It's a new old world to me

For spring break, I had originally intended to go on a whirlwind tour of Europe with  the Bus2Alps company- which would take me through Prague, Berlin, Amsterdam and Paris. However, due to some crazy mixups *cough Northern Ireland cough* I was unable to move fast enough on that, and the trip got booked up. So instead, I decided that I would go to Florence for three days as I discussed a couple posts back.

God, I'm so glad I did that. Everything about that trip seemed like it was tailored for me.

The Duomo, outside...and inside.

Here's another picture of horses, because I love seeing horses here.

And then I found something that made me geek out a little- an Internet cafe that served cheeseburgers. And Ben and Jerry's. And played the Sgt. Pepper album all the way through.

Shows my Internet habits, sadly.

And now a view from my hostel window, showing my continuing fascination with Roman pines.

As you may or may not know, the 150th anniversary of the unification of Italy was a few weeks back.

And now a few more shots from me just randomly wandering around Florence:

A kosher deli in the Jewish quarter of Florence. Some things never change.

The sentence on top of the door says "Where there is charity there is God," which is one of my favorite lines.

And a really kickass pizza. Also, I bought a book: "Far from the Madding Crowd," by Thomas Hardy.

And then we have the art- the most famous part of Florence of all!

The marble statues here are not the originals. This is actually where the original statues were originally placed, but then they were moved into museums and replaced with copies. At any rate, you can't take pictures of the original statues, so the copies will do me just fine.

This one is actually original.

And now for some more pictures of Cathedrals.

And now we're getting to the awesome part- this amazing market I stumbled across.

And now- drumroll please- I FINALLY managed to get my hands on a Carnivale mask! It's pretty boss. I love it.

I will be more diligent in re: posting pictures in the future!

On a central square in a city of the sun rose a palace

Wow, once again I continue to suck at actually posting on this blog. It's just that school's starting to eat my life. I'm actually feeling pretty good about this semester. With one or two exceptions *cough* Ethics *cough* all the feedback that I've gotten back has been positive. This week also marked my midterm exams. I had three (Italian Culture, Ethics, and Foreign Policy) and I'm cautiously optimistic about all three. (The "caution" mostly is connected to Ethics. My professor is really hard to read and is a very weird grader, so I'm not sure what exactly he wants. The fact that I feel good probably means that I either did really well or really badly. Italian felt super easy and my Foreign Policy exam was mostly straight from the readings/discussions so I felt prepared.)

Aside from that I really haven't done much since I've checked in. On top of school stuff, the weather has been really bad, killing my motivation to do anything. Also, euros are annoying.

So I'm on spring break now!!

I was originally planning to take a bus trip around the Northern Loop of Europe, but sadly money continues to make things complicated. But my break seems pretty sweet all the same. Why, you say? Well for one thing...

I'm in Florence.

I can't even tell you how excited I am to go to Florence. I've wanted to go since I was in high school- since I was sixteen, to be exact. Because it was my sixteenth birthday when I saw this:

(And yes, that is Matthew Morrison of "GLEE" fame. Back when he was AWESOME.)

So I decided to treat myself to a weekend trip to Florence. And let me tell you, all you hypothetical readers, it is amazing. This is the best weather I've had in Italy so far, and there are PARKS with BENCHES and I can read in the sun. There's a store that is almost completely Indian clothes/jewelry. I must have been the first customer they'd had in a while, the person running it was basically, PLEASE BUY ALLL THE THINGS." DAMN YOU EUROS, WHY ARE YOU NOT RUPEES.

And right now I'm in a wireless cafe down the street from my hotel. They have CHEESEBURGERS. Also, right as I came inside, the album version of Sgt. Pepper was playing. <3 <3 <3

Pictures from around Rome!

These pictures were taken one weekend when I decided to just amble around my neighborhood taking pictures.

This is my street.

I just really like this wall. Not sure why. I'm also a big fan of those flat trees you can see over the wall. They almost look like something you'd see on the African savanna.

That's my school. Again, more flat trees.

An embassy.

This is a church I stumbled upon while wandering around behind the school.

It's pretty.

And finally, here's another fun addition for anyone who read my India blog: I was startled to find that Vodaphone does quite a bit of business in Italy as well! This is an ad on the bus stop across from my apartment:

Okay, that's it for this post.



A comedy of errors

You may have noticed in my previous post that I was taking a field study trip to Belfast and Derry/Londonderry to study the Northern Ireland conflict. Why do I use the word "was," you say?

Funny story.

Wednesday was my flight to Dublin along with the other members of the class. We agreed to meet at my professor's house near Campe du Fiori. However, I got hopelessly lost and thus missed the group. In desperation, I flagged down a taxi to take me to the airport. There were road closures and traffic and all manner of obstacles, particularly when I was already running late. Then there were massive lines to get to the check-in...

When I finally did get up to the counter, the woman at the desk said, "all of the seats on this flight have been booked up."

I was a wreck. I think the stress of the day was just too much. I was sobbing, an incoherent mess. The taxi driver back to Ottavilla was really sweet, though.

So I booked a second flight for Thursday, hoping I could meet up with the rest of the team in Belfast. I'd fly from Rome to Leeds, spend the night in the Leeds airport (joy) and then fly to Belfast in the morning. Even though my ticket was ONE WAY  it still cost me 300 euro.

I did everything right this time. I gave myself all this time, I got my ticket, got through security, got to the gate. We were lined up getting ready to go on- but there was no plane there. The man at the front of the line announced that there would be a 20 minute delay due to mechanical problems.

Fast forward a half an hour and we were still waiting. I was playing cards with this American family with a bunch of little kids. Then there was another announcement: the mechanical problems were persisting. They would announce at 9 (another twenty minutes) whether or not the flight would be cancelled.

Turns out it was. And the next available flight wasn't until noon the next day, so I'd miss my connection to Belfast anyway.

So I called my professor and we decided to scrap it. Now I'm working on getting refunds for my tickets and for what I paid AUR. I know I can't get refunds on my original tickets- their policy expressly says that the only refunds they will give are if you were in the hospital at the time of your flight. And I'm certain I can get one from Jet2 from the Leeds flight, but I have to write to them and it could take some time. But I know AUR will refund my fee. It would be great to get that money back- all told I sunk nearly a thousand euro into this and I really, really could use that money.

Classes

Ethics and Global Policies: I'm pretty excited about this. For one thing, it's the most relevant of all of my classes to all of my interests- we discuss HIV, sexual orientations, church/state. The professor's sort of adorable- kind of looks like Ben Kingsley. He rambles a bit, but he's pretty cool seeming. He's also supposedly an easy grader.
P.S: Guess who sits next to me in this class? Hayley Boyle from Youth Theatre! So weird; COLLINGSWOOD IS FOLLOWING ME.

Advanced Italian: Yeah, I chickened out on this one. Also, it turns out I don't need to take a language class here, so I dropped that as fast as I could.

Intro to Italian Culture: This is what I transferred into after dropping the above class, and what I wanted to take in the first place. It's not a language class, and covers everything from art history to football to Italian movies. Excellent. It's a bit more work that most of my other classes, though- my professor makes us give presentations every week on different topics, but they're fairly low key.

Psych 101: Seems like a pretty cool class. The professor's very entertaining, and of course I've been dying to take a good Psych class. It's a bit frustrating at times because my classmates seem to have no grasp on what it means to be depressed. (They subscribe mainly to the theory that it should be treated entirely with positive thinking and pulling yourself up by your bootstraps- a theory that I find oversimplistic at best and dangerous at worst.)

Globalization: This is probably going to be my hardest class. However, I love the professor. (He also looks like a mix between Hugh Laurie and Stephen Anderson Moore, which certainly doesn't hurt matters.)

Comparative Foreign Policy: This class makes me feel smart. A lot of times I have trouble coming up with good examples/questions for my professors, but I'm feeling super good about contributing in the class. The professor is, again, this adorable Hungarian woman.

Northern Ireland: Conflict and Conflict Resolution: This is a field study trip that I'm going on next weekend (holy crap, I can't believe it's so soon!). The professor who runs it is another cool guy.

I officially booked my tickets yesterday! So excited!

Colosseum trip

The next day after we went to the Trevi fountain etc. (as you saw in my previous post) we went to the Colosseum. Again, after 5 years of Latin, I was really geeking through the whole thing.

Unfortunately, the weather was a little threatening, so we weren't able to go inside to explore. Clearly, Samuel L. Jackson beat us there with his radioactive chains to stop us from jumping in. (We were making a lot of jokes about the movie Jumper.)

Mayra and Kaylin try to jump into the Colosseum.

Then I took some sneaky pictures of the various guys in gladiator costumes. They charge a fortune if you want to take a picture with them, so I tried to get as many of them in my pictures as I could without paying for it.

I liked these horses. They had some pretty sweet hats.

Mayra.

This was meant to be a victorious gladiator pose, but it turned out to be looking like a fist pump. (I am from New Jersey, after all...)

Kaylin and Kelly. (A different Kelly.)

Aaand the Forum.

Hope you like them!

First days in Rome

Well, I'm officially in Rome now. This process has been so much easier than India was- I was able to fly and do all of my visa paperwork out of Philadelphia. Yet somehow my brain seems to be stuck on India- I still have to catch myself and stop saying "Ha" instead of "Si" (or even yes!) and

The sun sets at the Philly airport just before departure.

I'm living in a flat with four other girls- one from Emory (Rachel), two from Boston College (Sophie and Mayra) and one from American (Kelly). We've all gotten along well together- seems like it's going to be a smooth semester in terms of living situation.

We also live above a pizza shop, which is both entertaining and rather handy. (They don't just sell pizza, of course, which is even better- it means that I can pick up an entire roast chicken and side of potatoes or green beans and have that for dinner. I have even (very slowly) been learning to cook. (I can even work our gas stove.) This may not seem like such an accomplishment, but as someone who once burned soup this is a big step for me.



Mayra in our bedroom as we were unpacking.

 Note the very stylish airplane sheets that come with all of our beds for some reason that I don't understand. Even when I go to other AUR students' apartments they have the same sheets.

And now some photographs of the city itself!



A cafe around the corner from AUR, which is the brightly colored building in the background.

A pretty fly statue.

View from the bridge.

Me, obviously.

Mayra.

Don't ask me why they have Duff beer here; I've seen it in multiple places.

Trajan's Column.



Three AU girls: Leigh, Kelly and me.

 I'll finally give myself a chance to publish this.