Visit from Mom and Dad

 

I really haven't been doing a good job at keeping up with this blog lately. I guess I've been really busy lately between traveling and keeping up with school work. Not that I want to make excuses or anything. No excuses, blog comes first. Here's a quick update on my past month-ish though to catch all those up who aren't extremely dedicated followers. So exactly 4 weeks ago, my sister visited me for a week and I had an incredible time and am so glad she came out here to see me. Less than 24 hours after she left, I went on spring break for a week in the Canary Islands. Then, literally, as soon as I flew back into Rome from there, my parents got here for 10 days. They were already waiting for me downtown when my flight landed. While they were here, we did a weekend trip to Perugia and Assisi. More on that to come. Three days after they left, which was two Tuesdays ago, I left for a weekend trip to the Amalfi Coast that Friday. After getting back from that last Sunday night, I've been busy catching up with all the school work I wasn't doing since I had all those visitors or was traveling which means I spent most of all my free time working on homework, projects, presentations, papers etc etc. Pretty hectic right? Turns out it's really hard to find time to do actual school work while you're living in an incredible foreign country. Oh well, I'm learning good time management skills and how to balance out the fun and the work.

Mom taking a chocolate shot at a local bar

Okay, so you know how Maria's visit and spring break went. So onto my parents visit. It was awesome, to start off with. Perfect timing too, I was getting to that 9 or 10 week point of being away (wow, is that really all its been?) so it was nice to get to see them to fend off any of the homesick feelings that were due to come up sometime soon. Just like when Maria was here, I had to try and show them around Rome while making sure to go to class so some of the days that I didn't have class I was able to show them around Rome and play tour guide but other days I just had to send them off with a list of fun things to do. I'm pretty sure they saw all the main spots and more though, I even came across some things I had never seen before while I was with them which was pretty neat.

View of Assisi from the train

I have to say the highlight of their trip, apart from getting to eat at nice restaurants every night (turns out there's more to Roman cuisine than cheap pizza and pasta at my joint down the street), was our weekend trip to Umbria. We stayed in the town of Perugia, which is renowned for its chocolate festival it hosts every fall. We also took a day trip over another hill town, Assisi, where St Francis was from. I also enjoyed endlessly marching them across the city of Rome and making sure they saw almost every site there was. We all got a good workout that week.

Concert in the main square

I loved Perugia. It was a town with lots of history which I was a fan of. It wasn't very big, so once you were in the city square area, you were close to everything and anything. And also because it was a town with lots of life. They had a festival going on while we were there with a concert at night which started around 10. The band was pretty good, they played Italian music, but it was more fun just watching all the people enjoy it. Perugia was filled with young kids like me. This was such a refreshing site because I feel like my roommates and I are the only people under 50 in our area of Rome. It's rare for me to see many people my age on my 25 minute walk to school. Perugia has a big university there so that's why all the youth are there so it's basically a college town in an old hill town where everything's still cobblestone with narrow streets and hundreds of years old buildings. In the main square where the concert stage was, there was a huge fountain in front of an old palace with steps leading up to it. So starting around 5 o'clock on that Friday, the fountain and steps area filled up with college kids just sitting there enjoying beers or wine they brought with them. What could be better than having your own cheap happy hour outside with all your buddies on a great sunny Friday afternoon? Then along that main square area they had outdoor cafes and bars with TV screens set up to show the AC Milan soccer game that was going on later that night. How much better would College Park be if we had a place like that, where it was walking only, no cars allowed, in a wide old square with TV's set up so we could watch our sports teams while enjoying some drinks with our friends? Too bad there's a drinking age law in America that just has an opposite and reverse effect of its intent and drinking in public also isn't allowed. So that will never happen. Oh and some drunk idiot would ruin it for everyone one night anyways. Good news is there's an English speaking university there, submitting an application soon? Perhaps.

Speaking of a drunken idiot ruining it for everyone, listen to this mess. So quick background info: in Roma, as in Italy, you're allowed to drink in public. Anywhere, anytime, any drink. One of the methods we used to tolerate that crappy city of Naples for a day when we went was by going to bars and getting drinks to-go to walk around with. It's normal here. Then at night, the big thing here is sitting on steps or a fountain and drinking with your friends, just like I was talking about earlier. Then the other big thing is just getting a drink at a bar then standing outside in the street with your friends to drink it. There's even some bars here that are the size of a closet because all you're meant to do is squeeze in, get your drink, then go back outside to drink it. Anyways so that's a large part of culture here. So two weeks ago there was an 'incident' in Campo dei Fiori. It was the result of people drinking outside, albeit drinking way too much outside. Oh and by the way, Campo dei Fiori is the go to spot for Americans (& tourists) in Rome, as in if you go there, all you hear is English being spoken, so you can rest assured that the people involved were Americans. Anyways, they did some really dumb stuff and as a result, effective of two weekends ago, drinking outside in public after 11pm is now illegal and banned until June 30th. So frustrating. Just when the weather was getting perfect for it too. Thanks a lot to whoever you are that ruined it for the rest of us, jerk.

Castle at top of hill in Assisi

Alright you get the point, I just really liked that town. Assisi was really cool too. It was more hilly than Perugia so you were either hiking uphill or downhill on steep cobblestone streets the whole time. It had lots of churches, including a double-decker church dedicated to St Francis. I'm not joking, it was a church built on top of a church. You enter on the bottom level into a massive church. Then you go outside up a spiral staircase and are in yet another massive church. Never had seen something like that before. At the very top of the hill, there was an old fort castle from the medieval ages that of course I thought was really neat so we explored around through there for a bit. Gotta love old castles. I definitely recommend Assisi and Perugia to anyone traveling to Italy anytime soon. They're a good break from the commotion of the big touristy cities, and they're also conveniently located along the rail line that connects Florence to Rome, so you can just get off the train, walk around there for the day, and hop back on a later train to continue your travels to whichever city.

I went to my first mass in Italian with my parents there too. It was a lot different from masses that I'm used to. Let's see if I can remember all the differences...

• There were no altar boys (the priest did everything on his own alone up there the whole time), there was no music
• There was no kneeling
• There was no exchange and sign of peace (which I was dreading the whole time because I realized I don't know the phrase "Peace be with you" in Italian)
• There was no interaction with anyone around you
• It was almost half the time of a normal mass.

Obviously it was still a fundamental Catholic mass, I just thought some of those differences were interesting. For anyone reading this who has gone to Church of Nativity back home, you can see why I felt like I was in a completely different faith. Mass is more fun when I get to sing along to Chris Pierorazio & Co.

Well, that about sums up my trip to Perugia and Assisi from over 2 weeks ago. I've got some catching up to do with this blog. Next up: Sorrento, Capri, Vesuvius and Pompeii! It was pretty awesome. Oh and by the way, I'm going to the Coppia Italian Semi Finals game tomorrow night, AS Roma v Inter. Should be a blast, look for me on TV. Game starts at 7:45pm GMT (+1 for me, -5 for most of you). I'll post this now, but if you check back tomorrow, I'll add some pictures.