area. That night was the final mass in the St. John's chapel followed by a group dinner at a beautiful high-class restaurant. We had a couple speeches, enjoyed amazing food, and got to say good-bye to everyone - and by "everyone" I mean all the students and program faculty, as well as the host families of those who did not stay in the dorm, the Italian teachers from Italiaidea, and the seminarians from the NAC who were with us all semester. The good-byes were a little painful but we assured each other that we would stay in touch and absolutely visit the other campuses (definitely getting to Loyola. I will find a way) next semester. That night was back to the dorm and packing before our early flights.   Rome, I am going to miss you. I am SUPER happy to be home, back to the world where everyone speaks English and no one shoves flowers for sale in my face, but I will definitely miss you :)

Thought I'd end this blog with a quick list of favorites. And yes this needs to be broken down into this many categories because if you asked what my favorite "thing" was about studying abroad, I will just stare at you. No one word answer to that question :)

Favorite 3 places within Rome: Ara Pacis (altar of Augustan peace), Roman Forum, Roof of the Castel Sant'Angelo (view of everything)
Favorite 2 experiences: The first time I walked into St. Peter's/the Vatican, and seeing the POPE!
Favorite trip with the program as a whole: Tuscany
Favorite place visited with the program outside Rome: Pompei
Favorite trip outside the program: Greece
Favorite place on that trip: Acropolis
Favorite food: Mozzarella cheese, from the Buffalo Farm
Favorite Italian restaurant: Vito e Dina
Favorite type of gelato: Fragola (strawberry) and Nutella, covered with dark chocolate (obtained from Frigidarium Gelateria, near Abbey Theatre by Piazza Navona)
Best wine: Chianti 
Favorite Church: Santa Maria Sopra Minerva
Favorite souvenir: Horse statue of glass from Murano
Favorite Picture taken:

Tuscan Sunset

Thanks for reading everyone!!

Churches Visited in Rome

Ciao Ragazzi!

I am now blogging from my ever-so-comfortable couch at my home in New York! The plane ride back was beautiful - managed to sleep about 6-7 hours out of the possible 10 in the air :)

I'll comment more thoroughly on my experiences the last few weeks in the next post, as well as put up a little list of "favorite stuff" done to close out this blog. For here, I just wanted to give you all the list of churches I visited in Rome (a list I've been keeping since August). Of course I was hoping this list was going to be MUCH longer, but honestly, I'm proud of the ones i got to. I was not in the Theology class this semester the whole goal of which was to visit and study churches (so none of these were visited by necessity), and also my original plan was to go to a different church every week but quickly discovered that most of my weekends aka Sundays were going to be spent in other Italian cities or countries. And I kept this to just Rome. So anyway, here's the list - hope a few sound interesting enough to google! They were all beautiful :)

1. St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican – *Papal Basilica

2. San Giovanni (St. John Lateran) – *Papal Basilica, Cathedral of Rome

3. Santa Maria Maggiore - *Papal Basilica

4. St. Paul’s Outside the Wall - *Papal Basilica

5. St. Sebastian, Via Appia – Catacombs of the early Christians

6. Santa Susanna

7. Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri

8. Santa Maria in Vallicella, “Chiesa Nuova”

9. Centro San Lorenzo – World Youth Day Centre and Cross

10. Il Convento dei Cappuccini – Ossuary Crypt

11. Basilica dei SS. Ambrogio e Carlo

12. Basilica Parrocchia S. Giacomo in Augusta

13. Gesu e Maria al Corso

14. Santa Maria dei Miracoli

15. Basilica Parrocchiale S. Maria Del Popolo

16. San Luigi dei Francesi

17. Basilica San Eustachio

18. San Ignazio di Loyola

19. Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, AWC portrait and body of St. Catherine

20. Santa Maria dei Martiri, Pantheon

21. San Spirito in Sassia, St. Dominic’s Orange Tree and earliest crucifixion depiction

22. Chiesa del Collegio Leoniano

23. Santa Maria in Cosmedin, Mouth of Truth

24. Trinita’ dei Monti, top of Spanish steps

25. Basilica di Santa Cecilia in Trastevere

26. San Rocco All’Augusteo, by the Ara Pacis

27. Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, fragments of Jesus’ cross

28. Trinita dei Pellegrini

29. Basilica di San Clemente

Paestum

Saturday the group got the chance to split off and do as each pleased. A large majority went to Capri, an absolutely beautiful island off the coast of Italy, but I (being the nerd I am) joined 10-15 others on a trip to Paestum, a town founded by the Greeks in antiquity. The town today holds 3 amazingly well preserved Doric temples and the remains of some theatres and other buildings.

We got back around 4pm or so, then spent the afternoon hanging out at our hotel in Sorrento. That night we went to mass, had dinner, and attended a musical performance! It was thoroughly entertaining, with awesome dancers/singers and a nice simple plot for those of us who didn't know Italian :)

To wrap up the weekend, just a quick note on Sunday's events. We left our hotel in Sorrento early morning and went to the city of Naples itself. Gotta say, not my favorite city - it was super dirty/crowded and as a result we couldn't actually get anywhere or do anything. I think this was because it was "black friday" weekend (it happens in Italy too..), so it was all just a product of bad timing. But regardless, we did get to have pizza there - and pizza was originated in Naples. So it was delicious. Much more so than anywhere else ever.

this was Naples..

...and this was the view from our hotel. Put here randomly so that I don't end this post on a bad note :)

Ciao!!!

Pompei

Friday. That was the best day of the entire trip.

First stop - the Archaeological Museum! Huge, huge collection of daily life objects from the ancient city of Pompei, and in case you need a briefing: this is the city that in 79AD was buried under 6 meters of ash and rock from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Everything was super well preserved (including carbon based things such as people, bread, animals - which were "preserved" in the form of cavities that were filled with plaster) and so this city gives classics scholars an enormous amount of info for daily life in the Roman Empire.

musical instruments - pipes, castanets

cosmetic supplies

bowls etc.

Strigil!!!! If you know what that is, you are an awesome person

Cave Canem :)

From there we went to the site of Pompei itself! We walked around the ancient streets, visited the ancient houses and theatres, saw the ancient artwork, studied some ancient people (literally), and soaked in the ancient awesomeness.

speaking of 'cave canem,' there were some dogs that followed our group the whole time we were there..

one of the rooms of a house, everything was well painted/decorated in the ancient world

atrium of a house, the "impluvium" was the basin under the hole in the roof of the atrium for catching rainwater

theatre :)

painting of venus behind a houses' garden

Cornelius Pompeius Mortuus Plasterus

Buffalo Farm

Ciao!!

This past weekend was spent touring the area of Naples! We left Thursday morning to visit a Buffalo Mozzarella Farm and to have a Thanksgiving Day country lunch, Friday was the Archaeological Museum and Pompei, Saturday was Paestum, and Sunday was the city of Naples itself. It was a long, relaxing, and super fun weekend :)    I'll need a solid 3 posts to cover it all..

The buffalo farm was exactly what you might picture in your head - it was a factory for mozzarella cheese with a huge area in the back for all the animals. The cheese is made fresh everyday and quickly shipped out to the surrounding area (I say 'quickly' because mozzarella lasts only about 4 days after being made..and each day it goes down in quality. The cheese we had for lunch that day was literally made hours before we ate it...and it was the BEST I have ever had. Just saying.) We got to tour the factory and watch as the workers finished packing the mozzarella in saltwater bags, then went to the back to visit the buffalo (including the mommy milk-producing buffalo, the bulls, and the babies..), as well as the donkeys, horses, pigs, birds of every kind, and jack rabbits. Pictures below!

Last note is that after all this, we got to have our Thanksgiving Lunch in the factory's restaurant. I'm very sure I have never eaten that much in one meal in my life - it was a solid 2 1/2 hour meal, with a huge plate of appetizers (mozzarella as far as the eye can see..and meat..and bread..and other things the names of which i do not know), then pasta, then an actual meat/vegetable dish, then fruit, then dessert. It was ridiculous. And awesome.

Assisi

Last Saturday, a group of us accompanied by some families took the train to Assisi, the home of St. Francis and the Franciscan Order! We got the chance to visit four of the major churches in the town - Santa Maria degli Angeli, Basilica Papale di San Francesco, Santa Chiara, and San Damiano - and to look at the amazing view of the surrounding region :)

Family Week

Ciao Ragazzi,

Yesterday marked the end of family week here in Rome! Now my daddy actually visited me two weeks ago for our own little adventures around Rome and Florence (SOO much fun!), so this past week I got to spend with friends joining on to the various activities the program hosted around here for other student families. The week began last Saturday with a day trip to Assisi (see next post) and ended yesterday with a day trip to Florence :)

Monday: Visit to the Vatican Museums. Made up of 12 separate museums and 13 'palaces' including the Sistine Chapel, Borgia Apartments, and numerous galleries, info from their website ( http://mv.vatican.va/3_EN/pages/z-Info/MV_Info_Settori.html )
Our program director got us all headsets and gave the mini-tour himself...I say mini because we got through 'only' 5 or 6 of the museums and the Sistine Chapel. This is one of those places that would literally take days to see. These are the a few of the pictures I was allowed to get:

Vatican Gardens

Laocoon and His Sons

Transfiguration, by Raphael

Tuesday: Inside the Colosseum! I've seen the outside of this thing about a hundred times since getting to Rome and was SO excited to finally see the interior! Again we got headsets for the 70+ students/family and the history and tour given jointly by my Roman History and Roman Art and Architecture professors

Even Ancient Romans were big on graffiti..these are etches on the colosseum walls made 2000 years ago

Wednesday: PAPAL AUDIENCE. Enough said :)

Thursday/Friday: No major events such as the above. Thursday we visited the Baths of Caracalla in the morning with Roman Art and Architecture (no family attended, it was a regular class), and we did the Ara Pacis in the afternoon with some classics friends for Greek. Friday my Christology class went to the Galleria Doria Pamphilj (still cannot pronounce) to look at some Baroque Art.

All in all...very, VERY busy week, but no complaints here :)