_______sanda in roma

Ciao amici,

Yup -- you read it right, I went to Easter Mass at the Vatican. How could I not? Need more proof?

1. I am in Rome
   
2. The Pope is in Rome
   
3. I need as many heaven-points as possible due to my excessive gross-out comments I make to everyone always.

Can you see the pope??

One thing I think I have mentioned about church in Europe (at least in France and Italy) is that there is no order to getting communion- everyone simply runs up when the opportunity comes. This is very different from the ordered procession I am used to back in the States. Well, the Vatican was no exception. Everyone started plowing forward, moving chairs, and to make things worse-umbrellas seemed to be used as an offensive weapon when trying to move. Too bad we didn't even receive communion.

One of the Pope-vision screens I could see if I looked hard left.

Ciao amici,

Okay, first off...I haven't written in my blog for a while, I know, but here's my update (finally). It's spring break and I took a short adventure to Paris as my vacation within a vacation. The nice part about going to Paris was that my dad knows someone currently residing there. Long story short, my dad met Donna, the person who lives in Paris, on an 'Encounter' (I think that's what they were called?) retreat back when he was a priest (yes, I typed that right). At any rate, Donna willingly accepted Keihly and I and was going to be our tour guide of Paris for a few days -- we also crashed at her place for a few nights.

So! Barely making our bus which would take us to the airport, in typical fashion, the two hour plane ride from Rome to Paris was flanked by about 4 total hours of bus rides--just so we could get cheap flights. Worth it? Maybe.... We finally orchestrated the catch-up with Donna via cell phone, and we saw our first glimpse of the magical, fantastic, awe-inspiring Eiffel Tower. No joke- this thing is fantastic! I LOVE it. We didn't get inside, but more on that later.

Nah, I might as well talk about it now. At the New Years celebration for the new millennium in 2000 (duh), the French (as they are called, since they live in France) installed hundreds of strobe lights on the Eiffel Tower to give it a 'glistening' effect which would be the big orgasmic finale to the year 1999 and thus mark the beginning of the world-wide destruction and computer failure of Y2K. Well! Everyone thought it was soooo freaking cool that the Eiffel tower had a bahzillion fire alarm strobe lights all over it, they demanded that the lights be re-enabled, even if Y2K wasn't going on! And thus, every night within darkness (between, say, 8PM and midnight) the Eiffel tower will burst into twinkles (not twinkies) for about ten minutes at the top of each hour. <---- TACKY!!!

But that's "okay". The rest of Paris was quite beautiful sans the clouds and rain and cold. We did a lot of walking, although the city subway and buses are fantastic. It was nice being far, far away from all of the tiny, windy streets and ugly, plain medieval wonders we get to enjoy in Rome. Paris has fantastic straight streets, and many of the little plazas (still basically streets) formed by multiple streets coming together (think spokes on a bicycle wheel). Plus, who doesn't love Mansard roofs? Donna graciously allowed us to spend a few nights in her apartment. She wasn't joking when she said that she would walk out of her kitchen and step on her cat's tail -- her apartment is tiny and in fact I (accidentally?) did as she described! Her apartment was on the 7th floor (8th by domestic-floor-counting-standards) and we enjoyed the tiniest elevator in the world. It has space for two people, but really that means 'two insanely thin people that do not have any backpacks or groceries with them'. Very tiny elevator, fun to point and laugh at.
This tea I am drinking right now doesn't have enough milk in it.

(that's a picture of Notre Dame--flying buttresses are bad ass!)

The Louvre - we didn't go in, but the outside is cool...'n'stuff.

Also in Paris, I bought an expensive but way cool coat. It's a black coat that everyone else in Europe is wearing, and frankly I got tired of wearing my grey fuzzy coat used for running. This coat is way cooler. I don't have a photo of me in it, but damn d00d--I look awesome.

Finally, may of you know that I am an insanely insane Phantom of the Opera fan. I will have you know that a-there is nothing wrong with that fact and b-if the Des Moines Playhouse ever does a production of that musical, I will be cast as Phantom. Hands down, it's happening. At any rate - while in Paris, I found none other than The Paris Opera House! If you don't get the connection here, you can no longer be my friend.
Don't forget to look at my facebook albums, again you don't have to be a member to look - they're free to view: Page 3 of this one and all of this one

don't miss my post about the swiss alps below!
I've created a few facebook photo albums, you are free to browse them without an account--check them out!

Here are all of my albums on facebook so far, latest first:

• Roma (parte cinque)
• Northern Italy field trip
• Switzerland - Vals and Chur
  
• Roma (parte quatro)
• Cinqueterre
• Northern Italy field trip - Vicenza and Verona
  
• Roma (parte tre)
• Pisa/Florence
• Roma/Ara Pacis
• Cinqueterre
  
• Roma (parte due)
• Around Rome/studio
• Lago Albano/Castel Gandolfo
  
• Roma (parte uno)
• Roman ruins/around the city of Rome
• Studio
• Aqueduct park
  
• Roma (solo vaticano città e musei vaticani)
• St. Peter's Cathedral/Square
• Vatican Museums
  

I haven't posted in a while, and the past week and a half are filled with at least three full posts. I will start now with my most recent adventure, then work my way back in time (if I feel like it?).

SO! Past week and a half are as follows: Cinqueterre...week-long field trip...Switzerland. Right now I am going to talk about Switzerland. In our wonderful second year of architecture, we took some basic architecture history classes and a few graduate students were assigned/hired as our TA's. One TA, Kent Brockman (yes, everyone gets the Simpsons reference, but that is actually his name and no he is not a news anchor), remembered our class would be in Rome this semester and sent an email to a classmate of mine notifying us that he lives and works in Switzerland and would love to have someone of us visit. Six of us - Blake, Jenny, Keihly, Nick, Zach, and myself, all plan a trip to Chur, Switzerland the weekend at the termination of our week long field trip (which I will get into later...) AND we also made reservations to visit the baths in Vals, Switzerland, designed by a famous architect, Peter Zumthor.

Uhmm... lets seee... do do dooo... what details, what details. Riding the train into Switzerland was complicated because each rail company cannot get exact details about another company's (or country's) routes so easily. For example, we had to book some trains in Italy using tranitalia, then some other trains and a bus using SBB CCF FFB (some crazy acronym like that). Turns out we made three unnecessary connections to get to the same place our original train would have taken us to. We arrive at the train/bus station and are greeted by a Minnesotan (Kevin) and a Spaniard (Bernardo) who was sent by Kent (old TA) to pick us up. We walked the interesting streets of Chur, with the stunning backdrop of the Swiss alps in every direction. The entrance/registration to our hostel was in a bar (...interesting...) and the most interesting stereo-typical german/swiss 'dude' was the bar tender. Think insanely ripped muscles, tiny-tiny but long shirt that barely covered his low-hanging pants - blond spiked hair and the silly german-american accent. The hostel was quite good - it was recently re-done with new furniture, lights, and wall graphics that were a nice touch.

A few hours and beers later, we end up taking a bus to a bowling alley. I made the mistake apparently EVERYONE makes when using the bus -- you can NOT put the coins into the slots, the bus driver must do it. He got pissy and started yelling at me in Swiss-German-Deutch something. I had to pay an extra .50 francs and I got to ride the bus. The bowling alley was fun- it was packed with the young, aspiring swiss teenagers with mo-hawks, cigarettes, etc (actually, it was fun and pretty cool).

I still feel like I am riding on a train/bus. Stupid delayed motion sickness.

Typical Italian becomes typical Switzerland: [almost?] any city you visit, it is located in a valley conveniently allowing said visitor to view the city from above via the ring of mountains surrounding. This was true for the cities I have been to in Italy (Rome, Vicenza, Verona, Florence, ....not Pisa..., the five cities of cinqueterre, need more?) and the same was true for Chur. I unexpectedly hiked forty-five minutes up this mountain to see a cloud-topped view of the city. In my wheezing, we found a small chapel built in the 1600's, and continued along many scary ledges, through trees, and around other stuff of the sort (like... mushrooms? deer? bambi?). The view was typical-above-the-city-exciting, but the mountains around had a bit of a different character to them. Switzerland is just beautiful.

Ever heard of Peter Zumthor? Now you have! This amazing architect constructed his first building in 1986-just after completing work for the city of Chur as part of the .... mmmm... restoration.. uhh... something? department (I might have my details wrong). The building is a somewhat open air structure that allowed viewing of some ancient Roman ruins (as if I haven't seen enough of that?). Two non-square rooms and a third sliver-shaped room is accessed through a cantilevered metal stair and creates a path by transforming to a light-weight steel cage with stairs accessing some standing areas. Windows allow complete transparency from the exterior to the interior. Three large skylights bring light in from above through black square-like tunnels. The larch wood on the interior (reminiscent of the larch wood floors originally part of the roman ruins) allow light in and add a golden glow to the interior palette. Big, fancy words, huh (I bet they made no sense and I am not going back to proofread, sorry). Very nice space, I wish I had visited earlier so I could have applied some of the ideas to a studio project I just did regarding aqueduct ruins.

service drive and near a hotel... (I think they're going to redesign that.........hopefully). Walk down a dark, black hallway and get to a confusing gate that says something in german speak. Figure out that you need to swipe your orange coin/token to magically open the gate. Walking down a narrow hallway, the first two doors are for women, the middle for families, and the last two are the locker rooms for the men. Along the opposite side of the hallway is a wall with copper pipes sliding through dripping (fresh?) water along the concrete wall causing natural rusting. The locker rooms are very red and small. Don't forget to use your orange coin/token to get the key off of the locker!

After putting on your speedo (yes, I was wearing a speedo. No joke. Stop laughing. I was wearing a speedo. Are you done laughing yet? Okay....... I'll wait. Done now? Speedo.) Through the locker rooms you can access the main 'atrium' (I like to use that word for big open spaces, because that's what the word means, right? Right?). Down a long staircas

Another space has cold, cold water -- around 14ºC. Across the hall is the hellishly-warm water, 56ºC (I think). Another room, my favorite, was the 'tea room'. It had warm water with yellow tea-leaves injected in the water. A small box on the side wall pushed a very pleasant lemony-mint smell. The beauty in this room was intensified with metal-panel clad walls which bounced any noise inside (and outside) for about 4 to 6 second. The magic was when everyone inside the room remained silent and the song of passing acoustics was consistently playing (does that make sense? 'Music' was made just by sitting in there).

Against the main 'slow stair' was a pool that slowly lead people down and out of the building, to the outdoors. The spectacular view of the gorgeous building carefully carved to allow stunning views of the mountains was intense. Although it was about 50 to 60ºF outside, it was cold to remain outside of the water---the water, however, was perfectly warm. Three tubes stood at one end of the pool and bent over to create another stream of heavy flowing water. These were surprisingly relaxing against your neck and back. Sit against the building, look at the mountains, enjoy the sunshine, stay warm in the fresh water. Outside was one of my favorite locations.

Past the changing rooms were the toilets and showers, and even further were two saunas. Both saunas were similar, simply mirrored a bit so they would fit together like "L" shapes. First one walks into a shower - with low lying lights and steam flowing gently across the ceiling. Turning and passing through the first leather door is the first sauna room - mildly warm. The second and third, final rooms get increasing warm and increasingly cloudy. The third room has practically 2 feet of visibility. There are large black stone slabs and seats and hoses to cool off/make more comfortable. The interesting touch was the added scent -- hard to describe, I *think* it was ... uhmm... like lavender, or another type of tea, similar to the 'tea room'.

I discovered why there were two different saunas in a sort-of shocking way. I, obviously, cannot read German/Swiss-dutch/mix? and was at first confused at the signs outside the saunas. The first door has a sign that started with "durn....." and the second door has the same but an additional one that said "nadchel..." (or something similar, I do not remember exactly). The confusion was whether or not one was for male, the other for female---but that wasn't the case because those words were not similar to the ones for the changing rooms. I only stayed in the saunas for a short while only to return later to grab a friend of mine. This second visit was interesting (and thus the conclusion of what those words meant) - I was following a couple into the second sauna and noticed immediately a woman removing her swimsuit -- "Whoops!" I though ... but the couple continued to enter ... further, six more naked woman walk out of the sauna and into the initial shower -- "interesting........." I grabbed my friend to leave and noticed on the way out the couple, too, were missing their bathing suits.

The moral of the story is... the word "naked" sounds a little bit, some-what not really similar to the same word in German (or swiss or dutch or something?). I just think its funny how I found out.

We had a tight train schedule for the return trip, and we, in fact, didn't have tickets for the entire trip. As we got to one train station we hoped and prayed that we would be able to buy tickets at the late hour to the next. It luckily worked out (kind-of) and I remained incredibly relaxed thanks to the baths.

Here's the best part of the story (if the baths don't win it)-- Our ticket from Milano to Roma Termini were insanely cheap - 23.50 Euro for an 8 hour train ride. Keihly and I got our tickets in the Milan train station but somehow got separated from the other four. We walked towards the train and noticed many, many people standing outside the train waiting to get on... we continued to walk along the train further to the front only to notice that it was jam-packed with an insanely large amount of people. Apparently it is possible to purchase more tickets than seats available -- and how! Keihly and I camped out in the end of one car between the gangway (connection part between cars) and restroom door. As the eight hours passed, more stops were taken were more people attempted to get on. We even took two or three smoke breaks. It was pretty intense, but luckily everyone remained cool about it, and no one really acted like a jerk. We happen to be sitting next to an Italian teenager who spoke english and he wrote a sign "fuori servizio" and posted it on the door to keep people from treading through our floor-sitting to get to the bathroom. The conductor lady was pissed and removed the sign - but luckily didn't kick us off the train. We arrived in Rome. Finally. I probably slept 2 hours max.

What happened to the four others in our group? Apparently Jenny left her backpack on the last train, and as she attempted to search for it, the train started to depart for Zurich. She jumped off of the train and she and Blake stayed behind to file a police report, etc. Nick and Zach stayed with them for only a few minutes but got on the same train as Keihly and I and ironically had an identical experience regarding our restroom/floor seating situation.

Vacation is over.

Shit. I just realized I lost my iPod on the train. This sucks.

Ciao amici,

Have you ever noticed in the movies when someone is just in the nick of time when they run after the bus or just sprint to the gate to get on a plane? That's what happened to us. Thursday afternoon we depart from studio late, and speed walk to the bus stop near Argentina to get a bus to Termini train station. As we approach the stop, we see our bus, 64, making the turn - so we all make a run for it. Peter and I get on in the rear door and stand in the doorway to force it to remain open while Keihly and Amy (finally) arrive to walk on. We finally arrive at Termini with only moments to spare-- sprinting through Termini, avoiding children, luggage, and beggars, we finally make it to our platform and land on the train. Just in the nick of time -- only minutes later we depart for Florence.

The three and a half hour train ride from Rome to Florence was very nice. The route brought us through mountain valley to prairie and back against mountains. The country side here is spectacular--especially passing by cities that are built up the side of a mountain. Spectacular views, spectacular countryside, spectacular train ride (except when you go through tunnels, it makes your ears pop all crazy like ... it hurts!)

We arrived in Florence after dusk. Amy had booked a hotel room for the four of us at 'Hotel San Lorenzo'. We somehow found the door and followed these arrow, winding stairs up four flights to a door with a sign that said 'HOTEL' above two stars. So ... I guess we're staying in a two-star hotel ... interesting. Maybe it will be like a Hotel 6 or whatever. At any rate, we surrendered our passports (which is typical of hotels in Europe) and got our room key. It was quite nice! It had an interesting wood ceiling with beams, and one wall was at an angle forming a trapezoid shaped room -- this was an obvious response to the street angle below. Interesting.

We went out walking and found a fantastic gellato place. My first gellato in Italy. So delicious, we went back two nights in a row. Not the most healthy solution, but delicious none the less. We also went to a restaurant that was recommended by some fellow students who came to Florence the week before. Turns out this place (in a very inconspicuous location) serves Florentine Steak. The four of us arrive, order a 1kg (2.2 lbs) Florentine steak ("Bistecca alle Florenzia) and two pasta dishes - one with ravioli in a cream/tomato sauce, another with tortellini in a similar sauce with truffles.

It turns out that meal included two Italian delicacies and my brother (a chef) is insanely jealous I ate it. I will attempt to relay the information I received from said insanely jealous chef brother-- apparently truffles are fungus/mushroom type thing that only a boar (or dogs?) can find -- people harvest these by following the animal as they sniff them up and out of the ground (note to self, learn how to smell truffles and become the first human to harvest them with a boar or dog). Want to try some truffles? They're only $400/lbs (or kg? basically very expensive). Delicacy number one.

Delicacy (kind of?) number two: bistecca alle firenze (Florentine steak). This 2.2lbs steak is left out for a while (to let the steak age and get more tender), hopefully no more than a week, and is drenched in butter, and cooked in a very hot pan. To keep the butter from burning, more butter is added as the steak continues to (sort-of) cook. It was the most raw, but most delicious steak I've ever had. The outside was so crisp, burned -- it was all amazing.

Is your mouth watering yet?

Florence is also the home of Brunelleschi's duomo at Santa Maria dei Fiore (see the three pictures above). This early 15th century renaissance cathedral has an interestingly over-ornate exterior and shares a clearly juxtaposed relationship with its bare, stark interior. (heh, there's your architecture lesson for the day, folks). We spent 6 euro to walk up 436 (that's the wrong number, but it was a lot) of steps to get up to the top of the dome. On the way, we walked through rings that were up through the interior of the dome. Everyone looked like ants from all of the way up inside the dome. At the top of the dome, it is 300 some feet above the ground. This means that while I was on the exterior on top of the dome I was even higher with a clear 360 degree view of Florence.

Let's fast forward a bit. After walking up a huge hill (to get another gorgeous view of Florence) we found a church (with yet another gorgeous view of Florence). This church had an interesting chapel that was almost like a crypt in that it was located below the main choir and alter (even though the stairs down were behind a secondary altar which was closer to the nave/congregation). Not too sure about the history of the church, but it seemed to have a italian renaissance flat facade with corner/triangle pieces that mask the shape of the roof behind (hard to describe - it was green, like many other italian renaissance facades, too). At any rate, we proceeded to get the church we had just visited mixed up with a castle we saw at the top of the hill. We figured we would just follow the roads to the castle on the map and magically be there. 45 or so minutes later (and after seeing an italian on a motocycle listening to Michael Bolton - quite a funny site) we figured out we were lost. No really loss though, we enjoyed viewing a once in a lifetime view of valleys and vineyards we otherwise would not have found. We finally discovered our fatal mistake in that the castle we thought we were headed to was actually the church we just visited -- then we discovered we weren't even on our map! It was a fun laugh to think that we were completely lost outside of Florence, really a true feeling of excitement.

We walked further, and more, and finally down a hill to the correct street. We finally reached back to Florence and knew where the hell we were. Still a fun adventure, if you ask me.

Fast forwarding, again... Pisa. The leaning tower. The end (serious).



Fast forwarding ... The Mediterranean sea at the coastal city of Pisa. Interesting ... deserted.




Back to Florence, another Florentine steak (yup, no joke, we enjoyed it two nights in a row. No regrets. I'm still alive). We found a look out to watch the sunset... another gorgeous view of Florence (from the opposite side).




I am tired of writing and you're probably tired of reading my writing.

Ciao amici,
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Ciao amici,

You might recall my post about the aqueduct park and its picturesque moments I captured on my camera (or, look below if you haven't seen it yet). Well, I intentionally qualified the statement "most picturesque moment" with "...so far" because I suspected...no...HOPED that I would find equally, if not more beautiful moments in the future.

Today Keihly and I hopped on a train and traveled to Castel Gandolfo (makes me suspicious of the Harry Potter character "Gandolf"). We knew a bit about it, and from what Keihly researched, there would be a bit of the lake viewable from the train station, and we could also treck up a steep path to reach the top of a mountain... sounded interesting.

As the train emerged from a dark tunnel, we rounded a curve and was welcomed to an enormous lake which snugly fit into a valley surrounded but continuous mountain like peaks. We were both shocked. The view from the train station was fantastic -- the sunshine was exploding onto the lake (yes, sunshine explodes. Just look at the picture. It's exploding). We found the insanely steep pedestrian pathway to the upper part of the hill, and found a quaint little city (rather, the lake was bordered by many cities, this was one city with a small square that overlooked the lake). Every view from within the city - and out through the alleyways was stunning. The framed views through the narrow streets gave the small town and tight quarters such an Italian character.

We walked around the city, sat in the square to draw, and was given ooodles of pamphlets from the gentleman who was sitting in the tourism stand. Clouds flew in around 1PM, which made things cold, dark, and a bit damp. Luckily it passed and the sun poked through remaining clouds for the rest of the evening. Along the lake's edge, a road carried light traffic, and to our surprise, many people who were jogging (we saw ... mmmm... over ten people jogging within two hours -- lots for Rome!). And how could you blame them? They have found a perfect, relaxing, beautiful place to go for a run -- a steep, tree-ous hill on one side, and a placid, large round lake on the other. The air was so crisp and clean -- no smog or noise from the city.

We paid €3,80 for the round trip tickets -- so cheap! I also got a ciocolatoto (sp??--hot chocolate) at a bar when it started raining a bit. This is also when I decided that I don't need to pay oodles of money to go to extravagant places around Europe, I know there are so many beautiful places in Italy that I can easily access for cheap. (Not to say, though, I will go somewhere fantastic for Spring Break ... not sure where yet)

Ciao amici,

Saturday: Sunny, 63° F

My sinus infection that I've had for three weeks (literally) moved into my ear, I guess. I've been trying to use pseudoefedrina (as the Italians call it) to clear it all out/loosen it up - which helps, but it's still just crappin' up my head. Maybe I will go to the doctor soon. Maybe...


Here are the way cool details about where I live!

This is the gate I enter into ... Vicolo de Santa Maria in Cappella, 6. The church straight ahead was built in 1009, and is unaccessible because they have been digging/excavating inside for some reason. The building smack behind that is where my apartment is, on the third floor. You'll also notice a long wall that connects the front-most portion of the building on the far right, along side the church, and up to the wing of my apartment -- there is a rooftop terrace-type area that we like to go on at night.

This is the columnade/logia that I walk along to get to my apartment -- the sun is shining nicely through the private courtyard. There is a Clementine tree which we are welcome to steal well-seeded fruits from. The courtyard is a very nice area - we just can't really go into it (especially at night).

This is the view of the courtyard from the entry/lobby/foyer room out of the elevator just outside the apartment.

This is the dining/living/common room. The cleaning lady had just come. Can you tell?

Photo of the teeeeeny tiny kitchen. Jeremy, in the foreground, is my roommate. He is as sarcastic and cynical as I am. We are hosting a contest this semester to see who is the most sarcastic and cynical. Whoever wins can just go to hell.


Another view of the teeeeeeny tiny kitchen. No dishwasher. No microwave. What kind of kitchen is this? Shiiiit....

This is my room. There's a ton of my laundry everywhere (don't look at my underwear!11!11!!!_LOLLLZZZ) drying because there are no dryers. The room is actually a lot larger than what it appears. But it is very loud because outside of my window ....

...is an insanely busy road. As you can tell from the picture, these vehicles move by so fast, they appear as just a blur. Be careful when you try and cross the street!

There are other nice views from my apartment, like from my dining/living/common room:
I LOVE all of the antennas! Do you recognize the building on the left? It's my header image at the top of my blog.
Sooo... that's where I live. Jealous? Yeah. I thought so.

Here are the way cool details about where I go to school!

This is outside the studio, see the huge ass door? Well, there is a smaller door inside the bigger door which you use. It has a big key, too.

This is my studio. It is one of six studio rooms. Two are larger, two are this size, and two are shorter and a different small shape.

Here's a view of a different studio.

This is the lecture hall/room. We get way boring two hour art history lectures in here.


This is the view outside my studio. There is a crazy little fountain that is leaning on one side and it spills water over onto the cobblestone. How silly is that? Also, this area is the Jewish Ghetto - there are two schools, an elementary and high school. It is funny to see all of the high school kids in their crazy expensive clothes looking all hip hoppity cool and with the times with spiky hair and really huge sun glasses (don't be surprised if I come home looking like this)
So. That is where I go to school everyday. Jealous? Yeah... I thought so.

Our first studio charrette is to transect the 1748 Nolli map of Rome against the modern city. The enormous map was divided into 24 sections, and in groups of two, we tread through the city in order to find what 250 year old streets and city conditions on the Nolli map still exist or how they have changed today. It was a llooonnggg walk.

The Nolli map. My section is 21, which is an eastern sliver of the city. See the angel figure in front of the building in the bottom right of the map? That's part of my section.

Ciao aimici,

awe·some /ˈɔsəm/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciati[aw-suh m]

–adjective

1. inspiring awe: an awesome sight.
2. showing or characterized by sight.
3. Slang. very impressive: That new white convertible is totally awesome.
   

We followed the circus maximus through and across a twentybazillion lane wide street and up against palatine hill and arrived at the coliseum (obviously firefox's spell checker doesn't like the ancient way of spelling "colosseum" ...and, note to myself, that was a really nerdy statement). It was funny that somehow I missed the fact that this colossal monument was in front of us until we were about a quarter of the way past.

"Oh wow, we're at the colosseum, huh?" I stupidly ejaculated.
In response, Keihly rudely interjected: "uhmmm, yes, how did you miss that??"

Guess I deserved that. Anyway, I commented how the colosseum has a cross engraved in a marble panel that was obviously attached to the structure far after it was originally constructed. Isn't it interesting how many, many of these ancient structures/monuments were intruded/taken over and sacred-ized. (gee, I think by now everyone reading this thinks I have an elementary education based on my obvious observations and stupid vocabulary. I like trying to sound smart. Give me a break.)

Alright! so -- we walked like seven miles to get to this metro stop, which I secretly suspect there was an easier way to get to, but I wasn't going to doubt our route because Keihly, being a girl, was sooooo proud of herself because she actually found directions to get to this crazy in the middle of nowhere place. I wasn't going to take away from her pride, even after she tried to make us walk in the wrong direction... like three times. No, maybe twice. Or four times? This is all really besides the point. We walked far to get to this metro stop. It was a really nice metro stop. It was at .... uhmmm... Menzoni...mezoni ... mezonlili... Nanzoni. Nancy. K. we got onto the train, got off, and started to walk toward something I was stunned by. Off in the distance was this obvious chunk of ancient aqueduct with three or four arch/bays in silhouette.

(and, that last paragraph will be the only one that funny) We approached the ruins and guessed its access as we turned down a road (where, interestingly, people were getting trained on motorcycles. Luckily, no one was hurt). Through a short arcade of another aqueduct, we arrived to a vast green space with various segments of what was once the brilliant, extravagant, monumental technology which supplied water to ... somewhere (that sentence bombed). I couldn't help but experience the pride and the challenge that was put before the builders and what planning and precision was required in the planning of this infrastructure. Brilliant.

We continued walking through the beaten paths and avoided three dogs, about seven joggers, and one elderly man on a vespa. I guess you can take those things anywhere? Even on historical/reserve land. After passing a flock of sheep (not really a metaphor for anything, we actually saw a ton of sheep) we discovered a longer, more in-tact stretch of the aqueduct. This area was even more stunning, as the termination of the aqueduct seemed to intersect a light of top-heavy african-esque trees (see the pictures, you will agree).

I must admit, "When in Rome" has come up a few times, not really in appropriate manners, but this, I think, is a situation where I can honestly apply it. When in Rome, you can drive vespas on dirt paths through ancient aqueduct ruins, AND, beside these ancient ruins, what more deserving thing could be placed other than a golf course. Brilliant! I'll keep adding to this list of When in Rome's as I see fit.

(When in Rome, you can walk into oncoming traffic and the traffic magically stops, rather than just hitting you)

Keihly and I sat on top of some ruined brick at the base of one of the arches. The sun was beaming at us and the temperature was about 60 degrees (warmer than negative one degree at home! Take that, Iowa!). It was nice to see many people out jogging, riding their bike, and walking there dog. Many families were entertaining their kids with an afternoon stroll against a two thousand year old stone arcade. Everywhere I looked just felt so picturesque - like a painting that was perfectly orchestrated, carefully thought-out, and every aesthetic detail perfectly pronounced. The site was so beautiful. How can you top that? How about mountains in the distance?

I sat on a mount, coughed and sniffled (I am still sick) and drew some sketches while taking a moment here and there to snap a photo. Gorgeous. It was well worth the numerous miles we probably walked to get to the site. And I must give props to Keihly -- she did the research online, and actually DID get us to the site!

Today is my niece's first birthday. I am sending her my happy birthday wishes from across the globe!

Ciao amici,

I've been busy with my drawing charrette this week. Each day we spend 3+ hours somewhere in Rome drawing. Today we did an in-studio exercise where we work on duplicating existing work. This is beneficial for us because we are fine-tuning our precision by studying something static which we can reference/measure in any way. Once we're good at that, hopefully (very much hopefully) we'll have more precision when drawing out in the field. (On the left... I think... is a picture of us slaving away at our desks in studio. Kind-of an interesting atmosphere, if you like being chained to your desk and slave driven to finish studio work. Ha! I'm only kidding...)

Sorry for the EXTREMELY crappy photos below, but here are some quick shots of what I've done. It's kind-of funny for me to look at the picture of the actual thing, and compare it to what I was able to puke up. Now I see how I screwed up! Don't laugh .... By the end of the semester I'll be sooooo much better at sketching - we have many many more weeks of intense drawing like this.

That's a statue of St Peter in a church we visited yesterday. I don't really know much more details. Shame on me.Okay, so this is the example of embarrassing work. The back in the figure is way-off in my gesture drawing. I did this really fast, though -- just moved around the sketch very quickly. I probably did that in ... 5 to 10 minutes. Yeah, I know that some proportions are off, but you know what? Let's see you do it better. Jerk.