Days go by

02/28/11, 03/01/11, 03/02/11, 03/03/11

     Tuesday started early with our Layers of Rome class, this week we were going to Villa Farnesia, This is the first attempt post-renaissance to create a Roman Villa similar to those during the classical period. The majority of the class was focused on the artwork within the villa, much of which was done by Raphael or his associates. My favorite room in the house was the dining room upstairs where it was painted to look as though it was situated outside with columns painted on the wall and the floors are painted on the wall to look as though it continues. The view shows what you would be able to see throughout Rome if the walls weren’t there. 

Painting by Raphael

Painting by Sebastiano del Piombo

The "Outdoor" Room

     Later that day, we had to meet with the Italian students we are matched with to help discuss ideas for our video project that is due at the end of the semester focused on some aspect of food and culture in Italy. Our group decided on fresh markets and to focus on restaurants that only use fresh food versus the many restaurants in America that have food stocked in their storage and shipped in on trucks. I think this will be a very interesting topic especially because fresh markets seem to be slowly dying out even in Italy. While there used to be one in nearly every neighborhood, now only two main ones exist because of the increase in number of supermarkets. 

     Yesterday and today (Wednesday and Thursday), I had my first two oral exams for my Italian class and they wound up going well! They had to be between 3-5 minutes and with how short of a time period I’ve been taking the language, I used nearly every word I knew somewhere in my presentation! Wednesday night a group of us went out to an area called Testaccio to a club called Coyote. We all enjoyed a night out dancing and meeting new people. Today, I’m staying in to catch up on everything that needs to be done before we leave for yet another weekend to Venice for Carnival! But first, tomorrow we have a Rome version of U of I’s unofficial St. Patrick’s Day (which is actually tomorrow at school as well) by doing an Irish Pub crawl tomorrow night!