Buonasera a tutti! La settimana è finita e io vi dirà tutto su di esso.
While we are only just finished with our second week of classes, the homework is piling up, and I have certainly been keeping busy! I met for a second time with the Ricci Scholars group on Tuesday and received information to get in contact with my project mentor who is an American professor currently teaching English at a local school. She apparently has an interest in the subject of technology - the focus of my project, so I think she will be a fantastic resource and I can't wait to meet with her and actually get started.
In other news, I had class at the Roman Forum Wednesday (you know, the usual). I went for my art class, and I have to say, going there the second time around and actually knowing what a lot of the ruins were was even cooler than the first time. The public buses were absolutely mobbed this week though since school has just started for the Italians, so it was a bit of a hassle getting to and from the campus.
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| Getting to know the ancient runes |
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| Basilica Nova also known as the Basilica of Maxentius also known as the Basilica of Constantine (whew!) |
Wednesday evening the Rome Center celebrated the Mass of the Holy Spirit, which marks the beginning of the school year in Italy. The mass was held at la Chiesa di Sant'Ignazio, the Church of Saint Ignatius in downtown Rome. The school actually reserved the entire church just for us, so we had a really nice, private mass for the Loyola community. And the church was unbelievably beautiful. I wasn't able to take any pictures inside, but just take a look at
this. What's really incredible is that there's actually no dome inside the church, it's just painted to make it look like there is. Apparently the Jesuits ran out of money when they were building it and weren't able to build a dome, but years later, artist Andrea Pozzo, a Jesuit lay brother, painted the ceiling with these extravagant frescoes to provide the appearance of a dome. It was highly convincing to me!
After the mass, some friends and I got together and did a little restaurant hopping until we found a relatively nice (and cheap!) place to eat. I had a dish called penne all'arrabbiata which I thought was funny since arrabbiata means angry (angry pasta). It was actually pretty spicy since there were chili flakes in the seasoning, but it was yummy. We wandered Rome for a little while before heading back to school.
I don't have any recent pictures from this week, but here are a few flashback pictures from the last week or two that I thought I'd share:
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| Piazza Navona - they used to have chariot races here |
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| A night at the Spanish Steps! |
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| More Spanish Steps (there's quite a few of them actually) |
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| Flashback of the Colosseum |
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| Maccarese Beach |
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| Lunch last weekend among the olive trees |
I finally have plans to go see the Vatican museums tomorrow, and I am so excited, so stay tuned!
