Tuesday the 27th of May

I have some pictures of the trip that I got from Kate! Click on each to see the photograph.

Pretending to be in jail--Kate took this picture of me behind the gates at Santa Maria in Travestere.
Kate in front of the villa-- I took this picture. We're standing in front of the villa that overlooks Frascati on the mountain. Our hotel is one of the buildings just to the right of Kate's shoulder. Behind the visible buildings is what our view of Rome from our hotel room looks like!
Our bathroom--this is our bathroom with all our laundry, and the bidet (second toilet used for washing one's bum). We have not used the bidet.
Our TEACHER--we have taken to calling him Dr. Jones because of his hat. He is breaking his own no-cell-phone-use-in-class rule.
The sidewalk chalk artist from Australia-- that we met last weekend.

Today started out proving to be very warm, well, really pretty hot. It's still fairly humid here from the wintertime, plus most places in Rome don't have air conditioning, so we were sweating almost as soon as we set off for Rome from the hotel. Last week, I was actually so concerned about moisture affecting my hearing aids that I made a make-shift dry-aid container for them. I got a box of dried rice from the local grocery store and put it into a tupperware container; and it worked pretty well as far as absorbing moisture from my hearing aids goes!

We were outdoors the entire time for the duration of class, but our teacher kept us moving very quickly so we were able to finish before noon to catch the train back to Frascati, and to avoid the worst of the afternoon sun. We spent a lot of time in the Roman Forum area to see the Forums of Caesar and Augustus, and then we went to another area close by, in the Campius Martus (the name denoting a geographic region of Rome containing many monuments) to see the theater of Marcellus and the Porticus of Octavia, which were right next to each other. I spent almost all my time in the sun with my umbrella to protect myself from the sun; and I might spend the rest of the trip doing that. A lot of the people in my class already have been burnt to an extent and I'm doing my best to avoid that.

So, the Forum of Julius Caesar, and the Forum of Augustus were basically additions to the Roman Forum, which at the time, was getting too crowded and not large enough to serve the many functions happening in there (shopping, business, legislative and judicial issues, etc). The next two pictures show the forums; the first is the Caesaran forum and the next is Augustus's forum.







Mostof the forum of Augustus was blocked off because it's next to a major street in Rome, and they were getting it ready for a parade (by installing bleacher seats and so on). Independence Day for the Italians is right around the corner, on June 1 or June 2. We'll see what happens with that and how it affects class! After these two forums, we were going to walk through the Jewish Ghetto to go to a section of the Campus Martius, but our way was blocked by a movie company getting ready to do filming for some Italian soap opera. So we had to take a pretty wide detour to get to our next destination, the Theater of Marcellus.



This is a theater that was constructed before the famous Colosseum. Marcellus was one of Augustus' adopted sons who was due to become his heir, so Augustus named the theater after him. However Marcellus died before Augustus. This was a problem that often happened with emperors, they would name heirs and then the heirs would die before the emperors did. But at any rate, this theater was a regular theater-- in the shape of a half circle. An amphitheater is a theater that makes a complete circle around the stage, as is the case with the Colosseum. A theater is when the theater makes a semi circle around the stage. In fact, the Greek theater at LSU is incorrectly called the Greek amphitheater, even though it doesn't form a complete circle.



Next to the theater itself is a temple, the Porticus of Octavia, who was Augustus's sister. He named the theater after her, since he had so many great monuments named after himself. People would still connect the temple with Augustus via his sister. This temple is one of the oldest temples that is still in very good condition. It has the original pediment (the triangular section on top of the structure), cornices (the decoration that sticks out on the edge of the roof), and archaeologists have recovered fragments of an enormous map of Rome that covered the walls--this gave them a lot of information about the layout of Rome in that era.

After that, most of the class hurried back to the train station via the bus, and Natasha, Kate and I went straight to our favorite pizzeria for lunch. The pizza there is excellent, and the person, a guy in his late twenties or early thirties, who usually cuts the pizza up for us, is quite possibly one of the nicest people ever. He's come to know us by sight now, and is always enthusiastic every time we get pizza from there. Yesterday, a second incidence of a pigeon entering the pizzeria occurred, and we were eating at one of the tables outside when this happened. We watched the pigeon strut into the store, pecking aimlessly at the floor. When the pizza boy came to shoo it out, the pigeon banged into the window before it could fly out of the store.

I'm going to describe a few incidents that I forgot to mention in my earlier posts. It's been really wonderful to walk around Rome with our teacher (who has a PhD. in art history, is an archaeologist, and speaks fluent Italian). He's way better than a tour guide could ever be, since he can give us so much information about the things we see, and help us in a crisis or emergency when we can't speak Italian. Yesterday, I went to meet Natasha at a local coffee shop so we could study together (Natasha was to study interpreter-related books, and myself for this art history course). When I got there, Natasha looked very distressed. It turns out that the check out boy meant to put a charge of 27.90 euros on Natasha's card, but accidentally charged her 279 euros instead, which is close to 450 American dollars! He didn't know how to fix it, and they only spoke Italian so it was a difficult situation. But Natasha was able to call our teacher, and he came and helped her sort it out with the manager of the restaurant. They were VERY sorry and deeply embarrassed about the mistake, and gave Natasha her coffee for free, and gave her a discount on the wine she purchased. I tried to purchase some water and coffee after this happened and they wouldn't let me pay for it either, even though I only got there after the mistake happened. It could have been a much worse situation, but it worked out in the end.

Last week, when we were at the Colosseum, there was that horrible thunderstorm that went on all morning. After we finally got inside the Colosseum after two hours in pouring rain, we were getting ready to listen to the teacher lecture about the Colosseum when a man, an American, came up to us and asked the teacher if we wanted a tour guide. The teacher told him no, and the man flipped out and became infuriated at the teacher's refusal. The man started cursing at our teacher, using the F-word liberally, and then tried to knock him down to the ground! We were able to avoid a nasty confrontation though, just by moving on.

Another "tour-guide" incident happened yesterday as well. We were at the Basilica of St. John Lateran, and we were in the front of the building talking about the great, original bronze doors there. We were looking at a particular page in our course packet, which our teacher made specifically for us, copying various pages with lots of diagrams and photographs from assorted literature. Another man came by us and yelled at our teacher, shouting, "Why are you using a tour guide packet?!!" He thought that our teacher was lecturing from some generic tour guide booklet, which he wasn't. It was really strange.

Then today, another misunderstanding happened on the subway. Kate and Mica were a little bit of a distance away from me on the subway, so I didn't see this happen. But apparently, what happened was that this tall and very smelly, dirty man came onto the train. He was really oily and greasy and had long lank hair. When he put his arm up to grab a handhold, Kate's face was right in his reeking armpit, and she and Mica couldn't help but start laughing. Then they started a discussion about rude people in general, but it wasn't about this man in particular, just other incidents that had happened, such as with the tour guide. But the man apparently understood English, and thought they were referring to him. When it was time to exit the train, he tried to spit on Kate. However, he missed her; his spit landed on random woman who conveniently walked in front of Kate. Wild stuff. I know that in the USA, spitting is a form of assault and you can be arrested for that. I don't know if the same applies to here.

There's a saying that nothing goes right in Italy, and it's proved to be very true on a daily basis. It has NOT been boring at all so far, though, and I doubt that'll ever be the case here.