Tuesday

Just to answer my mother's question in my last post, I don't think I'll be able to put any pictures in this blog (not unless it's from the Internet or something). I probably won't even develop any of my film until I get home. I may pull certain pictures from the Internet to illustrate some of the more famous things I've seen though.

So! Today the weather was indeed horribly wet and dismal. But before I get to that, I'll write about a few more observations of Italian culture.

Italians are big fans of PDAs (public displays of affections), especially with younger people. Teenage couples grope at each other and exchange quite a bit of saliva, so it's a little embarrassing to look at. But the older couples, in their twenties, are a bit cuter about it. They do these sort of looooong hugs in public, especially when it's obvious each one of them has to go in a different direction for work or wherever their destination is. They act like they can't let each other go. Today, at the Termini train station, there was this one particular couple that kept doing these really cute smooches--not making out or anything, but they kept pecking each other on the lips. I'd take a picture if I could, but I don't really want to invade their personal moments.

Italian men are supposedly "more romantic" than American men, but this really isn't the case for most of them. In fact, quite a few of them are pretty vulgar and not so subtle when they're checking a woman out. Every day, it's been pretty obvious that at least one or two random Italians--mostly young men in their teens and twenties--have been gawking at me. They do it everywhere to women everywhere--in the piazza, on the train, on the bus, in restaurants, in Internet cafes. Italian men think it's a turn-on to stare at you intently, but it's really quite uncomfortable. They're not threatening you in the least bit at all, as would be the case if a random man was staring at you in public in the United States. It's just what they do here, and the best way to deal with is to ignore them completely. If you make eye-contact with them for more than a split second, then it's an affirmation that you're responding to their staring. It's pretty irritating. For instance, there were two guys staring at me the entire time from their computer while I was using my computer at the Internet cafe the other day.

I forgot to post about this the other day, but apparently on Sunday, from approximately two to four in the morning, there was a band of four drunk, bawdy Italian musicians, wandering around on the streets by our hotel, playing the guitar and singing love songs off-key. In fact, I was informed that they were singing off key so badly that they were more screaming rather than singing love songs. This kept nearly everyone in the hotel awake, as we all had our windows open to let in fresh air. Everyone was bleary eyed and joking about it in the morning.

Dinner for the first time together as a class was really nice. We got arrangements to eat in the same restaurant every night during the school week, and they'll make something different for everyone each night. The restaurant was "family-style," which is to say NOT the same as family style is in America. This was a very cozy nice little restaurant, not too fancy but not dirty or cheap either. Just a nice little restaurant. We were served two courses of food, which for me is an incredible amount. The first course was penne pasta with red sauce and pork, and the penne pasta, sauce and pork were all freshly prepared on site, not from dried or canned products. Oh no.

I quickly asked Mica, who was sitting across from me if it was rude to turn down the Italians if they offered you more food and she confirmed it. So I stuffed down two plates of said pasta. Then the next course had two slices of veal and a side of potatoes lightly fried in olive oil and seasoned with rosemary. I was pretty close to exploding when we were done, but really, it wasn't that much food, and we had walked a lot earlier that day. Really darned good. I decided to get up and go with a few other people back to the hotel, and not a moment too soon. The skies opened up (it was about nine thirty at night) a few minutes after I got into my room and started pouring down rain. I watched the light show from my window; I could see enormous bolts of lightning striking down over Rome, which was twinkling in the distance.

Today, we woke up to wet, dismal and gloomy weather. As soon as we boarded the train to Rome, it started pouring sheets of rain outside. We went to the Roman Forum again, and by the time we got there, the rain had let up a bit and the sun was even out for a little bit. In the middle of the teacher's lecture, it started pouring again, and we fled for cover under the arch of Septimus Severus. I noticed a few more details on the Triumphal Arch that I hadn't before, and took a few more photos. We wandered around the forum some more, discussing various aspects of it.

After that, we climbed a few billion steps up to the Capitoline hill, which is the most important hill in Rome. You know the saying, "Seven hills of Rome..." well, there are only three hills that are generally agreed upon to be part of the original hills, but no one else agrees on which constitute the remaining original hills. The fact is that Rome was established in a very hilly area around a river that allowed them access to the Mediterranean.The Capitoline hill, or the Capitol hill, is where the most important places were (e.g., the Temple of Jupiter).

Straying from topic again... the official name of the Temple of Jupiter is the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, which literally translates to "Jupiter the Best and the Greatest." The Greek equivalent of Jupiter is Zeus, just so you know. Now, my roommates and I think that this description is very funny, because the idea of Jupiter being the "best and the greatest" is pretty pompous and egostical, even though he's the most important god for the Romans.

On the Capitoline hill, there's the Palazzo Nuovo, which is a museum that was designed by Michaelangelo. It contains all sorts of fantastic treasures. The first thing we saw almost made me jump up and down to see it, but I didn't because of my bad ankles (which were doing really well today, so I didn't want to mess them up!) This was a collection of the remaining fragments of a colossal statue of Constantine, the emperor who legalized Christianity and eventually was the first Christian Roman emperor (he converted on his deathbed). This statue was originally fifty feet high, painted in realistic colors and even dressed in real clothes, and could be seen from a long distance. The only surviving parts of it are the face, the hands, parts of his arms and his feet. The feet even have the toenails carved out on them, and the smallest toe was about the size of a cantalope. Really exciting. Then our teacher led us on a whirlwind tour through the museum, there were too many things to look at for us to sit still in any one room.

The most important things we got to see included the original bronze representation of the She-Wolf that nutured Remus and Romulus, (the founders of Rome); the gigantic and original equestrian bronze sculpture of Marcus Aurelius on his horse (this towered over you and was immensely impressive); a life sized marble sculpture of a Gallic trumpeter dying from a stab wound to his chest; and the sole surviving fragment of the once colossal Temple of Jupiter. The surviving portion of the temple was a good 50 feet long and about twelve feet thick, but represented only a tiny fraction of the original size of the temple. There were also incredibly moving and beautifully sculpted marble reliefs and heartbreaking frescos covering entire walls and too many other things to list.

The teacher said that we were free to stay at the museum after the tour was done, and this was our original plan. But the weather got pretty ugly, and we decided to try to go back to the train station to figure out what to do from there. However, the walk back to the train station was absolutely miserable; we went down a very steep hill from the top of the Capitoline, and then they had blocked off the sides of the streets for some political or religious procession; so we had to detour onto the street itself, and eventually all of us had our pants soaked up to our thighs, even with umbrellas. That decided it for me, and I went home with my interpreter and Kate. Mica stayed behind to find a filter for her camera, but sheforgot that siesta was about to start and all the stores would be closed for three hours. By the time I'm done with this post, she should be back here, (each train to Frascati only runs once a hour).

The teacher walks like a maniac, and he says that this is HIS going slow. This is like Roman boot camp. By the time I return home, I will be quite fit from climbing billions of steps.