Unofficial in Rome!

03/04/11

     Friday started with a field trip to a television studio for our Food & Media class. According to our schedule, it was supposed to be from 9-4, which doesn’t sound like the greatest of afternoons. As it turned out, we actually didn’t have to meet at the train station until 10 and by the end of the day we spent more time traveling than in the studio itself. We arrived on set at about 11:30 after taking the tram and metro over. Once there, we split into groups and took turns taking a tour of the facilities and getting the chance to watch one of their television shows be recorded first hand. Although I’m not sure of the exact name of the show, it is a combination of a cooking show and a talk show. The day we visited we got the chance to see two guests, one a book writer and the other a prior Miss Italy. Miss Italy was stunning in real life (on screen too, of course!), but we learned how there was a lot of controversy in her claiming the title of Miss Italy because she wasn’t technically born in Italy and is of African American decent. Either way, it was cool to get to see her and say ciao! We sat in the production studio while they filmed it so I got a chance to see how one person is responsible for microphones/sound, one in charge of camera angles, one for switching from camera to camera and one is the director. It was neat to see all of this happening in one place and recognizing how much truly goes into creating a TV show. I never really think about this when just flipping through channels, but it makes me appreciate them a lot more now! 

     Immediately after the TV Studio visit, all 32 students in my program planned to go home and then start our “Unofficial Pub Crawl” an hour from the time we got back to our apartment. For anyone who doesn’t know, Unofficial is something students at U of I celebrate every year a couple weeks before St. Patrick’s day (an unofficial St. Patty’s Day) where students skip class, wear all green, and it’s a big party all day long. Considering this is one of every students favorite days on campus, many of us abroad were sad to miss out on the occasion so we wanted to create our own! Therefore, everyone in my program dressed up in as much green as we packed—I packed surprisingly little green and had to borrow from my roommates—and got together to go to the various Irish pubs across Rome. We met down in the lobby at 4:30 and went on our way. Our program director knew of the holiday and warned us to behave ourselves and act in an appropriate way, but I’m pretty sure we did everything she wouldn’t have wanted us to do. We were loud and obnoxious on the tram playing games as we went. As we walked to our first stop (Highlanders), we walked around with half of the program chanting I-L-L followed by the other half chanting I-N-I. Looking at the faces of all the Italians surrounding us made my night that much better. 

     We paused quickly to take a picture of ourselves in front of the Pantheon in all green on our way to the first bar. Highlanders was the perfect place to start as it was 10 Euro all you can drink, wine and beer, for an hour. Plus, they had two large beer pong tables and plenty other tables to gather around giving us the feeling that we were back on campus in a fraternity house.  We drank Carlsberg beer, the first time I’d drank it but I couldn’t think of a better occasion to try it and I liked it a lot! From Highlanders, we skipped the other bars and went straight to Scholars for the remainder of the night. My roommates and I went home at 9 knowing we had to get up veryyyy early the following morning to catch our flight to Venice.

My roommates and I in front of the Trevi Fountain in between pubs