It's The Little Things...

I've just spent the last week being rather sick, so regrettably I haven't been able to get out much. I was just so frustrated and then I realized that I have reached the half-way point in my study abroad program. Then my brain just started whirring. Holy cow, I'm almost done here and what have I accomplished? My Italian isn't as good as thought it would be by now. I haven't gone as many places as I intended to by this point. How on Earth am I supposed to go back to living in California after this? Am I really experiencing and appreciating every moment of this trip. And on and on...

But then I was able to talk to some of my friends from the States (Elaina, Olivia, David, etc.) 

and when telling them about my recent adventures and the ones that are upcoming - Budapest, Bucharest, and Transylvania - I realized that I am making the most of this. I'm doing what I want to do in the ways I want to do them. I didn't want this trip to be a whirlwind tour of Europe where I spent a day or two in massive cities. I wanted to integrate myself into Roma. I wanted to learn about customs, gesticulations, and places that only Roma has. As much as I want to travel the world I also want to know it intimately. It really boils down to my 'be a traveler not a tourist' campaign. 

I've decided to start planning little weekend excursions to places in Italy and working on my Italian a bit harder. But as for now I am completely content adhering to the Italian idea of 'la dolce far niente' - the sweetness of doing nothing. So I am sitting in my kitchen eating some delicious grapes - their skins burst in my mouth and I am overcome with a sweet, refreshing but also slightly tart flavor that makes me think I can taste the sunshine on them - and I am reading my first birthday card. It's from my paternal grandparents whom I adore. It says, 'Do what Granny does on her birthday... get "gussied up" and give it your best shot!' It shows an old lady with a rifle which reminds me of my Great Grandma (Gigi) Brown. My dad told me how she used to take an air rifle and pump it a few times before shooting BBs at the squirrels in her backyard. More importantly it is a reference to how my Grandpa Peterson took me out and taught me how to shoot a rifle... which I picked up rather well. I spent a week of my summer spending time with them. It was wonderful. Sometimes I'm amazed by my family. Their ability to love me so much after a lot of the rougher parts of my life is incredible. But I guess that's what family is supposed to be for... to love you unconditionally. They collectively teach me everyday how to be a better person and push me to go after what I want. The only reason I'm here is because of all of their love and support. I know, I'm getting sappy, but what's a girl to do? It's not everyday she realizes that she's where she's supposed to be doing exactly what fate intended her to do. I am so grateful for being privileged enough to be able to study here in Rome while at the same time having my family's unfailing support.

I am amazed that this made it through the Italian postal system!

If anyone has any tips on Hungary or Romania of just wants to say hello, leave a comment!

I'm spending my birthday in Budapest and Halloween in Translyvania!!

Just reached over 700 views!

I feel kind of accomplished!

As much as I'd like to think that people actually read this, I know there is really only one thing to say...

thanks mom.

Side note: worst best song to get stuck in your head - here

Castel Sant'Angelo and a Night at the Museums!

This past weekend I went out to Castel Sant'Angelo, St. Peter's Basilica, the Pantheon, Piazza Navona, Trevi Fountain, and the Capitoline Museums. I ended up going to Castel Sant'Angelo twice... Primarily because I adore it, but also because my friends needed a tour guide of sorts. Yes, when I end up in places that I have historical or art historical information on I turn into tour guide barbie. 

I had all of the dirt on Castel Sant'Angelo (archeology pun! don't judge me) and so I told my friends of the tumultuous history of the place. It was originally built as the mausoleum for Emperor Hadrian, who was one of the 'Good Emperors' and held his ashes and the ashes of his wife. But it was sacked by the Visigoths in the 410 and the cremation urns were smashed and the ashes scattered. 

After a long period of disuse and having its marble used in other building projects the now stripped down mausoleum would be put back into use by Pope Nicholas III. He turned it into a fortress for his Holiness to use during times of trouble. It received it's name from a sculpture of the archangel Michael by Rafaello da Montelupo - which was later replaced by the one that now stands atop the keep by Peter Anton ver Verschaffelt. Pope Nicholas also built il Passetto di Borgo - a secret passageway leading directly from Castel Sant'Angelo to the papal palace within the Vatican walls. Castel Sant'Angelo was a favorite of Pope Alexander VI (Rodrigo) Borgia in the 15th century. I am fascinated by the Borgias. If you have any free time and a love for history and scheming watch Showtime's The Borgias. It's wonderful and Jeffery Irons plays Pope Alexander VI. 

The castle also functioned as a prison for the papal state. From the upper levels one could see how it was utilized as the Pope's lavish escape from prying eyes - especially when he was having a tryst with Julia Farnese. But as you go lower you can see that it really served more militaristic purposes. There are murder holes everywhere, turrets for the cannon (which at the time were a new weapon in europe), and ballistae. In a time when Italy was not united and France was marching through the country to take its 'rightful' claim over the Kingdom of Naples after having sacked a few cities on its way down and the fanatic Savonarola was leading a religious and social movement banning displays of wealth and having a Bonfire of the Vanities (which burnt some amazing Florentine paintings of the Renaissance) Rome needed to be able to defend itself - or at least the Pope. It definitely served its purpose.

Later on the Ponte Sant'Angelo (the bridge that leads to the castle) was decorated with angels designed by Bernini. Two of them are said to have been sculpted only by his hands, but unfortunately we don't know which two. These angels are magnificently beautiful and provide a divine experience for any walking towards the castle.

Alright, here is where I confess to being a huge nerd... So I got hooked on Assassin's Creed II when I saw my younger brother playing it. I had never realized that it took place in Renaissance Italy, and even the cities were laid out exactly like they are in real life. I could find my way around cities I had previously visited easily. And then you get to interact with famous historical figures, for example Leonardo da Vinci is your buddy who occasionally hooks you up with his 'inventions' like hidden handguns and nifty gliders. I just really appreciate the fact that there are people out there who are stealthily educating the children of the video game era. You meet Borgias, Medicis, and even Machiavelli. Plus, the free-running mode is insane - it allows you to scale buildings and leap rooftops like a renaissance spiderman. So, as I'm walking around Castel Sant'Angelo for the first time I am having an incredible moment of dejá vu. I know where I am.... I've been here before... I've scaled these walls... I tried to assassinate Cesare and Lucrezia Borgia here... Wait. What? Oh yeah, not real life. Just a ridiculously architecturally accurate game. 

So instead of forcing more historical knowledge on you than you ever wanted, I will instead post photos with small captions for your sanity and mine.

A model of Hadrian's mausoleum.

Destruction wrought by time.

A bust of the Emperor Hadrian.

A defaced bust... but I swear it's Voldemort.

Me and Stephanie on the Ponte Sant'Angelo.

Loggia of Pope Julius II over inscription by Pope Alexander VI.

Ponte San'tAngelo

Saint Michael the Archangel by Verschaffelt

Climbing up inside the castle.

An area of original flooring.

Inside the walls.

A courtyard  with the original statue of St. Michael the Archangel

Beautiful view of my favorite city.

Ponte Sant'Angelo

Atop the walls

The lavish upper apartments.

The park below.

There's even a café

Guard supply room.

Really high up murder hole.

Ballista

Roma!

The view of St. Peter's from the Castel

Me with a killer view of Rome.

The next night Rome had a bunch of museums open for free between 7pm and 2 am. If that's not my dream come true I don't know what is. The best part is that only the locals seemed to get the message - my professor told us about it - and there weren't a lot of tourists. It was no refreshing. So I went to the Capitoline Museums and had the time of my life. You couldn't take pictures inside, but it was incredible. If you get the chance, GO! 

I saw the equine statue of Marcus Aurelius. This statue was mistaken for emperor Constantine - who converted to Christianity on his deathbed and legalized it in 313 with the Edict of Milan- so it was preserved as a person of value to the Christians, unlike most other bronze statues of the time which were melted down for ammo. Later, thanks to Roman realistic portraiture, it was discovered to actually be a statue of emperor Marcus Aurelius, who was one of Rome's good emperors (he was the dying emperor in the Russell Crowe Gladiator film who was succeeded by his jerk son Commodus). This statue used to be in front of the Lateran Palace - the Pope's palace before 1420 - until it was moved to the center of the Capitoline Hill in the area designed by Michelangelo. Now it is replaced by a copy and the original is inside the museum to protect it from the elements. 

Capitoline Hill. Packed with Italians.

Equine statue of Emperor Marcus Aurelius.

The Italian version of the story of my life....

Paolo is Secretly Mafia...

I went on my first site-visit with my favorite professor, Paolo Alei, to Santa Maria Sopra Minerva. A site-visit is when we have class lectures inside of or in front of what we are studying. Thursday's focus was the Carafa Chapel, painted by Filippino Lippi in the late 15th c. for Cardinal Oliviero Carafa. Normally you have to look in on the chapel from outside the balustrades, but Paolo just strolls into the cathedral and bribes a priest to open the chapel for us and even set up chairs for my small class to sit in inside the chapel!

I walked through those gates and had a 2 hour lecture in the Carafa Chapel!
Blame crappy picture quality on Wikipedia - I'll update this later with a better one of my own.

Cardinal Oliviero Carafa was a papal hopeful after the death of Pope Alexander VI Borgia, but he was beat out by Cardinal Giuliano (now Pope Julius II) della Rovere. But everyone at the time knew that he was on the path to becoming pope, so he had his own chapel created in the central cathedral of the Dominican order. This chapel even had a small square room off the the left where only Cardinal Carafa could enter (sometimes with another clergyman). This room was decorated with scenes of the lives of Lucretia and Virginia - two Roman stories of women of superior chastity - which also had a window that looked out onto the right wall of the chapel that has a fresco of St. Thomas Aquinas featuring his conversation with the crucifix and his miracle of chastity and the presentation of his Summa Theologica. In this small room Carafa would regularly practice self-flagellation. All of the imagery that promotes chastity and virginity combined with his self-flagellation habits lead me to think he had some big issues with sexuality. What those might be exactly I am not sure of, but I am definitely going to ask Paolo.

The altarpiece shows an annunciation scene - Mary receiving the news from the archangel Gabriel that she was to bear the son of God. But instead of looking joyful upon receiving the news she looks mournful. Her eyes gaze down onto the altar in front of the painting. One of the most important sacraments of the Catholic church takes place on the altar - transubstantiation. This is the moment when the priest blesses the host and it becomes the body and blood of Christ in truth. This is what Mary sees: her son's future crucifixion. It is a moment of alpha and omega, a beginning and an end occurring simultaneously. 


Honestly this entire chapel is amazing. I highly recommend visiting it in Santa Maria sopra Minerva. It is divine! And the church is located above the platform that was previously home to temples honoring Isis and Minerva (Greek - Athena) and is now dedicated to the Virgin Mary. Three of the most influential female religious figures have all made a home here. This is why I love Rome - everything was at some point something else, which further enhances the meaning of the things that currently occupy that space or use those stones.

Sometimes it's not always magical...

Maybe I'm still riding the high off of going to Ireland last week and starting all of my new, amazing classes... Maybe it's because I think of every day that I am here as an adventure to be lived to the fullest... Maybe it's just hormones... I have no idea what the reason behind how much this past weekend managed to underwhelm me is, but I do know that I was very disappointed with it.

I try to make every day that I'm living in Roma valuable. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity and I don't want to squander my time here by doing things that I could do anywhere else in the world. So this mindset has left me very disenchanted after this past weekend. Almost everyone who is in my program ended up going to Munich for Oktoberfest and our apartment was dead. Only Lindsey and I were left in the flat, and when this place is normally filled with eight ladies that is just a bit jarring. I wanted to go out Friday night, but Lindsey wanted to have a night in, so rather than be a complete idiot and go out alone I was forced to stay home. I had quite a bit of reading to do for my courses, so I wasn't completely without purpose. 

By the time Saturday rolls around, rather lazily actually, I'm getting a bit stir crazy. I actually  recopied some of my notes into a more organized, neater area of my notebook. Official OCD diagnosis here I come! Anyways, I finally was going to go out with Lindsey and we were going to have a fun night. Unfortunately that is not how it went. We got to Scholar's, our favorite pub, and had a pint while we watched a Michigan vs. Oregon college football game - because that was the most exciting thing to do there. The pub was dead. So I voted to head over to Campo de Fiori, which is a very tourist-y and party focused area at night, but I had never been when it's in full swing. There were a ton of people, but they were all ridiculously pissed and obnoxious. This was not my particular brand of fun, but I was willing to move on somewhere else and find a nice bar, get a glass of wine, meet some people and practice my Italian. Lindsey was not. She complained the entire way back to our flat that she hated drunk people and crowds and that all she wanted was to go home. Needless to say I was frustrated. But we went home and passed out.

I spent Sunday doing some homework, but all of the downtime gave me a bit of too much time alone with my head. I would have gone out to escape cabin fever, but it was threatening to rain and the thunder and lightening had already started. Trapped in the flat I decided to watch the latest Doctor Who episode. I ended up sobbing. It was the mid-season finale and the point in time where the Ponds stop traveling with the Doctor. To say that I am emotionally attached to these characters is a bit of an understatement. My heart broke a bit. While I was crying my eyes out I began to think about Kev and how I had gotten a glimpse of the perfect kind of guy who exists and instead of trying to hold onto it, I , like the idiot I am, decided to let it go and exist in a perpetual state of unruinable perfection. But  at this moment I was looking back on it as a missed opportunity wondering if that was the only chance at love I might get, and I let him fly off to Sydney without even having my last name or a phone number. Now my heart is bruised and I can't really talk to anyone about it because the only advice to give is 'give it time, you'll meet someone new.' Although when people really get to know me I end up intimidating them with my freakish knowledge of history, art, and random facts and my obsessions with ridiculously nerdy things and my really strange sense of humor that can be a bit dark at times. So the realistic chances of me meeting someone who not only can handle these attributes but also find them endearing is slim to none. Pile up all of these issues with the fact that I afterwards decided to watch One Day (a romance movie with Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess) and I was a ball of tears and broken dreams. 

There was a bit of this going on...

And a bit of this... I'm not proud

By this morning (Monday) I was heading out to class and silently reprimanding myself for allowing the spiral of rather depressive thoughts to pile up and ruin my night/weekend. After my Italian class where I made a stupid mistake in front of the entire class of eight people I got myself a cappuccino and decided to head out to St. Peters to have some much needed prayer time. I ended up in a pew in the east transept and all of a sudden a priest was bringing in the eucharist and an official looking guy with an earpiece was turning tourists away from the area because mass was beginning (they just didn't want people walking up to the altar while the priest is going through holy rites and taking pictures.) I stayed and attended mass in the Vatican in Italian. What was crazy is that I actually understood the homily and most of what was happening. I even shook hands and offered peace to the people around me when the time came! I participated in communion in St. Peter's. My mom is going to be so proud! After mass I walked around and asked some of the ushers who worked there if they knew where the tomb of Pope Julius II was (I'm doing a paper on it). I ended up having about 6 small Italian conversations until I found someone who knew. I was so pleased that they just spoke to me in normal Italian, not trying to speak English or really slow Italian. 

I finally decided to head home and I took the long walk through the Gianicolo, one of Rome's seven hills and a large park. I got a great view of the city and some fresh air. I ended up getting lost in the northern part of my neighborhood, Trastevere. It was beautiful and magnificent and comforting. I love getting absolutely lost. In Roma it's not really a problem because if I just get to the Tiber I can get home. It's a bit too easy. But I found some cute little bars that I would love to go to for lunch and an open air market that was for once devoid of tourists. I got back to my flat and had a bit of a siesta. I realized that I had been out exploring the city and walking around for at least 3 hours straight, so I was a bit exhausted.

 I'm feeling better and more in one piece. Today made up for the weekend. I'm realizing that life here will not always be magical.... but then again there are the times when the city surprises you, whether it's with a religious experience, some quality sightseeing, or a chance at love. So I'm resolved to appreciate every moment (even the lackluster ones). Like right now I am going to go get me some pizza margherita and read some Vitruvius.