A Small Wanderer

Let's hear it for Pittsburgh!

So, Adam, what do you have to say about the Steelers now? Hmmmm?


{update about our weekend in Florence coming soon...}

posted by Stacey @ 9:48 AM 3 comments

Hooray for Italian bookstores.

So, finishing yesterday's post and continuing on with today...

Forgot to put in my post yesterday (hey, I was tired) our trip to this awesome park near school. Our friend Josh from PhilaU had mentioned how he and some of his other friends from his school had found this gorgeous park while looking for somewhere to go running, so yesterday Dana, Josh, and I went to check out this park. Freaking gorgeous. This place has a huge pond with ducks and swans and a series of waterfalls leading into the pond, one of which has a little path where you can walk behind the waterfall. It's just sweet. This park is huge - there are huge open spaces, lots of trees and gardens, multiple fountains and waterfalls, a tiny private chapel, all sorts of cool things. Apparently the whole place is the summer residence of some rich family that lets the city use the grounds as a park when they aren't living there. As soon as I upload the pics from my camera I'll post a couple here.

So funny story from today. As you might know, I have a small obsession with bookstores, and I've been looking for a bookstore that sells books in English and is located vaguely close to my apartment or the school. Well, I was walking home from school today and lo and behold, there's this bookstore on the street that I take at least twice a day that I just never noticed before. I don't think it was open when I've passed before - Italian businesses close for a few hours in the afternoon for a siesta (though I don't think they call it siesta because I believe that's Spanish), and they open and close at odd hours, but anyways. The place was just called "Libreria" ("Bookstore"). I, of course, walked over to check it out. I walked in and heard the three employees (two guys in their 30's, one woman a decade or so older) speaking English to each other, although it was apparent they were joking around and it wasn't their first language. I laugh to myself because I figure if they're speaking English then they must have some English books. Well, they see me smiling and the ensuing conversation goes something like this: (imagine all comments by all parties except with me in Italian accents and it becomes much more amusing)
Bookstore employees: "English?"
Me: "Si, grazie, inglese."
Bookstore employees: "You American?"
Me: "Si, americana."
Bookstore employees: "Where in America you from? Philadelphia, New York, Washington?"
Me: "Uhh (trying to remember how to say "I'm from" in Italian but failing for the moment)...Pittsburgh."
Bookstore employees: "Pittsburgh...Super Bowl!"
Me: "Si, si!"
Bookstore employees: "Come si chiama [what is their name]...what is the name of the Pittsburgh team?"
Me: "The Steelers."
Bookstore employees: "What is the name of the state that Pittsburgh is in?"
Me: "Pennsylvania."
Bookstore employees: "Listen to how the Americans pronounce their names! Pittsburgh! Pennsylvania!"

I start laughing and then just start browsing through the store. It's all Italian books, not a huge selection. They're talking to each other in Italian. I pretend to be browsing while in reality I'm just trying to figure out how to say "Do you have any books in English?" in Italian. Once I get that down...
Me: "Avete di libri in inglese?"
Bookstore employees: "Lei parla italiana! She understood everything we said! Lei capisca!"
Me: "No, no, non capisco italiana. I'm learning."
Bookstore employees: "No, no, you speak Italian very well! Very well!"
Me: "Grazie, but no."
Which was followed by an interesting exchange between me and the two guys that involved one of them speaking to me in Italian, the other telling him he should be speaking to me in English so he can practice, and the first guy responding that he was speaking to me in Italian so I could practice my Italian. They asked how long I was staying in Rome, and where I was studying, and then told me that if I ever came back to Rome I had to come back to their store. I told them that if they ever came to Pittsburgh they had to come visit the bookstore I work at. Then they started asking me about the reading habits of Americans ("The Americans...they read very much? The Italians...they not read very much."). I asked again about English books and one of the guys pointed out their English selection to me - a bunch of Shakespeare's plays, editions that had the English and the Italian on opposite pages, and Dan Brown's Deception Point. Good times. Yay for Shakespeare. I really wish I could read Italian...anyways. I think I've found a group of Italians on whom to practice my Italian skills (I currently speak an Italian/French/American English/Pittsburghese hybrid. I'm a linguistic mutt.).

Tonight Dana and I made dinner for our roommates and Tommy. We made pasta alfredo with chicken and broccolli. Good stuff. I think it would have worked better had I been able to find heavy cream (like the recipe called for) instead of fresh cream (the only cream the grocery store seemed to have), but it was really good nonetheless. Tommy brought some random mushrooms, we cooked them up and they turned out really well. Dana and I are going to be awesome cooks before we leave. We're going to try making ourselves a fancy dessert in the near future.

It's official....we're going to Florence this weekend! Dana and I bought train tickets (thank God we found a guy who spoke English) and booked a hostel today. I love how easy it is to say "Let's travel this weekend!" and then actually make it happen. Hooray for cheap travel in Europe!

On another note, Dana hasn't had class in two days because her classes keep getting cancelled. I'm only slightly jealous...

posted by Stacey @ 10:43 PM 0 comments

I'm back!

Sorry for the lack of updates. I'm going to blame it on a combination of classes starting, the wireless being dumb, and me being lazy.

I believe I have slightly more than a week since the last post to cover, no? Well, most of the past week was spent in class and therefore not doing anything terribly exciting, but I'll review the highlights.

Last Saturday I finally met up with Carmine and Raul. Dana and I walked around the city with them for a while. We saw the Trevi Fountain, the Spanish Steps (which looks much cooler on the postcards covered in azaleas than it does when we saw it covered in tourists), and the Piazza del Popolo. We found our way up to the Hard Rock Rome and met Carmine and Raul's roommates, Josh and Kevin (from PhilaU, not GW, in case you're wondering) for a light mid-afternoon meal (Italian dinnertime is somewhere around 7:30-8:00, and our poor American stomachs have been slow to adjust to that). For the record, the Hard Rock Rome has the same overpriced menu as the Hard Rock Pittsburgh and every other Hard Rock, and the staff did not seem to speak English as their first language as we thought they might. It was good though. Later that night Dana and I went out to a couple of the clubs with Raul and Josh. Good times. Dana had some interesting encounters with a couple of Italians, Orlando and Francesco, but that's a different story.

(the Trevi Fountain)

Last week was the start of classes. I think all of my classes are going to be pretty interesting. I'm taking Intensive Italian, which counts for 6 credits instead of 3 and should theoretically give me a year's worth of Italian in a semester; Ethics and Global Policy, which would be much better if half the class didn't sleep or talk to each other over the professor the entire time; The Mediterranean World, which the professor has decided to divide into two units, one on anthropology of the Mediterranean and the other on the political science of the region, though the class is listed as an Anthropology course, and I'm really not sure how it's going to transfer back to GW; and Survey of the History of Ancient Rome, which should be pretty interesting and includes a few on-site classes. Most of this past week was jsut starting class and marginally getting back into a slightly academic schedule. One of the highlights of this past week was when I bought knitting needles (my roommate Aurora wants me to teach her to knit) from a little shop whose owner spoke no English. My Italian extends nowhere near the realm of knitting vocabulary, so this was accomplished with both myself and the shopkeeper rambling on while we knew the other couldn't understand and me making akward gestures and charades to try to communicate "knitting needles". Fun times. Now I just need to buy yarn.

This weekend Dana and I saw the Colosseum. We actually saw it twice. We went Friday, but the weather was quite gray and rainy, so we didn't go inside (which costs money, and we were out of cash) or stay very long. We did make friends with one of the tour guides there. At places like the Colosseum there are guys walking around dressed as gladiators and centurions and Romans of that nature who walk around trying to get people to take pictures with them. One of them walked up to us when he saw that we had cameras. We said we didn't want a picture but the guy took Dana's arm and led her over to the chair they'd set up for pictures. One of them took our cameras and the other two posed with us while the first took our pictures. Once they'd taken our pictures they handed back our cameras and demanded that we pay them 5 euro for the pictures they'd so graciously allowed us to take of them. Being broke and slightly annoyed at what had just happened, we refused, so they made us delete the pictures off our cameras. The one guy actually tried to take my camera and delete the pictures for me. Not a very friendly bunch, really. We walked away and then took their picture from a distance just to be spiteful. The next day the weather was slightly nicer, so we went back to the Colosseum (avoided the gladiators this time) then walked to the Pantheon and met up with Carmine and Raul. We walked around the Pantheon, then walked up to a church not far away (that's kind of silly to say; you're never far from a church in Rome) and explored that, then we came back to the Pantheon to go to Saturday evening Mass. That's right, the Pantheon is also known as the Basilica of Mary and the Martyrs - a Catholic church. We went to Mass in the Pantheon. That was pretty cool. The organ sounded amazing - round stound buildings have sweet acoustics. It was rather cold, but nice all the same.

(the oculus of the Pantheon)

Sunday Professor Kirk, one of AUR's art history professors, led a walking tour of the city that followed the walls that had been built to defend Rome throughout its history. Dana had originally planned on coming along, but then decided that her bed was a much nicer place to be at 8:30 on a cool Sunday morning. About 40 people showed up, around a dozen or so leaving the group at various points during the day. There were only a couple people I knew in the group starting out (Tommy and Melissa, a girl from GW), so I got to meet a lot of new people over the course of the day. A bunch of the people I met were from PhilaU. I also met a few resident students and some other study abroad kids from random schools. The walk itself was awesome. We left the school at about 10 after 10, stopped around 1ish for about an hour for lunch, stopped for about 15 minutes a couple hours later for coffee and gelato, and finally got back to the school around 5:15. We stopped fairly often along the way for Professor Kirk to do the tour guide thing and talk about the history behind various portions of the wall, but most of the time we were walking fairly quickly. Sadly, I don't remember much of what he told us about the walls. They were built over centuries under the sponsorship of various emporers and popes, many of them by Emperor Aurelio for fear of an impending barbarian attack. Some segments of the wall were built rather frantically in the fear that the barbarians were coming to attack the city in the immediate future. During the construction of the wall builders used whatever building materials were handy - bricks laying around, random stones, old temples, ugly statues that were broken to bits and cemented in the wall. Some parts of the wall were built as experiments in the latest military technology. Some parts have been destroyed or buried by the flooding of the Tiber. All in all it was a pretty cool day. When I finally got back to my apartment at the end of the day the entire lower half of my body was just one mass of numbness. I think I'm still working on replenishing all the calories I burned. Good times.

(portion of the wall)

As far as tourist-y type things, that's really all I've got for the moment. There's a chance I may be going to Florence this weekend. The school is leading a guided tour of Florence, the only catch is that you have to make your own travel and lodging arrangements. My roommate and I are working on it. I think tomorrow morning we're going to see about buying train tickets.

Other than tourist-y things...let's see...Dana and I have been cooking a lot. Food is so fresh and cheap here that it's hard not to want to cook. Mostly we make soup from mixes we buy, but we've also done pasta a few times, chicken marsala, parmesan crusted chicken, and a rice-mushroom-broccoli casserole thing. Good times. By the time we leave here we'll be great cooks. Tomorrow we're planning on making pasta alfredo. We have a charcoal grill on our balcony (how cool is that?!) so eventually we plan on having some sort of cookout(s?) with various friends of ours.

That's all I've got for now...it's bedtime. I'm trying to see about signing up for a website where I can post all the pictures I've been taking, instead of just posting a few here or on Facebook. Will keep the updates coming.

posted by Stacey @ 10:09 PM 0 comments

Days 4-6

I'm back on my laptop this evening, so hopefully I can write a decent entry without accidently shutting off the darn computer again. This might not be as detailed an entry as the lost one would have been, but whatever.

First of all, Ily reminded me that I haven't actually "introduced" my roommates or any of the people who get mentioned in this blog, so that'll be first. I share an apartment with 3 other GW girls (all of whom get referred to as "roommates") - Dana, Amanda, and Aurora. Aurora and I share a bedroom. I hadn't met any of the three of them before coming here. Amanda and Aurora usually hang out together, along with some other friends of theirs. Dana and I have been hanging out together with various friends of ours. We all get along thus far (knock on wood), it seems to be working well.

Anyhow.

Wednesday night Dana, our friends Tommy and Mario, and I all went out for a pasta dinner. Dana and I had decided that there was something very wrong with the fact that we'd been in Italy for three days and had not yet eaten pasta, so we invited Tommy and Mario out with us for dinner. We ended up going to a cute little restaurant in Trastevere, north of AUR (Trastevere is this huge neighborhood that extends from just south of the Vatican to past where my guidebook's map of Rome stops. The main part of Trastevere, however, is just below where the Tiber bends around Tiberina Island. That's where all the restaurants and Mario's apartment, among other things, are. Our apartment is in Trastevere but is about a 45 minute walk farther south). The food was delicious, and fairly cheap. We all shared a bottle of wine and Tommy and I shared an appetizer of bruschetta. My meal - my share of the wine and appetizer along with an entree of pasta carbonara, along with tip - came to 10 euro, or about $12.50. Not bad at all. After dinner we walked across the Tiber and explored the area around Piazza Navona. We got gelato (mmmm) and walked around for a while before settling at Sloppy Sam's bar for a bit. Piazza Navona and the immediate surrounding area has a lot of bars. Sloppy Sam's is one of the few that are popular hangouts for Americans in Rome (The Drunken Ship is another). The guys had a beer and Dana and I split a mineral water (must remember to order "acqua naturale" from now on instead of "acqua", as we both now know we don't care for mineral water). We sat and talked and peoplewatched and chatted with a few other people from AUR who came by. The peoplewatching was good thanks in large part to a little old woman who was standing beside Sloppy Sam's outdoor tables and dancing to the bar's [horrible] selection of music. She was cute, in a sad sort of way. I think she was homeless (Dana commented on how we haven't seen very many homeless people at all in Rome, but they're definitely here).

After we left the bar we walked around for a little while longer before deciding to head back to our apartments. Tommy, Dana, and I parted from Mario (we were headed in the opposite direction to get home - Tommy's apartment is relatively close to ours). The walk back home was nice. By this time it was probably around 1 AM. Rome gets surprisingly quiet at night. There aren't nearly as many lights on at night as there are in most American cities, probably partly because of the low amount of electricity an apartment can use before the electricity goes out (the school recommends that you not use the water heater and the oven at the same time). It's very, very quiet out late at night. I think it's even quieter than it is back at home in South Beaver. At home you hear crickets and bats and all sorts of stuff like that at night. In DC there's always cars and sirens and all sorts of noise. Trastevere was silent, except for the occasional siren or passing car. Walking past the bakeries and pastry shops we could smell the next day's bread baking. Quite a nice night.

Yesterday was an awesome day. Dana and I might Tommy and Steve, one of his roommates, early in the afternoon. We sat in a caffeteria (coffee shop) for a little while then walked up to the school. All this week (except for today), the school has set out food for orientation, so we stopped by for a free lunch. We ate and talked to one of the business professors for a while. After that Steve left to meet his parents by the Spanish steps while Tommy, Dana, and I headed up towards the Vatican. We walked through Gianicolense Park, which has some amazing views of the city. A vendor in the park was selling slices of fresh coconut, which none of us had ever seen before. Tommy bought some, then shared with me and Dana. Fresh coconut is interesting. It has a very subtle taste - at first it seems almost tasteless, but if you hold it on your tongue for a second it has a sweet, milky taste. We weren't exactly sure how to eat it though. I think I like it.

(one of many views from Gianicolense Park)

Anyhow, from Gianicolense Park we walked to the Vatican. We walked around St. Peter's Square and admired the Vatican's Nativity display (Did you know that Pittsburgh has an exact copy of the Vatican's Creche? I think I would have been slightly more impressed with the Vatican's Creche had I not already seen the Pittsburgh one). We walked through the area of the Vatican where the tombs of many of the former Popes are, including John Paul II's tomb. I would have liked to stay by his tomb for a little while and say a prayer or something, but there was a small crowd already gathered round it, and I didn't want to disturb anyone else, plus there wasn't exactly much room to begin with. His tomb is very simple, just a slab of plain white marble, slanted to face the people walking by. I thought it seemed fittingly humble. Anyhow, we also explored the church, St. Peter's, itself. We didn't make it to the Sistene Chapel, but St. Peter's was breathtaking enough on its own. I don't even know how to begin to describe it. "Awesome", "breathtaking", "majestic", and "overwhelming" come to mind, but they don't do the place justice. Overwhelming is probably the best of the four. My mouth was hanging open the entire time I was in there. Everywhere you turn there is beautiful artwork glorifying God. The place thunders with majesty. It seems to whisper and scream at you all the same time, "Behold the Glory of God in His Majesty!" If ever there were a place where man succeeded in using his gifts to give praise to God, this would be it. The altar was probably the most beautiful I've ever seen. There's a small chapel dedicated solely to prayer - no cameras allowed - that was gorgeous. We saw La Pieta, which is more beautiful than pictures of it can convey, although for some reason I had been under the impression that it was larger than it actually is. The whole place completely overwhelms your senses. I can only imagine what mass must be like there. We didn't get to the Sistene Chapel, or the Vatican Museums, or really any part of the Vatican that required the purchase of a ticket, but we will eventually.

(St. Peter's, along with the Vatican's Creche and Christmas tree)

(St. Peter's Square)

After being significantly overwhelmed by St. Peter's, we walked across the Tiber and explored more of the area around Piazza Navona. We got gelato (mmmm) again as we were wandering around. We passed some random ruins - not completely sure what they were, but they were nice to look at. We found a piazza with some gorgeous buildings (but don't know what the buildings were, nor do I remember the name of the piazza) and a church that you got to by climbing these huge stairs. There were probably about 200 steps to get up to this place, if not more. The church was Santa Maria something or other (should be called St. Mary of the Stairs or something). We explored the inside of the church, which was gorgeous, although we may have been more impressed had we not just come from St. Peter's. The inside of the church was filled with dozens of crystal chandeliers and the floor was dotted with tombs, their marble faces nearly worn away from centuries (maybe longer?) of careless foot traffic. After we explored the church we sat at the top of the stairs and watched the sun set over the city. Gorgeous. I'm not sure any city could beat Rome for the amazing views everywhere you turn. Yesterday evening Dana and I cooked dinner and were quite proud of ourselves for it. Cod, cannellini beans, green salad and bread. I think the cannellini beans were our favorite part. Mmmm.

(random ruins. can you find the cat?)

(the sun setting over Rome)

Today wasn't nearly as exciting. Dana and I walked up to the school because she needed to fix her schedule. We talked with some of the school employees and student volunteers, waited a while in the schedule adjustment line to be told that Dana had to sign up on a waiting list, and eventually left. We had lunch in this cute little place that's now one of my favorite restaurants in Rome - part fine chocolate shop, part wine store, part pastry shop, part sandwich shop. Can you see why I loved it? We had spinach, proscuitto, fresh mozerella, and pesto paninis for lunch (oh, they were delicious). We walked back to the apartment, stopping along the way to check out a few stores. We hung out at the apartment all this afternoon, didn't really do much.

We cooked dinner again tonight. We made a rice, brocolli, and mushroom casserole. The recipe called for cheddar, but we couldn't find any cheddar at the grocery store and didn't feel like walking to a cheese and dairy store, so we picked a cheese that, even though we had no idea what it was, seemed to be of a similar texture to cheddar. When we actually open the stuff up to try it we find that it's the most horrible cheese either of us has ever tasted. Oh, it was disgusting. Horrible. Rancid. Foul. We still aren't sure what we're going to do with it. Aurora seemed less disgusted by it than Dana or I so we'll probably give it to her. We ended up using some cheese that Dana had bought to make sandwiches, the kind that comes in individual wrappers. You couldn't really taste it in the finished casserole. Baking the casserole was a victory in itself because it represented a small victory over the oven. The temperature gauge on the oven has no numbers or any labels whatsoever. The light switch is broken. There's a random broken switch that neither of us could figure out. There's another dial labelled with the numbers 1-60. We think it's a timer, but we aren't really sure. Since working the oven is complete guesswork, we're both quite proud that we cooked the casserole without scorching it. Maybe eventually we'll try baking something. Maybe eventually we'll find an oven thermometer. Who knows? Aurora joined us for dinner tonight and was thoroughly impressed with our casserole-making abilities. After dinner the three of us and Amanda went out for gelato (mmmm) to a place about 10 minutes down the block where Dana and I had gone a few nights ago. It's a gelatteria (gelato bar), bar, pastry shop, and sandwich shop all in one (I've found another favorite!). There were some people sitting around eating gelato, and others standing around having drinks and chatting. The man working the gelato counter was really friendly even though we obviously couldn't speak Italian well at all. The gelato was, as usual, delicious. I think I might go back there for lunch and try their paninis. I really want to try some of these Italian pastries I see everywhere, especially the fruit tarts. Dana thinks it's hilarious how I practically drool at the fruit tarts everywhere I see them. Eventually I'll actually buy one.

After coming back from gelato (mmmm) we didn't really do much tonight. I read for a while and played on AIM a bit. I'm working my way through the Chronicles of Narnia again. I finished the Magician's Nephew in a few hours between yesterday and today, and I think I'm about halfway through The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. When I read them in middle school I only got through those first two books, so I'm excited to go back and read the rest. That's another thing I really want to find here - an English bookstore, an Italian bookstore that sells books in English, or really just any bookstore. There really aren't any in the part of Trastevere where our apartment is, just magazine stands. I think there might be some in the area north of the school where we went out for pasta the night before last, I just have to find them.

That's all for tonight. Enjoy the pictures. These were all taken yesterday. Have a good night everyone!

(closer shot of the Vatican Creche with random guy)

(also from the Vatican. Turn around and you'll see...
...this.)



(cool building shot)

posted by Stacey @ 12:46 AM 3 comments

Stupid computers.

Last night I was typing up a really long entry covering everything I'd done from the night before and yesterday when I accidently hit the power cord with my foot and shut the computer off, obviously losing the entry I'd just spent a half hour writing (and wasn't yet finished). After that I gave up for the night. I'll write a long enry tonight, I promise! Hopefully I won't kill the computer in the middle again.

posted by Stacey @ 11:57 AM 0 comments

Long day

Dana and I did a whole lot of walking today. Most of that was because we couldn't read the stupid map and ended up taking a very roundabout way to get to the school (but we know where we're going now!), then tonight we ended up walking around a lot of the city with a couple guys from our program, Mario and Tommy. No long entry for today. I do want to comment on the fact that Rome is a gorgeous city but there is grafitti EVERYWHERE. I live in Trastevere - a nice residential neighborhood - and there's grafitti all over all the buildings here. It's literally everywhere. I can't even tell if the city makes any effort to clean it up. Thankfully some of the older buildings or Rome's architectural treasures aren't covered in it, but it's really just everywhere. It can be odd when you're used to grafitti as the mark of run-down neighborhoods.

Today's pictures...


Part of a random fountain. I think this one was from Piazza Navona. It might be one of Bernini's fountains, but I'm not sure. I'll get better at keeping track of what I take pictures of eventually. Obviously this was taken at night. A better daytime picture will be posted eventually...when we get back there in the daytime.

And here we have a lovely view of Dana's and Mario's backs. Actually, I just thought the way the streetlamps reflected off the wet cobblestones was really cool.

posted by Stacey @ 1:31 AM 1 comments

Pictures!

Today's pictures: Views from our apartment's wrap-around balcony.


And another...



I got my luggage back today. It's such a relief to have my stuff back safely in my hands.

So today was orientation session number one. My roommates and I walked to the school from our apartment. It's a pretty decent hike. We were't quite sure how to get there, so we ended up taking a very roundabout route and asking for directions several times, which was interesting given that we don't speak Italian. I can say "Where is", and my roommate Aurora knew how to say "the American University", but apparently not many Romans are familiar with either AUR or the tiny little side street the school's located on. There's another American University here, John Cabot University, that most of the people we asked tried to direct us to. I think there's also a street with a similar name to the one AUR is on that's on the other side of the city. We were directed there a couple times too. Hopefully we'll either learn how to get to the school or learn how to ask for directions properly quickly. My roommate Dana helped me get my luggage back to the apartment after orientation (we took a taxi; one of the school officials called it for us and told the taxi driver where to go so he wouldn't get lost and we wouldn't get ripped off), then we went out for dinner together. We ended up going to a Chinese restaurant that's just down the road from our apartment. It was the first restaurant we came to and it was pretty cheap as well. The food was really good, though apparently we came a bit early for dinner (we got there just before 7:30, which is apparently early for dinner in Italy), so we'll have to work on eating at a more "normal" time. Anyways, today was a good day. More orientation-type stuff tomorrow.

posted by Stacey @ 11:00 PM 7 comments

My luggage came!

One quick announcement:

I have my luggage back!

That also means that I can post pictures soon. For now, that is all.

posted by Stacey @ 6:46 PM 0 comments