Respite

Quick epilogue to my last post that I forgot to write about on Sunday - last Friday, we went to the EUR (Expositione Universale di Roma) district on the outskirts of Rome. It's the area that Mussolini built up out of the slums in the 1920's and 1930's to be the political headquarters for his Fascist regime. The "inner city" of Rome, where we spend 99% of our time, probably hasn't changed much in the last century or so, what with its cobblestoned streets, brick buildings, etc. The EUR, however, for all intents and purposes, is a modern city. Stepping off the bus, the first things we saw were asphalt beneath our feet, glass office buildings, and parking garages. It was either Andrew or Harrison that said, almost with a note of disappointment in his voice, "It looks just like North Texas."

It's been a pretty big week so far. We started off, as I've already said, with two midterms on Monday and our two five-pagers on Tuesday. For the amount of work that we do, nobody's that stressed about grades. Galinsky and Arya both seem to be of the school of thought that if you put in the effort, do good work, and participate in lectures, there's no reason why you shouldn't get an A. Besides, this is the first year that Plan II has done a study abroad program, and they need it to go well. They can't have fifteen students coming back and talking about how many B's and C's got added to their collective transcripts. Come to think of it, the Humanities rewrite I was so miffed at is probably one of those "keep trying until you get an A" assignments. Guess I can't complain.

Funny story from when we visited the Pantheon on Tuesday. I'm not sure how familiar my readers are with geography, but the Pantheon is Rome, which is in Italy, which is in Europe, which is across the Atlantic Ocean from my hometown of Dallas, Texas. We're walking around, looking up at the skylight, listening to Priya's presentation, when who do I see? Tom and Leslie Nacke, our next-door neighbors for the past fifteen years. I slipped away from the group to say hi, and we chatted about how awesome Rome is and what a small world it is. They had just gotten to Rome two nights before and were leaving the next day to go on to Florence, I think, which makes the event all the weirder. Next on my people-to-run-into list: either a) one of the Cistercian brothers (who spend two years in Rome as part of their novitiate) or b) Tom Hanks (who's filming "Angels and Demons" here for the next couple weeks).

The neighborhood where we're staying is called Trastevere, and it's located right across the Tiber from the main part of the city. We've decided that Trastevere is either Latin or ancient Greek for "noisiest neighborhood in Europe." Our building doesn't have AC, and Cheuk and I are on the top floor, meaning we have to keep our windows open 24/7 if we don't want to cook in our own juices every night. Unfortunately for us, the time we consider bedtime is the time that the people at large consider let's-get-drunk-and-start-yelling time. In their defense, we've been going to bed pretty early (midnight, one-ish), so we can't complain too much, but it's not just the weekends. It's every single night without fail. Additionally, the windows of our bedroom face a main highway that runs alongside the river. Fun fact - Italian drivers use the horn as much as they use the brake pedal. We've gotten pretty good at tuning out the cacophony of honking duels, squealing brakes, revving motorcycles, and the occasional shave-and-a-haircut followed after a couple seconds of silence by an obliging, almost begrudging, two bits as we fall asleep each night.

I need to head out because we're meeting downstairs in less than five minutes, so sorry if this entry's a little shorter than normal. A week from tomorrow is our last day here, we're chilling out on Saturday, and I (hopefully) leave on Sunday, so things are wrapping up fast. Galinsky said he's cramming as much as he can into this week so that we can take our last week to just decompress and enjoy Europe before we head home. That means either substantially more or substantially less blogging, depending on how we decide to handle our free time. So, until then, ciao for now.