Vado a Venezia per Carnivale!!

Okay, a re-cap of this past week...

On Sunday my apartment mates and I went to mass at the Vatican. Crazy stuff. It was really beautiful. When they were doing communion, I went up--to be blessed but not to take communion since I'm not Catholic. You symbolize this by bowing your head and crossing your arms across your chest, with hands on the shoulders. This was my first mass, and during it I just kept on thinking that if I'm ever going to become a more spiritual person this (being Rome) is the place to do it. Even though something like 95% of Italians are Roman Catholic, Rome is such a big city, there are places of worship for all religions. And not only are there so many churches, temples, etc. but they are all beautiful beyond belief.

On Monday we watched a political documentary. This has definitely got me more interested in Italian politics. Especially in the wake of Italy's Prime Minister loosing the confidence vote and resigning. Italy's political future will be decided in the next couple of weeks when they either set up an interim government with the goal of reforming outdated and corrupt laws OR elections will be held and most likely Berlusconi will win (that's what the polls show). And we don't want Berlusconi to win. It's interesting to be here when all of this is going down.

Anyways, we also had our cooking class this week--and watch out, I got some new bomb dishes to cook when I get back. I'm gonna try to take other cooking classes later in the quarter as well. On Thursday we went to the Vatican gardens--this usually costs money and you need to have a guide--who keeps a close eye on you. Somehow our landlord got us in for free without any supervision (rumor is he's connected to the mafia, but who knows?) Actually, related to that, is that our landlord told my apartment mate that he was friends with the old pope, that he was on the national soccer time here, and we have also been told by the people who were here last quarter that he throws a big party for us with the Swiss Guards. Weird stuff. Anyways--the Vatican gardens were alright. Nothing really special. It was just special that we were there, but there wasn't much to see.

Tomorrow we wake up early and go to Venice for Carnival. I'm really excited. I'll post when I get back.