Nerd Cityyyyy

Starting where I left off...
(I am so bad at blogging)

Thursday night we went to two bars I hadn't been to before AND we hung out with some new people! Woooooo. For those who know me well, I have the worst case of social ADD (I guess you would call it?) EVER. I constantly need to switch up who I'm hanging out with and where. There can be a few constants (like always going out with my roommates), but we always need to be meeting up with different groups of people and at different locations or I just start to hate going out. So Thursday was fabulous. It was sooooooo much fun! I got to talk to all the new people, we got to dance (another thing we haven't done in forever), we hung out in a VIP section (ha), etc. Anyway. No one wants to hear about the things I do in Italy that I can do at home.

Friday I woke up super early and went to class with one of my roommates. I am such a nerd. It's an on-site class (which means it meets in different locations all over Rome) called Bodies and Burials. We went to the St. Sebastian Catacombs. It was outside of Rome and suchhhhh a nice change of pace! Small, cobblestone roads, barely any cars, big rolling hills, the sun was out, etc. Perfect. The professor walked us up and down the road and showed us an old circus and a castle that is actually just a huge thing with super thick walls and one tomb inside. I LOVE stuff like that. Then we went into the catacombs too, which was really cool. It made me think of the mine's in the U.P. All of a sudden, it just opened up to this huge room where St. Sebastian's tomb is and where they used to have secret masses when Christian's were under persecution. It's so weird to stand in those places and think about alllllll the people who have been there before you. Just crazy. While we were on the tour, I explained to the professor that I was Victoria's roommate and asked if I could start coming to the class every Tuesday, just to listen and see everything. She told me yes and just to let the school know for insurance purposes or something since it's on-site. Wooooooooo. After I wasn't trying to blend in anymore in case she said no, I just started pouring out the questions, so I think she really liked me. I might be the most interested one in the class! Haha.

After class, we met up with some of our other roommates and some of the boys at school and then headed out to lunch. We got kebabs (pizza and kebabs... our only choices for a cheap lunch) and ate outside cause it was so nice out. (This no rain thing is GREAT.) The other two boys joined us when we were done and we sat in a little "park" (aka lots of gravel, a tree, and a bench next to a gas station) soaking up the sun. My face even got a little red! Anyway, I started talking about how cool Victoria's class was and one of the guys told me I should come to the on-site Art History class that two of them have on Thursday mornings! Yesssssssss. Two on-site classes? And I don't even have to do homework!? PERFECT. So now instead of sitting around until 2pm every Tuesday and Thursday, I have two on-site classes to go to. What a nerd... I love it.

Friday night, we all just stayed in and relaxed. Danielle, Victoria, and I just sat around and talked and stuff. I told Helen, it would have been one of those nights at home where we go to Meijer and spend an hour picking out which ice cream we want to eat (we have issues making decisions), grab some Stouffers mac and cheese, then go home and watch a movie. Here, there's nothing to do! We can't watch TV, we have no idea where a movie theater is, we can't rent movies, we just can't really do anything. I feel like I live on a farm in 1872... plus electric lights. We all had to be bundled up cause we have no heat. So seriously, 1872. I was wishing for a board game or something, but we couldn't even do that! Oh well, we'll get the hang of this eventually.

Yesterday, I woke up on a mission. I was going to a castle on the Mediterranean Sea. I figured it all out. Then, duh, I got lost. I could not find the bus I had to take to save my life. I asked soooooooo many people where it was. Not like it matters, cause my Italian is the WORST. I tried to figure it out, but it just didn't work. Finally, I found a place called "Fitness Center" and it said all this stuff in English on the building, so I went in there. Luckily, the lady behind the desk spoke English. Unluckily, she moved here from Florence last week, so she had no idea what I was looking for. FAB. Eventually, I understood some Italian guy who told me to go to another metro stop. So I did that, I kept seeing the buses I need go flying by, but I still couldn't find the stop/place to buy a ticket. Soooooooo, I finally just gave up and decided to save that adventure for another day.

I got on the metro for the third time... after going up four stops, back seven, and now up nine... and decided to go some place I hadn't been before. I was debating between Piazza della Repubblica and The Villa Borghese park. I decided on the park... it's the biggest park in Rome and it's supposed to rival Central Park. To get there, I had to walk through Piazza del Popolo ("the People's Square"). I've only been there at night, so I got distracted in one of the churches. I was going to go in the other two that are there, but I wasn't in the mood to be inside anymore. Plusssss, there were sooooo many tourists and it was just crowded. They were building a huge stage in the square or something, I'm not sure what was going on. There were lots of people dressed up for Carnavale too, so that was cool to see. I sat down and watched these two little girls for a while, they were all dressed in red, maybe little red ridding hood? They had a huge bag of confetti and were running in circles throwing it everywhere. The little one was so cute, she kept copying exactly what her sister was doing. So I watched them until their bag was empty (I'm such a creep).

Then I walked up to the park. Like everything else in Rome, it was dirty and dead looking. I'm giving the park the benefit of the doubt and hoping it's just because it's winter. I really wanted to find the lake that's in the park, but I had no idea where it was. This park goes on foreverrrrrrrrr. I just walked and walked and walked and walked. This park is also where you should go if you want to see Italians and their public displays of affection at their finest. Seriously ridiculous. It's so wierd because these people are like allllllllllll over each other and then there are all these families with little kids just walking past like nothing's even happening. Definite cultural difference. ANYWAY.

At the top of the hill where the park starts from the Piazza is a beautiful view of Rome. It looks right over the Piazza and it's really pretty. There was also a bunch of guys selling trains with people's name's, so I thought of Grandpa Jerry.

There's basically not much to say about the park other than that it looked dead, there were a lot of couples, and I walked a lot. Haha. OH and there were lots and lots and lots of little kids dressed up for Carnavale.

Last night we went out again with some of the new people from Thursday! We went to two of our usual hang outs though, but it was fun. At the second bar, Sunderland was on TV, so I thought of Michael. Some of the guys we hang out with are big soccer fans, and they were all rooting for Arsenal... I HAD to root for Sunderland. It ended in a tie, but we left before the game was over.

Soooo that's about it. I think I'm going to check out Piazza della Repubblica today since I didn't go yesterday. MSU is playing Wisconsin at 3pm today which is 9pm our time. YES. A good game AND at a time that doesn't require me to stay up all night!?!? Perfect. I'm going over to the guys place and we're making dinner and watching the game. I've missed my basketball sooooooo much! I don't know WHAT I'm going to do when March Maddness starts...!

Time to get moving! Ciao!


Ohhhhh P.S. Remember how I said I was getting dumber being here? The other day one of my professors said something I COULD NOT believe. We're reading The Hours, which deals with AIDS. My professor said something along the lines of "It might be hard to imagine because you guys don't remember when AIDS was a big deal, an epidemic, but it used to be a big disease that effected a lot of people." I almost walked out of class. Is she SERIOUS!? There are about 40million people with AIDS right now. It spreads like wildfire. It's a GLOBAL PANDEMIC. I could easily go into a big, long lecture about AIDS right now and what a problem it is and how no one pays attention to it. Ughhhh. I wanted to say something, but she kept talking and by the time I would have had a chance to talk, we were on a totally different topic. How can you teach and not even know what you're talking about!?!?! It's just so frustrating.

Apparently, I don't know how to exist without complaining. But seriously. That is not okay.

NOW it's time to go start my day.