Studio a Roma

The ceiling in one part of St. Peter's basilica

Classes started on Monday, but not for me.  Somehow, I ended up only having classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which is absolutely amazing because that means 4 day weekends every week! So classes started on Monday, but I ended up sleeping until 11 am while everyone else ran around scrambling to get to class on time and get everything done.  I leisurely went and took care of some admin things so that I could get my Permesso di Soggiorno, which will allow me to stay in Italy for more than 90 days.  A group of us ate at the cafe across the street.  The people there were really nice, and they had sandwiches, which we hadn't seen much of before then.  I got a prosciutto and provolone sandwich on white bread which was really good and only cost 2,00 euro! The rest of the day was pretty low-key.  I know we had a floor meeting for all of the students that are here for the whole semester, but other than that, nothing noteworthy happened.

Outside of St. Peters

Today, I had to wake up extra early to go to the post office for my permesso di soggiorno.  We met with Domenico at 8:45 am and walked to the post office (about 20 minutes away).  To get the permesso, we needed to copy every single page of our passports, a letter from our school, a letter from the bank, and some forms.  The permesso costs 73 euro! but since I'm a St. John's student, I didn't have to pay anything. At the post office, we went up one at a time and Domenico did all the work.  We only had to sign a form and that was it.  But we got to sit at the post office and people watch for a good two hours, which was really interesting.  

Top of St. Peter's Basilica

After the permesso meeting, we went back to campus.  Unfortunately, I had a class that started at 9:40 am.  Fortunately, I was two hours late because of the permesso, and it was excused (more than half the class was with me...).  The class was art and architecture of Rome, and it sounds pretty interesting, but also pretty intense.  It's a three hour class once a week.  We're going to be meeting on site at different architectural hot-spots for a lot of the classes, and we're responsible for getting ourselves there on time.  We're also expected to sketch things, which I'm basically in capable of, especially since I didn't even bring a pencil. The class is a lot of history and memorizing things, which I will find interesting, its the parts where I actually have to DO art that could be problematic.  We shall see.  I was supposed to have my first theology class today too, but it was cancelled because the professor doesn't return to Rome until next week (which means that class is cancelled for Thursday too!). After my single class, I retrieved my computer, which enabled me to start this blog! I'm much happier now that I can communicate with the world outside of Rome. We took another trip to the grocery store today, and I picked up some breakfast-y food.  We were going to attempt to cook tonight, but we didn't have any recipes or know how to make anything, so we decided that we're going to look up a recipe and try again tomorrow (suggestions of easy things to cook are appreciated!!).  We ended up going out to dinner again tonight, this time to Grotta Azzurra.  There was six of us, so they seated us in the back room, which was decorated like a cave/grotto.  It was really interesting, and definitely set the scene for the trip we're taking this weekend.  I ordered the ravioli, and it was pretty good.  I liked the sauce at this place much better than the sauce at the first pasta place we tried.  

Swiss Guard!

Today we also planned our first weekend excursion.  We will be visiting........... Capri!  We're leaving on the train on Friday morning, and staying at a hotel on the island.  It ended up not being overly expensive.  We plan to spend lots of time on the beach swimming, and we also want to see the Grotta Azzurra, which is one of the seven natural wonders of the world.  The train from Rome is only 10,50 euro, which is less than $15 USD.  I'm pretty excited to get to relax on the beach for a while, and I'm hoping the sunshine and fresh air will help get rid of this persistent cold I've got.  

So I'll be updating this periodically.  Every few days, or whenever I have some free time.  Don't forget to check out the rest of my pictures! The link is up top! Buona notte a tutti!