Mid Week Update

Buona Sera Tutti,

Tonight's going to be a late night. O's going for the sweet against Boston starting at 1am my time. NFL draft starting at 2am my time. Papers to edit, blogs to write, news to catch up on. But I love every bit of it. Savoring every moment of just sitting in this couch in Rome, the clocks starting to tick and I still haven't figured out how to stop time. I don't want to leave this place.

St Theresa in Agony

This week was a good one. #Duh. I don't think I blogged about Monday yet so I'll start with that. Jess was here so I hung out with her for most of the day. She was with 13 of her students from Maryvale back home for a spring break trip. Coolest spring break ever, right? I wish Calvert Hall had done cool stuff like that. But let's not get me started on what I wish Calvert Hall had done different. SO I met them at Villa Borghese, which all you regulars should recognize by now as one of my favorite spots. That was my 5th time hanging out there for an extended period of time and I love it more and more each time. Beautiful park in the middle of Rome, that overlooks the whole city from the top of the hill. Give me a sandwich, beer and some friends and I could stay there all day. The girls rented 4-seater carts and me and Jess just hung out and walked around the park. Afterward, their tour guide took us to Santa Maria della Vittoria, a church I've been wanting to go to ever since I got here so I thrilled to finally do that. (Church from Angels & Demons) That marked the end of my A&D quest across Rome so I've finally been to every point from that book, I just didn't do it in the cool James Bond way that Robert Langdon did it. Running around screaming about antimatter would have made it more fun though. After that, did a couple more interesting churches, saw the Quirinal Palace, and then I said goodbye once we wound our way back to Piazza Venezia. Had a great time and saw lots of new stuff to check off my list! The great day-part ended on my way home when I got caught in perhaps the hardest falling rain I've seen yet. So instead of getting drenched at the tram stop I wandered into a pizzeria (in Rome your never more than 30 seconds from one) and treated myself to some food until the rain finally stopped. I guess that part wasn't too bad after all.

Tombs; only picture I could find online happened to have the Pope in it

Tuesday was my archeology on site class. We were supposed to visit a criminology laboratory but for the second week in a row, they had issues and we were forced to change plans. Luckily my teacher is incredible and was able to formulate a new plan for our 3 hour class on the go when we met at the Piramide train station at 9am. We went to Via Appia Antica. (See February blog about me getting lost.) However, this time, in daylight, with my teacher as tour guide, I actually saw the real Appia Antica and didn't get lost in a neighboring park. We saw some cool old Roman funeral monuments that were so massive they were converted into medieval forts and outposts for Rome. After that, we walked by the San Sebastian catacombs to go to a WWII memorial in tribute to the Romans that the Nazi's murdered in response to Roman resistance and attacks on Nazi convoys within the cities. The Nazi's said that they would kill 10 Romans for every 1 Nazi soldier killed by them. They took them to a quarry here on Appia Antica to do so. I thought the monument there to them was great. More than anything, it symbolized their Roman pride. Although heavily Jewish, the families of those who were killed decided to make it about them all being Roman, not religion. Furthermore, they wanted everyone buried in a mass grave together as one, not with individual tombs and grave markets. In the end, a compromise was made with the city and they were buried individually, but in the same room. I was very impressed by it and that it was an extremely good tribute to those who lost their lives during the war for Rome.

Entering in the Pope Mobile

Wednesday was the Papal Audience at St. Peters. Yes, I know I was just there Sunday for Easter but this is just a holy week for me I guess. Arrived a bit before 10am, got a good spot close to the Pope-mobile route. Considering that Wednesday was bookended by the previous Sunday's Easter and this coming Sunday's beatification, I expected it to be a lot more crowded but it surprisingly was less than Easter. A-Okay with me. After the Pope processed in in his sweet Mercedes Benz Pope Mobile (to the organ tune of what sounded exactly like Nintendo 64 music), he said an initial greeting followed by priests saying a longer one in Italian, then French, English, German, Spanish, Portuguese, and two other languages that I couldn't decipher. Then, they moved into the blessing part. Again, priests of the different languages came up to the podium, there they called out the names of special groups that traveled together from various churches/dioceses across the world. After reading a passage from the Bible for each, the priest would then hand it over to the Pope who read a blessing and blessed them in their language. It was repeated for each language. English was third and we left after we were blessed by Pope Benedict. Very cool experience. This blog doesn't do it any justice, but I got blessed by the Pope. In 2000 when I got blessed by John Paul II I was too young to understand but this time, I knew it was a big deal. Was in a good mood for the rest of that day.

Next blog to come is about dinner at my Italian teachers house with my classmates for our oral exam grade, how cool right? And also my incredibly awesome day in Tivoli on Saturday! Look forward to it!