Ciao Roma!

I leave Rome today for a new adventure. I am heading south. I will go to Positano first and have three lovely nights at a little seafront Pensione. After that I'm heading to Sicily. I don't know how long I'll be there. My original plan was to have about two weeks there and two weeks in Sardinia. As I've been thinking about where I want to go, my time in Sicily is growing. So, I may not go to Sardinia at all. However, I'm not making any decisions right now. I'm going to see how things go and enjoy each town I visit. If I want to stay longer, I will. This is a big step for me - not planning it.
I might also meet up with Antonello who is the owner/husband of Barbara from of the apartment I stayed at in Vienna. He is from Sicily and his parents still live there in a small fishing village on the west coast. He might come for a visit and show me around. He's also hooking me up with a friend of Barbara's who owns a B&B in Palermo. I love the direction things are going so I'm just trying to go with the flow. Things work out better that way.

Week in Review

It feels like a lot happened this week. Tuesday was the big sightseeing tour and hair salon visit that I already reported on.
On Tuesday night, the Canadian – John, came over to my place and made me dinner. Ahhhhh. How cute is that? Actually, this is kind of his thing. He does it for everybody and basically he was hungry, didn’t want to stay home, and didn’t want to go out to eat. It was really nice to have someone make me dinner. It’s been a long time since that has happened so I really tried to enjoy it. I had heard stories about how great his cooking is and how he has gone over to various student’s houses and cooked for them. I have to remember my audience. He cooked a bag of dry pasta and tossed it with a jar of plain tomato sauce that he “doctored” with pepper and basil. It was so not want I wanted – I had pasta at lunch. It was also really plain. He also did something I didn’t understand. He added water to the tomato sauce and the cooked pasta when he tossed it. So the bland tomato sauce got watered down. I was a bit in shock when I saw this happen. I chocked it up to something that he saw his mom or grandmother do and he thought this is what you did to pasta sauce. He probably didn’t know that it was his mother’s way of making the sauce go farther. I’m just guessing. Anyway it was nice of him to do this and I ate a big bowl of pasta with as much enthusiasm as I could muster.
On Wednesday, I met up with the usual group for drinks. We hung out in the Piazza Navona area. At midnight, I reported that it was time for Cinderella to head home and I called it a night. Thursday was my last day of school and I wanted to make sure I had some sleep. I was really excited for my last day of school. I think I’m just ready to move onto some other adventures. In the end, I really enjoyed my time at the school. I enjoyed the teacher and meeting the other students. I even relaxed and enjoyed my lessons. It never seemed easier but once I stopped over thinking it, I had more fun.
I celebrated my last day of school by attending the Wine of Italy activity at school that evening. My bus ride to the school was probably the worst one I’ve had. I’ve taken the bus to and from school every day and from three different neighborhoods so I’ve experienced a lot of interesting rides. I had thought my morning trip to school was the last time I’d make the journey but I had forgotten about the evening wine class. The bus was more packed than I’d ever seen it. I got on at the back door and figured, “okay, we’re full and no one else can get on”. Why do I ever think this way? On each additional stop on the route to school we added a good 3-4 people at my end of the bus. I couldn’t see what was happening in the front. I could barely breath. I was having flashbacks of the Billy Idol concert when I was in high school. I rushed the stage, upon Billy’s insistence that he was lonely, and found myself squashed against a mob of people. I couldn’t move and I couldn’t breath. Billy’s guitarist, Steve Stevens, even tried reaching his arm down to me to pull me out of there but I couldn’t put my arms up to reach him. You know I wanted to be pulled on stage too. I definitely tried to move.
I found myself on the bus, thinking I’ll just get off at the next stop and walk. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get to the door and exit if my life depended upon it. I was trapped between two men, whom I became intimately involved with along the journey. They smelled like a mix of sawdust, leather, cigarettes, and drunk.
I kept breathing through my nose trying to prevent any chance of tasting this smell. I kept praying people would get out at each stop but no one was moving. I gave up hope as we got closer to Termini. Everyone was going to that stop. When we arrived, we spilled out of the bus, and I gasped for fresh air.
Thank god that was my last trip to Termini for now. Unfortunately I have to make the trip one more time on Tuesday to catch the train to Napoli.
Onto school and the wine class. I figured this would be a nice little night of sitting around a table discussing the various wines and tasting them all. Nope. It was a lecture, all in Italian of course, on the history of wine in Italy. Mamma Mia. I was in and out of listening and trying to understand the discussion, praying that I’d be rewarded with some wine when the professor was done talking. When he finished, 90 minutes later, we got some wine. Geez.
After the lecture I headed to a chain restaurant (I know but it’s good) called Insalate Ricca. They have an abundance of different salads, which is hard to come by here. I had only been once before and it was so good. I really needed a salad too, especially after my double dose of pasta on Tuesday. I plopped down and already knew what I wanted. I ordered right away and sat and waited, eavesdropping on the conversation of a couple of Brits next to me. They were leaving town the next day. Every time the server came back over to me for whatever reason, we’d chat a little about whatever in Italian. It was more of him talking and me understanding and answering with one or two words. He came back to the Brits table next to me and gave them some complimentary Lemoncello. They stared at it and gasped and mentioned how they couldn’t possibly drink it. I decided to jump in here. I told them what it was and how great it is. We started to chat about what they were doing in Rome and why I was here. They are traveling the world, endlessly it seemed from the tales they told. They were leaving the next day for Tokyo. As we chatted they confessed that they thought I was Italian by my conversations with the server. HA! Fooled you.
It made me feel pretty good though since I really don’t feel like I know a whole lot. I thought maybe I had even fooled the server until he came back over later and asked me if where I was from and that he knew I was an Italian student. Nuts.
On Friday, my first day without being an “official” student, I spent the morning lazing about my flat. I finished another book, did some messing about on the computer, and made a phone call to get a waxing appointment scheduled. It was time. I couldn’t put it off any longer. My fellow student, from Australia, gave me the name and number of this place and told me that they spoke English. Great! I gave them a call. Parla Inglese? Nope. Crap. Okay, I can figure this out. So I begin trying to explain that I’d like an appointment to get waxed. No problem. I want to get a wax from Sophia. She tells me that there isn’t a Sophia working there. Shoot. I hang up and read my text message again. Oh, Sonia. I call back. Yup me again. I ask for an appointment with Sonia. Sure, no problem. Today? Sure but only because that is easier to agree to than trying to negotiate for another day. Oh, and I want to somehow tell you that I don’t just want a bikini wax, I need my legs waxed too. I ask her to wait a minute while I look up the word in my dictionary. Got it – Gamba. I tell her that I need to have my legs waxed. She bursts into a fit of giggles. Crap. No? That’s not right. She tells me she understands in between giggles and says she’ll see me at 3pm. Oh well, I’ll just explain with hand gestures when I get there.
I ask for the location. I get bits and pieces of where they are located and I have an appointment booked for 3pm. I get off the phone and realize that (a) I only have part of the name of the salon and (b) they didn’t ask for my name to book the appointment. I’m thinking that they either think I’m not going to show up or that they just put down “American” in the schedule book next to 3pm. I pull out my map and look for this piazza near Piazza di Spagna where the salon is supposed to be. I’m hoping that between the letters and words she gave me, I can figure out where this place is located. I find it. Yeah. I make my way to the salon and when I get there the woman from the phone greets me and tells me she spoke with me this morning. She takes me to Sonia. Sonia is great, and also doesn’t speak English so I get to practice more Italian. She does a great job and asks if I want anything else waxed. Oh yeah! Eyebrows, please! She comes over and begins tweezing. OUCH! This is what they did to me in Beirut. What about waxing the eyebrows? My hair is so thick that each hair that is pulled out feels like a small tree with roots down to my sinuses. The good news is that she finishes quickly. I’m in and out of there in 30 minutes.
Friday night was a little last hurrah with some fellow students. Dinner and drinks and hit the clubs with the kids. I’ve got lots of sightseeing to do over the weekend and the weather is supposed to finally be AMAZING.

There is nothing like a trip to the salon to boost a girls mood.

After a very wet Easter weekend, the sun finally came back out on Tuesday. I celebrated by taking myself out for a day of sightseeing. I kicked things off by visiting the church, San Clemente. I had read about this church many times but never visited. It is a church built upon a church, built upon another building. The building on the bottom level is from the 2nd century, the next level is a church from the 4th century, and the main level is a church from the 12th century. This was one of the best preserved and organized ruin I have been to in Rome. It was really well done and very interesting. I couldn't take pictures though so you have to imagine.
Next I went to another church, San Giovanni in Laterano. This is no ordinary church though. You get major bonus points in the Catholic faith for a stop here. This was once the sight of the original papal headquarters before the move to the Vatican. It is a massive, massive, massive church. My guidebook used the turn "hangar". Maybe that is more appropriate. I did give out a little gasp and "oh, ah" when I came in.


After my stop here I walked across the street to visit Scala Santa (Holy Stairs).
Apparently, these are the steps Jesus climbed in the house of Pontius Pilate. They were brought here by St. Helena in the 4th century. You are supposed to say a prayer as you walk up the 28 steps. I stopped to ponder...do I know 28 prayers? I thought of 3 I could say and then thought in my mind it shouldn't have to be an "official" prayer. However, since this was a catholic holy site I decided I probably did need to know 28 official prayers and opted instead to walk up the side stairs to take a peek at the Sancta Sanctorum (Holy of Holies).
Apparently this is where the heads of Peter, Paul, and Agnes were kept at one time. Why do they keep the heads? yucky.

I also did something totally impromptu and spontaneous. I popped into a salon and had my hair colored. I was walking by this little spot and there were two stylists standing in the doorway talking. I walked past them, stopped, turned around and asked if they could color my hair right now. I was able to barely explain what I wanted and even chatted with my stylist a little, all in Italian. When they started me out by washing my hair (not normal for someone who is having color done - you wash afterwards) I started to worry a little. The whole event took forever too between them washing my hair 3 times and the power going out (hello Beirut!) but when they finished my hair looked great!

Buona Pasqua! Happy Easter!

Today is Easter. I had some deep thoughts about personal Resurrection and what this time of year means but I'm going to save that for another time. I haven't finished my thoughts on the topic and I was too excited to tell everyone what the Easter Bunny brought me!!
For weeks now, I've seen loads of Easter items for sale. I first noticed these special eggs at the shop near my first apartment and every day I passed the store selling this huge Barbie theme egg.

They have them in all sorts of themes - Barbie, Spiderman, Simpsons, etc. Each egg is filled with a surprise of some sort. The stores that sell these eggs also sell loads of other chocolate easter treats. It's wall-to-wall eggs, bunnies, chocolate, and colomba cakes. It's nutty. I'm curious to see these stores after the holiday.




But back to what the Easter bunny brought me!

Field trip!

My school organizes ongoing activities for the students. There's everything from film nights, to walks around neighborhoods, to all day trips out of town. I decided to sign up for the trip on Saturday to Pompeii and Napoli. I've been wanting to see Pompeii for awhile and even tried to get on a tour while my brother was here. I was definitely excited to see it and excited to get out of Rome for the day.
I had to get up super early and go to school to meet the tour bus. On my way there, via the city bus, I had another interesting experience. Now, I think I've possibly mentioned how Italian women stare. It is up there with the way Indian men stare. It's not just a little look or a sideways glance. It is a full on, mouth open, looking straight at you, for as long as you will let them stare at you. Now you are probably wondering, what could I possibly do that would make them stare at me. It doesn't take much but here it is - I filed my nails. Yup. Shocking. I sat down in the bus across from this mother and her teenage daughter. They were going on about something and I think the daughter wanted her mother to give her something and the mother wasn't going to do it. (Hey! I understood some of their conversation!) They were deep into this discussion. I pulled out my nail file and started taking care of a snag on one of my nails. I'm going about my business for a minute or so and I realize that they've stopped talking and I can feel them staring at me. I turn and look and they are both looking directly at me with their mouths open, staring. When I catch them, they sort of look away, pretending to notice the dirt on the floor. I'm sure my look was "what". Is filing your nails offensive in Rome? Is this written somewhere and no one told me? I immediately started to look through the catalog in my brain and see if I had any memory of anyone filing their nails on the bus. No memories, but the bus is usually so crowded that people are crowd surfing over the top to make it to the exits. Was I doing something totally offensive or is this just another thing for Italian women to stare at? I think I'm going to have my camera ready next time and take their picture.
Allora, onto my field trip.
We headed to Pompeii first. I was excited to see it. I had recalled people saying it was interesting because it was a whole village just stuck in this time and this situation. People had also mentioned what was really intense were the people who had tried to run from the volcano explosion and they were frozen in their attempt. A classmate mentioned that when she was little she had seen a dog running with sausages in his mouth.
I didn't have high expectations that this would be some monumental experience. I expected to see a really well preserved, interesting ruin. I wasn't that impressed. The problem is that they take out so many pieces of the ruins here and they put them into museums. There were pieces here that weren't the originals. Those were in a museum. I expected to see these people frozen in time. There were a few but they were in glass boxes in a sort of storage area behind a gate.


I understand that everything needs to be secured and protected from thief, weather, etc. but this is possible to do without turning the actual ruin into a boring maze of old buildings. Even if they had one area set up as a sort of display of what it might have been like for these people, that would have been an interesting scenario to see. I think I prefer to see a little of the "here's how they lived" shadowbox display.
I did see the bordello and the accompanying sign directing people to it - see photo.

They did have some nicely preserved bath areas and that was interesting to see. I also realized after the fact that I didn't see it all. It's huge and we just saw a portion of it. I think that they didn't want to overwhelm us with a tour of the whole place and as it was I think we were there for over two hours. So maybe I won't discount the place completely since I didn't see all of it.
After Pompeii we went to Napoli for just a short visit of about 1 1/2 hours. I had super low expectations of Napoli. For starters, you might have heard that they have a garbage problem. Maybe you haven't but it it's been going on awhile. The garbage collection and disposal is managed by organized crime. So as we were driving through Napoli to Pompeii and then back to visit the city, you see loads of garbage everywhere. It's not just bags of garbage but the piles also include tires, couches, matresses, etc. It's really nasty. It's sad too when you think of why the problem exists.

Anyway, we got into the city and started to wander around and it was actually a really great city - what I saw of it. I was pleasantly surprised at how cute it was and how nice the center of the city looked. A small group of us decided to just hit a grand cafe for warm drinks. It had been pissing rain on and off all day so we were all pretty well cold and wet. We found a great spot with heaters, because of course we're still sitting outside, and had a nice chat.

I got home pretty late and indulged myself with cheese, bread, wine, chocolate, and four episodes of America's Next Top Model (downloaded from itunes).
Such an interesting and nice day.

My flat in Trastevere

A little over a week ago I moved into a flat in Trastevere. This is a neighborhood on the west side of the Tiber river. It is kind of the hot neighborhood these days. It's very hip with lots of restaurants and wine bars. It has such a good feel to it. It is popular with the tourists but not a typical stop for people that are just visiting for a short time.
I had commented in a previous entry that I didn't think I'd end up here. I thought I'd be staying in Campo d'Fiori. I was mistaken. I ended up in a huge apartment in the heart of Trastevere. This place is twice as big and twice as much money as the place I rented, but because the owner made changes, I got a deal. I really wanted to stay in this neighborhood so I'm glad it worked out.
The apartment is huge and on the 3rd floor. It feels like it's bigger than the last place I had in Seattle which was around 620 sq ft but it could also feel that way because it has a ton of windows compared to the two that I had in Seattle and the ceilings are really high.
I am about one "block" off the main street, Viale di Trastevere, but I don't hear any street noise. There is a Baptist(!) church across the street from me, a restaurant and a bar on the first floor of the building, and shops across from my front door, next to the church. Looking out my kitchen window, across the piazza, is another restaurant, Carlomenta, which is always packed. I'll try it soon and see what the fuss is all about. I have a feeling it's just convenient.




I love watching the neighborhood activities from my kitchen window. There are loads of interesting people and situations.
Once a week this little old guy comes and sets up his bike outside of the restaurant below me. He places the rear wheel into a trainer that prevents the bike from moving. He then sits on the seat and uses the bike pedals to turn a sharpening wheel that is attached to the bike. He sharpens the restaurants knives this way.








There is a convent down the street. I love seeing the sisters. It's very comforting to me to see them. It's definitely a pleasant childhood memory for me. I never had the bad nun hitting me with a ruler scenario. I think it was either because I was just really good in school and never caused trouble or I had nice nuns as teachers. I think it's a little bit of both. I was very friendly with the sisters at St. Mary's. I even did impersonations of one of them, Sr. Ermelinda. She even witnessed me doing it and said it was quite good. However, it was strangely similar to my impersonation of Ed Grimly, a character played by Martin Short on SNL.

Skip Day

I took a little vacation yesterday. I decided that I needed a day off of school so I skipped my Italian classes. I didn't feel too bad about it either. I figured I've been a diligent student for over four weeks and I'm pretty much in school 24/7 by just being here. It was a great decision. I slept until 7:50am, which is late for me here. That sun really wakes you up in the morning. It's no wonder I want to sleep until 10am in Seattle. I got up, had a little Italian breakfast (cafe and bread + some nasty strawberry flavored sugar yogurt with whipped sugar cream that my brother had picked out while he was here) and watched a little morning news. After the news I headed out for my first official exercise since I got here. I was feeling a major need to sweat and get moving. I've been wondering if I could count my bus ride as exercise, considering all the pushing, pulling, lunging, and squatting I do just to make sure I don't fall over. I'm pretty certain you don't need to take a driving test to get your bus driver license here. Joe never wanted to take the bus while he was here. Unfortunately I have to take it to school otherwise I'd be walking forever and be sweaty when I arrived. But back to my skip day...
I put on the official exercise clothes and walked to Circo Massimo to run laps. How's that for a race track? I've never been much into running around tracks but the view is pretty good here. (see photo)

It was a GORGEOUS day. Sunny & warm. I had a great run and was actually able to run which is a miracle. Side effect of Palm Sunday mass with the Pope perhaps? Or, it could be that I bought new running shoes before I left the states and took a mini course before I left Seattle on Chi Running. I tried to put some of the philosophies into effect as I ran and I think it may have helped a little. My knee never even began to hurt. It usually hurts immediately.
After my run I decided to visit the Testaccio farmers market. I thought I had read in one of the many guide books that it's the best one. Maybe I misread (highly possible) but it wasn't so great. I also think that I might be spoiled by the Pike Place Market and all the great farmers markets in Seattle and Portland. Anyway, I enjoyed wandering around, trying to speak Italian, and buying a few things. I skipped purchasing the baby pig. (What is with all the baby animals I keep finding in the meat departments here?)

However, I did find some strawberries that look like Oregon strawberries (they are different than the California ones in the store), a Colomba cake for Easter/Pasqua, and another freaking bigne alla crema. These things are turning into my version of crack. If you recall I ordered one of these when I first arrived in Rome. It's the lighter than air cream puff dough, that I think is fried not baked, and then filled with about a cup of egg creme. When Joe was here he went out to buy some sweets for breakfast and came back with these from a local shop. They were insanely good. The one from the farmers market? A waste of calories but it was all in the name of research to find the best one in Rome. I think I will throw the towel in on this research project though. I'll just announce that the neighborhood joint has the best one and stop eating them before my pants split.
The rest of my day was spent reading and doing very little.
In the evening I went for a stroll in my neighborhood to check out some book bars. These are a new concept in Italy. A bookstore where you can also hang out to read and eat something. What an idea! Seriously though, this is a concept counter-culture to the Romans. The book stores were great though and I'm sure I'll go back.
I ended my night with two stops. The first, in a local pub where I noticed all the tables were reserved except for one bar stool at the end. I plopped myself down and then realized that the Roma vs. Lazio football match was that night and they were preparing for it. The last stop of the night and my skip day was to have a pizza for dinner. I know I've been complaining about too much pizza but this place looked so great. No one was in there which is typically a bad sign. That wasn't the case here. I decided on something sort of random for me - anchovies and zucchini flowers. I love that they use zucchini flowers here. They don't really seem to taste like anything but I keep ordering them anyway. I think I just like the idea of eating flowers. I will probably start buying that salad with edible flowers in it at home. I never eat anchovies though and I thought of my mom and brother George who love them. You were in my thoughts while I enjoyed my pizza!