Pre and Post Amsterdam

A picture I took all the way back in September. One of my favorites from the semester thus far.

An original mosaic from 1090 in the "off-limits" church next to my residence

A view down an Amsterdam canal.

Hello Everybody!

I'm going to try and get this blog out before my day of classes start. This is the last week before the weeklong semester break, and I have two papers to write before Thursday night. As soon as these papers are finished, and my week is over, the finish line is really around the corner. One month from tomorrow and I will be on a flight home. I must admit I am looking forward to getting back to the States.

As I walked out to classes one morning, one of the porters at our residence took me aside and asked me if I would like to tour the 11th century church next to my residence. The church has been closed for, to my guess, at least a few hundred years, and is currently in the process of being renovated, but it is closed to the public. Paulo, the porter, took me inside, and took me around. It is a great example of Romanesque architecture, and although the apse is the only part of the church that hasn't been dug up it is for good reason. There are two excavated holes in the floorleading to the foundation below--an ancient Roman home, filled with all sorts of pottery. When the excavators found this, they decided to keep digging, and found a graveyard, which must have been the crypt, under each side nave of the church. Paolo asked me for a souvenir, and when I answered in the affirmative, he told me I could take anything from any one of the large plastic bags--except one. It was filled with bones. I took pictures instead.

I met with five priests before my trip to Amsterdam. Fr. Corey, the pastor at St. Mary's in Bethel, was in Rome for a retreat, and offered to take me out to dinner. We had a lovely meal, and some of his priest buddies were really pretty funny. They were all from Boston, and they talked up being priests. I didn't realize that meeting a group of priests (and a seminarian my age) subjected me to talks aboutjoining their ranks, but I did manage to thwart their attempts. We had great dinner conversation, and after the meal ("It's on me," Fr. Corey said. "Actually, it's on the parish's dime, but you get the idea.") Fr. Corey slipped me a fifty euro bill and told me to, "Have fun in Amsterdam. Just remember: everything that is legal isn't exactly moral."

It rained in Amsterdam the entire time I was there, but being in a northern European metropolis was refreshing. New culture, new attitudes, new architecture, Amsterdam really got me excited for my class next semester, the Northern Renaissance. I met three of my buddies from school there, Tyler, Victor, and Nathan, who had that week off from classes and were traveling around Europe together. I can't tell you how excited I was to see some fresh faces not associated with Kenyon in Rome. Kenyon is a tiny school to begin with, but when the only students you share classes with are the ones you are living with, it becomes exponentially insular, and seeing three of my best friends in a city I had never been to before was delightful. We visited the Rijksmueseum together, and also the Van Gogh, and walked all around the city together. The Rijksmuseum has a tremendous collection of Rembrandts and Frans Hals, and as I said before, made me that much more excited for my Art History course next semester. Amsterdam really would be a nice place to live, if I spoke Dutch and if I had money. Everything was much more expensive than in Italy, and it was tough to budget, especially with three guys who needed to save every penny for the remainder of their Eurotrip.

When I returned to Rome, I learned that I missed our program dinner with the provost who was visiting to make sure everything was running smoothly. I volunteered to take him out around the city between classes on Monday, and I couldn't have been more surprised by how laid back and fun to talk with. He answered a bunch of my questions about a possible career in academics and treated me to a filling lunch in Trastevere. I'm looking forward to talking more with him when I get back on campus next semester--it also can't hurt to have a buddy in the administration.

A bit later in the week, my Vatican class toured St. Peter's again, but this time we had an even more special treat than we are normally accustomed to. Our professor took us all over the Basilica again to various off-limits places, but then the climax was the trip inside the sealed off chapel where Michelangelo's "Pieta" is held. The public, maybe 15 yards away, and separated from it by an immense plane of glass, can only view his masterpiece (sculpted when he was about my age) from a distance, but with Dr. Carlo-Stella we were able to enter the chapel and view the work face to face. There were dozens of people behind us, separated by the glass, taking pictures and what not while we had a brief lecture (15 minutes or so) right in front of the "Pieta". The chapel was silent, completely protected from the sneaker squeaks and camera flashes and not-so-hushed whispers of the tourists, while we took notes and reflected. Our professor, Dr. Carlo-Stella, had this to say right before we exited: "Each one of you someday will ask yourself about death and suffering and whether you believe or not. Please, regardless of your faith or lack thereof, I ask of you to please keep with you spiritual beauty. With this you'll be able to face that moment of transition--death. Spiritual beauty will guide you during this eternal bliss. My message to you is to foster and develop spiritual beauty in your existence." Needless to say, it was the most profound lecture I've ever had, and I'm beginning to think that this is the best course/professor I have ever had.

Back at school, my friends on the football team have just finished their season in which they went defeated. 0-10. Yikes. I was able to tune into the broadcast online and watched most of the game, until I saw one of my friends break his fibula. That's when I turned off the game. They were down 20-0 and surprise, lost.

OK, I'm off to classes. Three today, and then homework for the next few days before break. On Friday of this week, we will have a guided tour of the Villa Farnesina with reknown art historian, Ingrid Rowland, which I am super excited about, and then on Tuesday I fly to Paris until Thursday, when I meet up with Tyler and Victor in London. I hope all is well at home, looking forward to hearing from you.

A Quick Synopsis of the Last 5 Weeks

 Grapes at the Vineyard on Vesuvius

View from our hotel overlooking the Bay of Naples and Vesuvius

 Flooded St. Mark's Piazza

I haven't written in ages and if I don't blog now I'll lose all ambition to ever blog again. This may be healthy, though. Compulsive blogging is a hairy problem. I'll start where I left off before my 7 hour train to the jade-green canals of Venice. On the train to my destination I met a remarkably fit 80 year old Roman named Luciano who has sailed around the world twice (once as a retirement present to himself when he was 62-66) and spent time with Kerouac and Henry Miller at Big Sur in the fifties. We had gorgeous weather in Venice as the pictures concede, and even the pouring nightime rain afforded us the chance to see St. Mark's flooded. Venice struck me for its uncanny, near implausible beauty and its strangeness--a very strange city indeed. I visited the Accademia, Santa Maria dei Frari, San Rocco, and an excellent exhibit on the early photographs of Stanley Kubrick. These black and whites portray characters the margins of society (circus freaks, the handicapped, poor families, orphans, etc.) which speaks to how fringe characters (those living in Edge City as Tom Wolfe would say) make compelling narratives.

I certainly met some Edge City dwellers during my stay in Venice. The hostel was a fabulous old palazzo with marble floors, coffered ceilings, and hall length mirrors, as well as Venetian chandeliers, but with 90's West Coast rap music playing day and night and instead of cash you could trade goods--a tattoo artist, a guest for the weekend, earned her cot by tattooing the manager. There were plenty of friendly New Zealanders and Aussies traveling and working there and an 18 year old Briton who'd run away from "Me mum for a bit."

Other recent trips have included Naples, Pompeii, and most recently Florence where our hotel gave us tablecloths and napkins for towels and washcloths.In Naples my class and I studied ancient frescoes at archaeological digs at Stabiae and Pompeii where we took a closer look at Pompeii's "Living Statues"--the plaster body casts of the victims of the Vesuvian quake nearly 2000 years ago. Our program had lunch on the slopes of Vesuvius at a winery called Cantina del Vesuvia where we were served excellent food and after lunch we were allowed to romp about in the vineyard and eat grapes by the bundle.

Field trips for my other classes have been extraordinary. We've studied the Vatican necroplis on the Scavi Tour (that Mom's friend Jackie Molligo recommended), have traipsed throughout the Vatican grounds, with our high ranking Vatican official/professor, and have been all over Rome in my other Art History course. Professor Clarvoe never fails to impress me and I am very thankful to study under her.

Recently, in the past two weeks or so, I've begun to feel fully at home in Rome. I know how to get everywhere by foot and I can navigate the bus routes fairly well. Rome is the first city I've lived in, and Trastevere has become my first village. I'm buddies with the neighborhood coffee bar attendees and I know a few local dogs by visage.

In the past couple of weeks I've had the wonderful chance to see my family. First, Dad and Bonnie came out and we enjoyed a few lovely meals and some Roman walks together as well as a tour of the impossibly expansive Vatican Museum. Next, a week later, Mom, Mamaw, Kathleen, Pat Ann, Mary, and Sue Ford visited. We walked all over Rome together and spent some great family time together at a few restaurants and we also toured the Borghese Gallery. I've been immensely fortunate to be able to see my family--I know not everyone is able to do this and it really provided me with a lot of comfort to see my loved ones.

I know this has been a quick skim of the past 5 weeks or so but I hope it's legible. I'm off to Amsterdam next week to see a few college buddies and to check out some Vermeer and Van Gogh, etc. I've already bought my tickets to the Van Gogh Museum and the Rijksmuseum so you can't say that my purposes are entirely Dionysian. In fact, there is an excellent Van Gogh exhibit here which I graced with my presence last week and I am looking forward to learning more. I will write either immediately before or after my Amsterdam trip. Much love to all.

Ciao!

The Orvieto Cathedral - Within decorated frescoes by Fra Angelico , etc. .



The Dying Gaul statue



I did not Understand what a "Roman nose " WAS until I saw this statue ...

I've been quite busy for the past few weeks trying to get acclimated to schoolwork again and haven't had the time to sit down and write. I'm going to organize this blog in bulleted format because I'm having trouble trying to weave it into paraagraphs.

• Our group had a private tour of the Capitoline Museum by one of the directors a few weeks ago and we were able to see the original Equestrain Marcus Aurelius statue as well as the statue of the Marble Faun (Hawthorne's muse). We were given some time to walk around by ourselves and I particularly enjoyed a new exhibit featuring ancient Roman gravestones and was touched by some of the epitaphs. One read: "Here lies our beloved son. Evil spirits cut his life short like a storm from the south cuts a tender plant."
• I became enraptured by Kenyon's very own James Wright and his The Shape of Light and I have committed a few of my favorite lines of his to memory. Also, speaking of Kenyon, we were recently ranked the most beautiful school in the world by Forbes/Yahoo. Unfortunately, we still have ugly students. This is true as well, more or less, for our Kenyon in Rome program. I have taken to growing a very ugly mustache--it's a result of what my friend, Clint, has termed the Adonis Factor.
• It has cooled down considerably here, especially today. Regardless, I haven't work socks once since I've been here. My two pairs of Birkenstocks have served me quite well.
• I've been to a few contemporary art shows--one, titled The One Night Stand II, featured a tuxedoed man who was giving people handshakes full of wet paint. I shook his hand and gave him a pat on the back, leaving my handprint on his tuxedo. In another room of the show an overweight Asian woman in a velvet evening dress held two very large fish (who began the show alive), each weighing about 15 pounds under her arms. Still, yet another woman, a hefty German, spent the duration of the show profusely sweating under a hot lamp in a wool dress, the material of which she was meticulously wrapping back into a ball of yarn. The program says her agenda was to "find out the audience's limits and where her own mental limits are, the limits between strength and pain". I didn't stay to see her finish unweaving her dress.
• One of my friends on the program was mugged as he left a gay bar by the Coliseum two weeks ago. He was hit a few times in the face, and more gruesomely, had his ear sliced by a small knife. He had left the bar by himself and presumably, a local committed a hate crime against him. Rome is not Gambier, OH.
• I visited the Villa Giulia, the National Museum of Etruscan Art, a few weeks ago and spent a few hours there taking notes. Later that same day I stopped at the National Museum of Modern Art and was intrigued by the Sala del Giardinere where works by Van Gogh, Monet, Cezanne, Degas, and Courbet all reside. The painting I liked best in the museum was a work by Gustave Klimt, The Three Ages of Woman.
• Two weekends ago our group went on a field trip to Orvieto. We toured the Cathedral and were able to walk around the quiant town for quite some time. The stillness of the town reminded me just how loud Rome is. On the train ride home I sat next to a Kenyon student who lightly chanted Hare Krishna before he napped.
• Our program director, Professor Clarvoe continues to wow me. She's fluent in French, German, English, and Italian and studied Middle English, Ancient Greek, and Ancient Latin. I am loving her classes and I leave every class enlightened. Evidently, I'm not the only impressed by her--she's dating a man considered to be the best Bernini restorer in the world whom I was able to meet a few times since he's been in Rome.
• I've befriended the porter at our residence, Armando, who has been very cordial with me and patient as I struggle with my Italian. Also, I met one of the elderly residents across the courtyard named Atilio. He was a very accomplished sculptor and painter and his work can be seen in numerous churches throughout Rome. He's an 88 year old father of 8 and a WWII veteran. He bought me a coffee on Sunday afternoon and as we were walking back he tripped over an exposed grate and fell onto the gravel of the courtyard before I was able to catch him. Luckily, he really only bruised his knee but I hope that doesn't have other complications. I help him struggle to his feet and was able to get him medical attention from the nurses. I was worried about his well being but he waved my concerns away and said the Italian equivalent to "Shit happens."
• In my poetry workshop we're focusing on Ovid's Metamorphoses and in our Poetry and the Visual Arts course we're reading  works by Elizabeth Bishop as well as various other ekphrastic works including Homer's description of Achilles' Shield in the Iliad.
• Out of class I've been obsessed with an Italian author, Italo Calvino, and the English translation of his Six Memos for the Next Millennium, a collection of lectures he was supposed to give before his unexpected death at Harvard which centers around his thoughts about literature. His lecture on "Lightness" is particularly captivating and pertinent because it is just this quality that my writing professors have stressed--to be light and quick, rather than heavy and overbearing on the reader. "Take the weight out of language to the point that it resembles moonlight." Also, I'm currently reading an excellent biography of Caravaggio written by Hellen Langdon. It was one of the books alluded to by Ingrid D. Rowland, an art historian at Notre Dame, whose From Heaven to Arcadia I finished during one reading intensive day last week. She's in Rome for the semester as well, and a friend of Professor Clarvoe's so hopefully we'll be able to tour museums with her.
• It looks as if I may be going to Venice this weekend. I'm psyched to see some Giorgione and Titian. Also, an intern on the program, Kenyon '09, and I are planning on a trip up to Parma in the near future to check out Correggio's decoration of the Parma Cathedral, of which I did extensive research my freshman year.

Phew! Until next time!

Ciao!

A chamber room in the Palazzo Doria Pamphili Where the priest if he Would greet visitors Indeed Were visiting . You can vaguely see His throne under the portrait bearing His Likeness .

I Think They Went a little overkill with the whole fertility reference. A statue of Diana in Villa D' Este.

A view from behind of the cascading fountains and monumental (and Rome in the distance ) as if the almighty water flows directly from Villa D' Este to the Romans .

Hadrian's Theatre Maritmo - his own private island ( included moat ) on the Villa Adriana grounds. here I thought of Mom and how sheWould like her own little island .

My roommate has the roman Fever. It is not atypical for him to ooze sweat or stay in bed for days no end or smell of week-old soup but it is uncommon for him to run a fever of 101degrees. He's a jolly white giant, 6'4 240lbs. of body hair and pimples and he thinks he's Rodney Dangerfield 2.0 which would be quite funny if I didn't know some of his jokes came straight from the mouth of Rodney Dangerfield 1.0.

Anyways, I'm in the kitchen (while the rest of the coop is at la playa scaring away the beachgoers with their very unbeachy bods. There's a reason why poets are pale.) You'd think they'd know better coming from a school which E.L. Doctorow once wrote, "At Kenyon we did poetry like Ohio State does football." I've been venturing off by myself fairly frequently and as a result I know Rome fairly well on foot. I've been waking up at 7 AM most days to hit the streets before the forestieri mob the piazzas. This week one day I spent time at the Fountain of Trevi (absolutely packed, I must go either late at night or early morning) and the Palazzo Doria Pamphili. The Doria Pamphilis rose to prominence when Cardinal Pamphili was elected Pope and became Pope Innocent X. The palazzo was built for his nephew (cough, cough son) and I was fortunate enough to have the extravagant palazzo basically to myself for the afternoon as I took a few hours to examine the vast collection. Works by Lorrain, Caracci, Del Sarto, Corregio, Caravaggio, Jan Brueghel, Bernini, Parmigianino, Rembrandt, Durer, Rubens, Veronese, and the most famous of the collection, a portrait by Velasquez of Pope Innocent X. It is said that when the portrait was unveiled for the Pope he despondently exclaimed, "It is too real!" for it captures his aging visage too well.

The art gallery is quite overwhelming as pictures are hung from floor to vaunted ceiling (which of course are painted as well). Fun macabre fact--the Pamphili's had the remains of two saints, Theodora and Justin, exhumed from the catacombs to be put on display (literally their decomposing bodies are visible) in the family chapel.

Other destinations this week included a guided tour by the Pantheon Institute director, Romolo Martemucci (architect and blabbermouth). Romolo was backed into this free tour of Villa D'Este and Villa Adriana because he neglected to tell our own program director that electives (like my Vatican course) wouldn't start until two weeks after we arrived in Rome.

Villa D'Este was a vacation home for Cardinal Este before he too became pope in the 16th Century, 25 miles to the east of Rome. It is one of the most complete and refined examples of Renaissance elegance and has been my favorite spot thus far. Romolo gave us the longest winded speech I thought I could ever bear (only to trump it with an even longer one at the Villa Adriana) during which he explained quite eloquently the philosophy behind the architecture of the sprawling gardens. Renaissance artists and aristocrats were obsessed with connecting themselves to the classical ideals and thus modeled their home or homes to reflect their elite status and intelligence. For instance, Hercules is the recognized mythical forefather of the Este clan and his likeness can be found at the Villa D'Este and in the Este family tree where firstborn sons as named Ercule.

The villa overlooks the river valley and the city which Este would come to govern and the gardens are meant to showcase water, where all life springs, in its most grandiose. Romans were particularly fond of their water systems and fountains are everywhere, even some that shoot 60 feet in the air. Water is further paralled to life and fertility in the Fountain of Tivoli at Villa D'Este which portrays a narrative of Sibyl, a wet nurse to Bacchus, and at another fountain of the myriad breasted Diana (get the fertility references yet?)

After lunch we took a trip to Villa Adriana, one of the homes of Emperor Hadrian during his reign in the second century, only about 1/3 of which has been excavated. Romolo talked for an hour and a half at the gates before letting us walk about. Somehow he managed to tell us not only the history of Hardian and his villa but also on the reach of his empire, the tenets of democracy, Plato's Republic, tennis, Genesis, the Egyptians, his years at college, and his grandkids. It was actually not going to end until Professor Clarvoe had to stop him, and only after that were we able to walk around on our own. I promptly headed past Hadrian's private island, Teatro Maritimo, to his palazzo where I napped under an olive tree praying Romolo's voice would somehow get out of my ears.

Classes are here, too, and I am already swamped with work. I spent all of Friday and Saturday reading and writing and today will be spent drawing, and surprise! more reading. Currently I'm trucking my way through Hawthorne's Marble Faun and also prose poetry (although he would die, again, if he heard the phrase "prose poetry) by a Kenyon alum, James Wright, a Pulitzer winner whose verses have been particularly refreshing and captivating recently. it seems always to be a breezy summer day in France or Italy or some cobblestoned city in his reflections of his time away from Ohio, yet there is a strong undercurrent of melancholic tones. "The men and women and their children are still arranging for our slow ambling choice the heaps of grapes, melons, peaches, nectarines and all the other fruits of the season in a glory that will not last too long. But they will last long enough. I would rather live my life than not live it." Wright's ethereal, fleeting scenes, just as the piccolini he writes of, leave a ripple in my mind to ponder and remind me (as if we all need reminders) of our transience.

To return to the quotidian we have dinner as a group in a local restaurant. The locals in Trastevere are quite hospitable and I just happened to meet an Italian with an Australian accent which I was thoroughly amused by. He left me with a "Buongiorno, mate" and I bid you good day as well, mates.

Another Italian Man--Fabio

For whatever reason this blog is Being translated from Italian to English back to English so there are inevitably Some pretty glaring grammar mistakes That I Have Noticed - my apologies . I Thought Were intelligent computers ... Please excuse the typos .

A lesser known from Bernini's San Andrea delle Frate ( ps I've Decided I like the European pronounciation of my first name Better Than The Americanized . Please Refer to me as Undrew / AndreasFrom Now On ...

<>

Baroque Wall Fountain, Anon . Villa Sciarra . Our muse for the first afternoon of classes.

Professor Clarvoe reading to us from Hawthorne 's The Marble Faun in the Villa Sciarra .

The Fontatoni and Fiat in situ atop the Janiculum .

The Spanish Steps.

In view of the Vatican

Sculpture in the Piazza del Popolo

Michelangelo 's Pieta . He Was 23 When He Was commissioned for this piece.

You might ask yourself what Fabio, GHB (the date rape drug) Strawberrymisu, the Vatican, coffee, blisters and art supplies have to do with one another--at least I'd hope you would be asking yourself by now.

The past few days have exacted a heavy toll on my fragile body. I can't fathom how many miles I have walked up and down the Tiber. My back is sore, I have blisters on my feet, and a laundry bag full of sweaty clothes. It is quite here during the day but around 16:00 or 17:00 it cools down enough to an almost bearable temperature.

To escape from the heat I am now relaxing in a neighborhood pizzeria in Trastevere--the same one in fact where I enjoyed my first gelato the other day--a tasty, yet unique hybrid of strawberry and tiramisu. There was a bit of a communication breach between myself and the waitress.

Later that night we went to celebrate our housemate's, William Heus, birthday in Trastevere. There, at an overwhelmingly Italian discotech I befriended two British girls from Nottingham. It came as a shock to learn they considered I had a STRONG accent and that they think Americans' lives are like "one big epsiode of Friends." One of them, a Salvadorian had a drug slipped in her drink and became quite ill. An ambulance was called for an emergency trip to the oespedale for treatment, and because they were by themselves I was offered a ride by two Italians, Fabio and Salvatore to the hospital to help.

We stayd together in the hospital from 3-11 AM where I witnessed firsthand some of the difficulties of a socialized health care system (Pat Ann, I know there are positives, too) particularly at a hospital with an insufficient number of doctors and an entire medical staff who took breaks for cigarettes every 30 minutes. Anyways, the Brits were treated and released and upon my return to my residence in Trastevere I slept soundly for 7 hours without regard to the cacophony of traffic below my window.

Our first day of classes was today and although the first day is generally considered Syllabus Day both classes ran for over two hours and each included a field trip. Professor Clarvoe's course, Poetry and the Visual Arts, met and we ventured up to Janiculum to the Villa Sciarra where we encountered a Baroque Wall Fountain (pictured above) a muse for Richard Wilbur's poem of the same name. Professor read to us a lengthy passage from Hawthorne's The Marble Faun concerning the Trevi Fountain and she instructed us to write about how we felt. Clarvoe's course, highly celebrated in the Kenyon community will focus on the ecphratic nature of poets and painters/sculptors who have withstood the test of time. There is a baton of high classical information and responses passed on from Princes of Art stretching from Ovid to Shakespeare to Keats, etc. perhaps resulting in one of the greatest ironies of modern art--that Keats, the poet famous for his "Ode to a Grecian Urn", is buried under a grave (itself a sculpture of sorts) which reads "Here lies One whose name was writ on Water" an allusion to Shakespeare's Sonnet 55; "Not marble, nor the gilded monuments/ Of Princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme/". Speaking of Keats, I visited the Spanish Steps before class this morning and on my way to school I stopped at the San Andrea delle Fratte where there are two lesser known Bernini's.

Later in the day I decided to attend Professor Anaganos' class, Intro to Drawing. I would never have considered taking a studio art course but I was encouraged by Professor who insisted sketching is a teachable skill (I will let you know if it is learnable, too.) To intorudce us to drawing materials Professor Anaganos took our class of 6 to three art supply stores in Rome and treated us to coffee at Sant Eustachio, considered the best coffee in town. At our last art supply store I recocgnized a familiar Italian behind the register.

"Fabio?"

"Andrea?! Mi amigo! Como estai?"

Fabio had been a true altruist on Saturday, offering a ride to the hospital and even staying for a few hours to act as my translator. His family owns a prominent art supply store by Piazza del Popolo and both of us were astonished by the coincidence. He gave my class a 20% discount on all of our purchases and I left with a kiss on the cheek and my first Roman friend.

The proximity of Fabio's art supply store to the Popolo was too tempting to turn down and the opportunity to stray from a few heinous Kenyon girls proved to be too much. I went to visit S. Maria de Miraculi and Santa Maria del Popolo. I immediately recognized a few works of Caravaggio's from my High and Late Renaissance course from freshman year and was so inspired that I decided to trek the 25 minutes to the Vatican City. I was overwhelmed by the magnificence of the Basilica and its' impossibly gilded barrel vaults and its elaborate decorations. It is the most powerfully charged building I have ever been in because of its significance to the art world. I was there for closing at 18:30 (a good time to go, I might add) and almost had the Basilica to myself, the only place besides St. Peter's Square that I was able to spend any real time but on imminent ventures I will be surely able to express my pontifical experience better. 

My suggestion to those who are coming to visit (can't wait to see you, by the way)---get in shape for a lot of walking; read up on some art history; and watch your drink at all times so you ensure a GHB free night.

Much love to all.

My Romeo

This is the view from our apartment. Com orverlooks the courtyard of a 15th Century building

This Is the building Adjacent to ours . It's a chapel built in 1049.

In view of Palatine Hill across the Tiber from our apartment.

Graffiti covers all buildings in Rome .

A nearby church - St . Cecilia 's.

Roma! Finally. After three flight delays and flights from Laguardia to Chicago and then to Rome, I'm here. Not before I had to take a taxi to my residence though because there wasn't a shuttle from my program there to meet me. Romeo (pronounced Ro-may-o) and I were very close for about 45 minutes until he tried to up a fifty Euro taxi ride to 60 Euro and even offered to introduce me to his daughter. He didn't speak any English, and the only Italian I know is what I can recite from my Italian phrasebook. Phrases such as, "What's that smell?" and "I'm on the pill" and "Is breakfast included?". Romeo encouraged this play and we shared a few laughs--I even gave him my number for when he is in New York in December. He turned the meter off, and pointed out the Colliseum among other things and even gave me a mint. But then he tried to rip me off.

Anyways, I was dropped off at my residence in Trastevere (literally "across the river") and proceeded to drag my two checked bags (each weighing 40 pounds) up 4 flights of stairs (elevator out of service) only to find out that not only do I get to share a room with two (2!) roommates, they both go to Kenyon. I'm not entirely sure how Kenyon continues to mess up my preferred housing, this being the second out of three years now where I have asked specifically for differing roommate accomodations, but they sure are good at it. Our residence building is 500 years old, a newborn considering the adjacent building (as pictured above) is 961 years old and is without air conditioning although it is roomy and has three showers. I share the fourth floor with 6 girls and 4 other boys, all from Kenyon.

After unpacking, I ventured out by myself through some of the Trastevere neighborhoods finding a quiant town with some very quiet parks and its working class lovers walking hand in hand, young and old, licking their gelato before it melted onto the pavement on this 90 degree day. I captured a few snapshots on my mini expedition and was even mistaken for an Italian by a few tourists!

Later my group and I ate pizza together on our terrace with our two program directors, Professors Jennifer Clarvoe and Aliana Sargas. They instructed us to get some rest today for we'd be doing a fair amount of walking tomorrow (it's a 20 minute hike to our classes in Piazza Navona) and that's what I plan to do right about now, although if I closed my eyes and listened to the honks and horns and screeches outside I would say I had a fourth floor apartment in Manhattan rather than in Rome. Time to throw the iPod in and drown out the noise. Orientation tomorrow!