Alrighty, so Italian class started this week. So far, its alright. My teacher just laughs at us whenever we butcher her language, which kinda makes me think that it'll be a pretty easy A, but we'll see. On Monday we had a welcome dinner for Everyone in the program. Food was iffy, but tirimisu was pretty good. Tuesday we went to the Opera. We saw Tosca which is set in Rome. It was kinda cool to be watching an Opera in Rome about Rome. I don't know--I've kinda gotten used to living here. It just fits, especially traveling all over Europe for a month prior. I don't think it would have mattered where I stopped, just the act of not moving around so much feels like home. Even so, being at the Opera was very surreal. I would have never gone if I wasn't here. It really made me step back and be like, "damn, I'm in Rome". Thursday we went to Aperitivo. It's like the Italian equivalent to happy hour except that its not about alcohol (since they don't really get drunk). You go to an aperitivo place and pay for your drink--the place we went was 5 euro for a wine and I got a mohito for 8. But with that ridiculously expensive drink comes a free buffet style snack meal. They had pasta, soup, veggies, rice, chicken, etc. A pretty sweet deal, especially given that drinks in Italy cost that much already without a drink AND you can keep on going back for food as many times as you'd like. Last night after swearing we were gonna stay in and rest since we had to get up at 6 this morning, we went out to a club. Art Cafe. It has (I think) 4 rooms all with different music styles in them--so a hip hop room, an oldies, etc. So much fun. EVEN though there were a couple of creepy old guys there. There was this one older guy--like 50 some-odd that I kept on seeing with his pot-belly hanging over the railing, ew. I've never been to a club before cos I'm not yet 21, so it was definitively a good way to be introduced to the club scene.
Today we went to Orvieto, a small town in the Umbria region. After coming home late from the club last night, we only got about 1.5-2 hours of sleep, so I'm totally drained. So, what is there to do in Orvieto? The town now lies on what way once an Etruscan town--so we saw some tombs from something like 600 BC. Crazy stuff. We got to walk inside of them, which was pretty cool. They also have a museum with many artifacts that were found in and around the town, including some ancient frescoes. Orvieto has a beautiful duomo, with this absolutely crazy chapel with fescoes depicting the end of the world, the resurrection of the dead, Paradise and Hell by Luca Signorelli. Seriously, Google search it, because it was really cool. Also underneath the town they have all these man-made caves dug out that we got to go into. Mostly today they are wine cellars, but they started digging them in the time of the Etruscans--and they held pigeons in them for food. It was really nice to get out of the big city and see a more authentic Italian town (aka not overrun by tourists). Orvieto is known for its wine, so Ingrid and I both bought 3 bottles and we're hoping its as good as its supposed to be.
Lastly, our break trip is (partly) bought! Partly because we have only bought the flights, not yet the lodging. But...here's the breakdown: Ingrid and I head off to Copenhagen for 2 days while our other apartment mates are either in London or Paris. Then we all meet up in Amsterdam for 2 days, and then 4 of us head over to Barcelona for 4 days. So if anyone out there reading this has been to any of these places and have suggestions of things to do, see, eat, etc. let me know. I'm really excited for the break. And tomorrow we are going to Sunday mass at the Vatican and then going shopping. Yay!
p.s. I posted a lot of pictures from the program thus far on Snapfish. I don't yet have Orvieto or any pictures from the club up, but I'll try to get them up in the next couple of days
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