Fall Break - The Cat Sanctuary

Tuesday

Since we’d had such a busy Monday, we decided to take it easy on Tuesday. We all had a chance to sleep in, and I took advantage of having Mom as my fellow cat-lover to go back to Largo Argentina to see the cat sanctuary there. I pointed out the remains of the temples, and then started pointing out cats—there are hundreds of them!

Fall Break - Off to the Colosseum

Monday

This was the really big day...I dragged them out of bed early so that we could avoid the lines to get in to see...

Fall Break - Back to the Capitoline

Sunday

I'd like you all to appreciate how much I love my parents--after more than a week of twelve-plus hour days and about six hours of sleep a night, I was willing to wake up early in order to join them at their hotel for breakfast. Of course, when I tried to remind them of this, they pointed out that they flew to Rome to visit me, and I can't really compete with that :) Anyway, the hotel breakfast was very nice, and I discovered a new favorite--meleverde (green apple) juice. It was delicious, and now I keep trying to find it at the neighborhood grocery stores, because I'm fairly certain I won't be able to find it back home.

Fall Break - The Beginning

...which wasn’t actually much of a break at all, if you’re thinking of a break as a relaxing time. But then, why would I want it to be, when I had my parents here and I got to play tour guide in my adopted city? In an attempt to cram a week’s worth of touring around Rome and nearby cities into a theoretically reasonable amount of space, I’m going to try to keep the photos to a minimum (ahaha). Many of the places I took Mom and Dad to are things you’ve already seen here, or will see when we visit them as a class, so I’ll save my photos of those places for their proper times. Speaking of photos, I am obliged to give credit to Dad for taking a lot of these photos and then sharing them with me to post here--you can thank him for the existence of the ever-elusive candid shots of me.

I was originally going to make this week all one post, but when it got to be about 20 pages in Word, with more than 100 pictures, I thought your computers might appreciate it if I split up the days.

Rome

Still playing catch-up, while also working on two research papers, a presentation, and studying for end of semester exams. It has become inescapably clear to me that I won't be caught up by the time I leave, so you're going to get a few posts out of chronological order as I muse on the depressingly few days I have left in Rome, because they won't mean nearly as much if I'm writing them when I get back to the United States.

Thanksgiving at the Centro

Yes, I know, I was trying to keep things in order--rest assured, I'll be back to playing catch up after this, but I wanted to share our Thanksgiving celebrations only a day late instead of about a month late.

Back To Rome

Ah, finally Saturday, and back in Rome at last. The ferry ride was uneventful--this boat didn't have any good decks to stand out on, so I went to bed early and slept through most of the ride. We were once again woken up at an ungodly early hour, packed onto the bus, and headed back to Rome. There were no classes today, which was good as I doubt any of us had the ability to pay attention at this point. The drive from Naples to Rome took somewhere around two and a half hours, and once back in Rome I took just enough time to drag my suitcase up the stairs and then ran off to go visit Mom and Dad, who had gotten in the previous evening. I managed to get horrendously lost, which is just embarrassing, but to be fair I hadn't visited the hotel since the beginning of the semester and I was running on almost no sleep anyway. Eventually with the help of a nice jogger (I ended up near a park and nearly went completely the wrong direction) I found the hotel, and proceeded to start my fall break in earnest.

Wherein There Is A Surprising Lack of Classical Architecture

Sort of a lack of classical anything, actually! Haha, I lied--I forgot that we visited Palermo's classics museum. This is why I take pictures of things! We had a fairly easy and relatively non-classics-oriented Friday wandering around Palermo and the nearby town of Monreale before hopping on the ferryboat again to head back to Rome.

All Over the Geologic Spectrum

So in this one Thursday, we visited quarries, salt flats, sailed to a small island, and traveled to the top of a mountain. We also saw our very last Doric temple of the trip *tear*

Temples Everywhere!

This lovely Wednesday morning we actually got to visit the gorgeous temples we had seen last night, then headed off to another site...for more temples!

Traipsing Around in the Muckity-Muck

Really Tuesday now, so the long day felt appropriate...or it would have, if I hadn’t lost all track of days since we left for this trip on Friday. And of course, there are still three more to go before we get back to Rome to start our Fall Break!

Myths, Theater, and Warfare

...and a little bit of obscure linguistics, just for fun. Is it really only Monday?!?

Wherein Katie Gets to Use Nifty Little Accent Marks

I am very quickly losing my mind—if it weren’t for our (very detailed) schedule of the week, and my camera, I would have no clue what we did two hours ago, much less two days ago. Anyway, it’s Sunday, and appropriately enough our first visit was to a church—so let’s get started!

Paestum and Onward to Sicily

I can’t believe this is the weekend...we’re still running around like crazy. I’m going to really need Fall Break after this! Today we actually got to see the temples and sites of Paestum in the daylight, as well as a museum, some wonderful food, and a particularly awesome method of transportation to Sicily.

A Week of Tuesdays

First, a short note—while these may show up in large clumps as I get internet access, they’re generally written at the end of each day, so when I say “today”, it’s the day that I visited the site, not the day that these are uploaded. Hence, today is Friday. Now that I’ve confused you all, let’s get started!

I'm Not Dead Yet!

Just very busy! The Sicily trip was wonderful but extremely exhausting, and as soon as I came back I jumped into tour guide mode, running around Rome (and a bit of time in Florence and Tivoli) with my parents. I've got a quiz (over two weeks worth of site visits) tomorrow and an Italian test on Wednesday, in addition to all my usual classes including the weekly all-day site visit on Tuesday. The good news is that I don't have any classes after Wednesday evening! So things will be quiet here a little bit longer, and then I'll start catching up--many of the posts are already written, I just have to fill in the pictures and their explanations :)

Update on Adventures

Yes, I'm alive and still in Sicily. Internet is rare here, so I won't be posting until I get back for Fall Break. But I'm writing lots of wonderful posts for you all!

On Culture Shock, or the Lack Thereof

There are conventionally four stages of culture shock--this site explains it fairly clearly and succinctly. I know I'm extremely bad at adapting to change in general, and that's one of the major reasons I agonized over the decision whether or not to do this program for so long. I was terrified that I would get to Rome, be swamped in schoolwork, be completely lost and disoriented by everything around me, and not have a support system to turn to as I do at home.

Well, as it turned out, all of those things happened--they just weren't really that big a deal. The courseload here is indeed very heavy, but my study habits are (finally) starting to organize into something that works. I've gotten lost plenty of times, my knowledge of Italian is shamefully bad, and there are plenty of social situations that I'm just not equipped to deal with here--but it's really not much different from my difficulty in social situations at home (aside from the language barrier--that can be a big deal). I've screwed up, gotten glared at, had "stupid American" conversations occur over my head (I'm not that incompetent with Italian), and I've survived them all without any emotional scarring. I have the new support system of my peers, as everyone here goes through the same things I do, and Mom and Dad are wonderful about making time for me to call them on Skype when I need a "home fix".

And honestly? In the month that I've been here, I feel like I've skipped right past most of the stages into "eh, this is where I am for the next three months, let's have fun and make the most of it". College in general, and living on my own in particular, have taught me how to adapt to new situations far more than I ever realized. I have a safe place to sleep, I have amazing food to keep me going, I have new friends and peers to commiserate with, I have my computer to keep me connected to my friends and family at home, and I have a whole new city and country to explore and marvel at.

Life is good.

Adventure Time!

Yes, even more than the current adventures I've been having. How is this possible, you ask? Well, tomorrow morning we're all hopping on a bus and eventually a(n overnight!) ferryboat to SICILY! All of our normal classes except the Ancient City course are put on hiatus while we have a whirlwind journey pretty much around the entire island. There's no weekend for us--we've got travels and lectures from tomorrow to next Friday, and we get back into Rome mid-morning on Saturday. It's going to be lots of fun, but seriously frantic, so while I'll be taking my computer, my posting schedule will probably depend more on my ability to stay awake long enough to type up a post than the availability of internet (I've been told we'll have access, but it may be intermittent--send me emails if you need me, and I'll get back to you when I get on). So, you all may not hear from me for a week, but then you'll get a flood of posts and pictures.

After the Sicily trip is our week long fall break, which Mom and Dad are coming out to spend with me in Rome (and maybe Florence and Venice), so I'll probably disappear again. I'm going to enjoy playing tour guide, and you all may end up getting some stereotypically touristy photos out of me after all.

If you want a Sicily, Florence, or Venice postcard, now is definitely the time to tell me! Everyone who's already told me what postcards they want, I've collected most of them and will most likely be sending them out sometime over fall break when we visit the Vatican--their post office is apparently significantly more trustworthy than the Italian one.

Wherein Katie Takes Too Many Pictures, As Always

It was a very long day, one of those days where by the end of it you've done so much you've forgotten what you did that morning. No, seriously--I had to go scrolling through my (almost 200!) pictures of the day to make sure I remembered everything. But there are pictures of cats, and wolves, and way, way too many statues. And maybe a column or two just for consistency's sake ;)

Other People's Pictures Post

Because alliteration always aids in amusement. As promised, here are some photos that my fellow Centristi took and were kind enough to put up on Facebook for me to nab and share here. These photos exist thanks to (in no particular order) Lauren Matera, Brittany Fox, Mary-Claire O'Donnell, Maggie Kurkowski, Alex Olsman, Elliot Piros, Joe Mazzariello, Sarah Murphy, Will Roundy, and Alex Mina.

The Camera is My Weapon of Choice

Days I have been in Italy: 27
Total number of pictures I have taken and kept: 750
Total number of those pictures appearing in this blog: 216

Just in case you were curious ;)

Wherein There Is Too Much of a Good Thing

Namely, Latin inscriptions. Because unless you're an epigrapher (someone who studies inscriptions), spending a few hours staring at a chunk of engraved marble trying to understand the words gets frustrating really quickly.

Gabii, Praeneste, and Nemi, oh my!

In writing this particular post I've realized that it's not the post content that takes all the time to come up with, it's sorting through all of the pictures! We see a lot of classical sites that most people have at least heard of, but today's sites were a little on the obscure side--let's see if I can still make them interesting for you all.

...And Even More

This time, for social rather than academic reasons. I have no classes on Fridays, so I get to SLEEP IN YAY!

Wherein Katie Prances Around Rome Some More...

...for academic reasons, of course. Thursday is our field trip half-day, and we mostly stayed close to home, visiting a few of the sites of former Roman forums and temples, as well as Tibur Island.

Blog Note

As you may have noticed, I am a prolific picture-taker. Therefore, you can assume that I take a lot more pictures than actually appear on this blog, to save you (and your computers) from picture overload. I try to put up only the best and most relevant ones here, but there are still tons of great ones on my computer that I'd be happy for the rest of the world to see. I mentioned something to this effect in my recent post, but I thought it might be helpful to make it apply to the rest of the blog:

If there are any pictures or subjects that you're particularly interested in, please feel free to comment here or shoot me an email and ask if I have any more pictures of that subject--chances are good that I do, and that I'd love to share them with you.

Alba Fucens and Aqueducts

It's a good thing that Monday and Wednesday are academics-only days, because I'm already behind enough on this blog! Thankfully, the weekend is great catch up time (in between catching up on homework!), so here's the adventures and pictures from Tuesday.

Weekend Adventures

This is going to be a long post, because it covers the rest of Friday up until Sunday evening, and it was a very eventful weekend. Also, don't click below the cut unless you're confident in your computer's ability to handle lots of pictures--and I really mean lots, I only managed to pare it down to thirty. They'll appear smaller than normal so that this isn't too abhorrently long (click for the full size image, as always), but be prepared for a possibly slow-loading page!

Friday Chaos

Let me preface this by saying that while I did in fact go out on the Art History field trip to the Vatican on Friday, we didn't really see much (for reasons I'll get into below), so I'm saving my Vatican pictures for when I have better ones, which should happen this weekend with friends. The rest of the weekend (which will be in a separate post, to prevent an even more exhaustingly long post than normal) was more interesting anyway.

Day at the Museum

Continuing the Etruscan theme from Tuesday, on Thursday we all piled onto the bus again for a (thankfully much shorter) trip to the Villa Giulia, built by Pope Julius III and currently a museum dedicated to Etruscan art and artifacts. I have to admit that I didn't find this trip anywhere near as exciting as the one to the tombs--it's harder to get excited about museum exhibits when you can't read the placards, and again we weren't permitted to take pictures inside the museum. However, the villa itself was simply gorgeous, so I have lots of pictures from the outside architecture.

Blog Note

I've realized that since most of my posts are very picture heavy, your computers might thank me if I put the bulk of the larger posts (and really, I'm not kidding anyone, they're all large) behind a cut. For those less familiar with blog terminology, this means that there will probably be a short introductory paragraph, and then a "cut" or a "jump," which is a link that leads to the rest of the post. (For anyone who's curious, apparently the technical term is "expandable post summary")

Apologies in advance for anyone who gets notifications of any sort when I put up a new post--I'll be editing this one for a while until I figure the cut technology out, as I've never tried it before.

ETA: Excellent--that works quite nicely. I'll be going back and adding jump breaks to all of my old posts, and will attempt to remember to use them in the future. Remember that if a post seems short, look for the "Read more..." link at the bottom!

Making Like Lara Croft!

...only, y'know, with less raiding and more classical nerdery. So really, the only things in common were the tombs and the acrobatic climbing around/spelunking. But why let logic stand in the way of an entertaining post title?

Now, I know some of you are out there saying "Tombs? Spelunking? Lara Croft? Katie, what are you talking about?" Behold! Wikipedia has answers. Okay, no, really--today we had a field trip to the Etruscan necropoleis of Tarquinia and Cerveteri. A necropolis (plural necropoleis), for those who don't know, is a "city of the dead", which is some of the best archaological evidence that we have for our knowledge of Etruscan culture. Etruria was a pre-Roman civilization in Italy, which was eventually taken over by Rome. The Etruscans borrowed culturally from the Greeks and the Phoenicians, and in turn had some influence on Roman culture. Background history lesson over--if you want to know more, Wikipedia does actually have answers :) This post will sadly be relatively light on the photos, as large parts of the sites we saw we couldn't take photos at, either because of museum/site rules or because they were behind glass and the photos turned out poorly. The other, slightly more aggravating reason, is that my camera batter died worryingly quickly, so I'll be checking that out. Thankfully, many of my fellow Centristi took some good photos, and were kind enough to get some shots with me in them, so I'll be posting them as soon as I raid my friends' Facebooks.

Forum Romanum

Today was our first lecture day while on site--the site in question being the wonderful Roman Forum. One of the most interesting parts of this program is that we don't always travel as a group--in this case, we were told to meet them in front of the entrance to the Forum at 9:15, and how we got there was left up to us. They were nice enough to tell us to approximate 40 minutes travel time on the bus...and since breakfast is at 8:00, we all had a delightful time eating as quickly as possible before grabbing our stuff and flooding toward the bus stop. We did all manage to make it on time, and I was glad to be in the group since it was my first time on the buses here. They're very useful, like the shuttles in Austin that I'm used to, and I hope I'll make more use of them. The other nice thing about being in the group is that the people who knew what they were doing got to lead while I followed and took pictures along the way.

Where I've Been

I have pictures from yesterday, as promised!

Postcards

I've had a few people ask me to send postcards, which I am of course delighted to do, with a few caveats. I know I don't need to ask that you not request tons of postcards, but you also shouldn't feel the need to limit yourself to just one--they're pretty inexpensive. If you want a postcard (or two or three) from me, I need three things:

I. Your address, of course. Please don't assume I have it--email it to me to be sure.
II. Where you want the postcard(s) from. This can be as open-ended as "Florence" or "Vatican" or "ancient sculpture" or as specific as "Michaelangelo's David", although any request is predicated on the assumption that I can find the specified subject in a postcard. Do not tell me something like "anything's fine" or "surprise me"--if you do, you'll get a postcard consisting entirely of naughty bits from famous artworks. No, seriously--I've seen them before, and I will send you one. I'd much rather send a postcard from a place or subject that you like, and this prevents me from going "ooh, pretty postcard--I'll pick this up and send it to someone" and ending up with fifty miscellaneous postcards at the end of the trip :)
III. A promise that when you get the postcard, you'll take a picture of yourself holding it. I'd like to know that you got it, and I always enjoy pictures of my friends and family.

It would also help to get any requests as soon as possible--I'd hate to make the three hour trip to Capri one weekend, and then a few weeks later find out that someone really wants a postcard from the Blue Grotto there. Sites in Rome are obviously a little more flexible than sites outside of Rome. Somewhat tangentially related to all this; if you have any particular places or sights that you want a photo of, let me know and I'll do my best to get a picture and post it here. If you do request a photo, keep in mind that there are some places that cameras are not permitted, such as the Sistine Chapel and the David, in which case I'll try to get you the appropriate postcard--I like my camera too much to get it confiscated.

Jumping in the Deep End

Hard to believe I've only had two days of school here--we've done more in those two days than I usually do in two weeks at UT. Yesterday we had a general orientation, and split up into groups to be dragged around Rome for a few hours, getting our bearings. Then we came back for lunch and a brief overview of the Ancient City course, which is the main focus. This also included a diagnostics quiz, so that they could see where we all are on knowledge of Roman history and major archaeological sites, which was...well, let's just say that it's a very good thing that it's not going to be graded. My classical student pride may never recover. On the plus side, everyone else looked about as depressed afterward as I felt. Adviser meetings were next, and then the ten of us who are taking Italian had our first class--which, incidentally, really is conducted entirely in Italian from the very beginning. I'm very glad I had that semester before I left! The Centro staff made a special welcome dinner which was served in the garden, and we all trooped off to bed so that we could get up bright and early this morning.

Wherein Katie Begins to Run Out of Creative Titles

I think almost everyone has shown up now--we're missing about ten people, at most. Forty-odd students doesn't sound like much for a study abroad program, but when most of that group is hanging out in one room chatting, things get very loud! So naturally, I ran upstairs to hide. Sorry Mom and Dad--my social skills ran away quickly once the group started exceeding twenty people at a time.

Day One

Technically speaking, it's Day Two, but since it's the first full day, and my first day to actually be able to get out and explore, I'm calling it Day One.

Travel Day Part II: The Arrival

Yes, I'm having fun with titles. :)

The flight from Dallas to Chicago was uneventful but emotionally draining as I had to say goodbye to Mom and Dad. There might have been some clinging on my part, but they eventually shoved me through security so they could go home and celebrate. Once in Chicago, I found my gate, found food, and finally managed to find my fellow Centristo--only to discover that since he wasn't sure he was going to be able to find me, he'd taken advantage of the overbooked flight to catch a slightly later flight along with a travel voucher. So I was on the plane alone, but it was good to meet up with him ahead of time.

Travel Day!

In half an hour, I'm off to the airport for the first of my flights today--a two hour flight to Chicago, from where I will get on my nine and a half hour flight to Rome. I'll get in Rome at about 9:15, and then I'll have the fun of making my way from the airport to the Centro, where thankfully I'll have a few days to settle in before the semester starts. There's another Centro student on the same flight as me, and we're hoping to meet up in Chicago so that we can brave the train together in Rome.

Testing, testing, 1 2 3...

As anyone likely to be reading this will already know, I will be studying abroad in Rome via the Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies in Rome for the upcoming fall semester. I leave on September 2nd, and will be coming back December 20th, leaving me with almost four months of gleefully romping around Rome while still (ostensibly) attempting to get some schoolwork done. I'm taking Advanced Latin (Seneca's Apocolocyntosis and various other snippets, for those who are interested), Elementary Italian, and The Ancient City, which is really more like two classes in one, and is required for all students at the Centro. I took a semester of Italian back at UT this past semester, and promptly forgot most of it during the summer--I'll be able to greet people and order food without embarrassing myself, with any luck, but not much else. Hopefully by taking it again, along with the immersion in Italian culture, I'll remember more of it this time.

I've never actually attempted to keep a blog before, so this will be an interesting experiment. It's likely that this will be one of the only posts until I actually am in Rome, as the preparations aren't very interesting (just stressful). Once I'm there...ideally I'll be posting at least once a week to keep a sort of public journal of everything I'm doing there. I hope, if nothing else, I'll at least remember to put up some of the pictures I take. Given that I took over 800 photos while I was in Italy for a little over a week, I'm fairly certain that there will be an abundance of pretty pictures for you to look at, regardless of whether or not I have a topic on which to ramble incessantly.

On a boat to Capri, over Spring Break in 2009

(If you think you saw me attribute the Apocolocyntosis to some non-Seneca writer, you are of course mistaken. I would never do anything so silly.)