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.