Winding down

04/25/11, 04/26/11, 04/27/11, 04/28/11, 04/29/11

     Because of the holiday weekend, we had Monday off classes, but yet again, the weather was uncooperative. Therefore, the three of us who were home took the day to do yet more schoolwork. The nice thing about being abroad is there is very little work to do over the course of the semester. The downfall about it is that it piles up at the end and makes you stressed out when you should be enjoying your final weeks in a foreign place. Either way, being in Rome able to work on homework over the weekend was helpful. 

     Tuesday was a long day as usual. I had two Layers of Rome classes this week because the lecture the following week was cancelled due to our professor having a doctor’s appointment after breaking his arm. Tuesday morning we had to meet at Piazza del Popolo at 9:10. There is no easy way to get there so we had to leave extra early to ensure we got there on time. Luckily, we were early so a group of us got cappuccinos before the start of class. The focus of that lecture was streets, piazzas, and town planning. We talked about Piazza del Popolo, Piazza di Spagna, and then walked over to the Trevi Fountain and discussed its evolution. Following this class and Italian, my group had to meet with the people we film with for our Food & Media video for two hours and talk about which clips we liked from our footage and which we did not. This was to help prepare us and save time for the following day of editing. 

Spanish Steps in the spring

      Tuesday night, my group went to the restaurant where we filmed our project at, Trattoria der Pallero, for dinner. It was a unique experience in the sense that you don’t get to pick what you want to eat, but rather they bring you every course depending on what is fresh at the markets that day. We were served a mass amount of food. We started with antipasta, which consisted of: lentils, bread, salami, prosciutto, olives, and fried rice/fried meatballs. Then came the second course, a little bit of pasta with carbonara and pasta with an al’arrabiata sauce. When it came time for the second plate, there were two forms of veal, spinach, homemade potato chips, and artichoke brought out. I don’t like veal, but I still tried it, but mainly ate the vegetables. The artichoke was the best I’ve had yet. For dessert, we were brought lemon cake. The whole time, we were served wine as well. We had an incredible amount of food for the price we paid. This was probably my favorite meal I’ve had in Rome yet.    

Lentils

Prosciutto, Salami & Bread

Fried Rice & Meatballs

The two different pastas

Mozzarella balls & homemade potato chips

Second Dish

Lemon Dessert Cake

      Wednesday brought a long day for me. We were to edit in the studio from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Knowing I know very little about editing, I didn’t know how big of a help I was going to be so I was concerned. Of course, the bus to get there was late and took 16 stops to get there so we were nearly a half an hour late, but there was nothing we could do about it. When we finally found the studio, they were waiting for us outside, eager to get started. As it turned out, one of our teachers is really great at the editing program and he was doing all the editing, we just told him how we wanted it to look. Basically, we chose which shots to put where, how long for each shot to go, what music we wanted, etc. It was neat to see how quickly it progressed and the fact that we finished the entire video in one short (but incredibly long) day! We stayed a little late so that we could pick out some blooper footage for the end. By the time we got home after taking the bus it was about 7:30 p.m. I was ready to go to bed, but knowing how little time I have left abroad and the fact that all my roommates were going out, I decided to join them. Christina’s cousin and friend were in town so we took them, along with her dad, to our favorite Wednesday night place, La Maison. It was a fun night, as usual. 

      Thursday morning came quicker than I would have liked and it was again time for another Layers of Rome class. Thankfully, this week we met at a location much closer to us, Piazza Venezia. We were talking about the monument for Vittorio Emanuele, which was built post-unification for the death of all the unnamed soldiers. This class wasn’t very long, but we focused on this building, as well as the building of the piazza at the top of the Capital Hill done by Michelangelo. It was up here that there is first evidence of using a double-sided staircase, which I found to be an interesting fact. The remainder of the class was dedicated to review/practice for the final. Thursday night I was exhausted so I went to bed early. Christina left for Amalfi Coast on Thursday with her family and Gina left for London Thursday with her family. 

View from Capital Hill

Piazza by Michelangelo at the top of Capital Hill

     On Friday, I went with Lauren, Kelly, Andrew, and Alex to purchase our tickets for the following day to Cinque Terre. It was a nice day out so we decided to go lay at Tiber Island for a bit, before going to get gelato. As the day progressed, we finally headed back home to eat dinner, pack, and get to bed early before waking up at the crack of dawn the following morning to catch our train!