Obelisks

So today was our first day to really get acquainted with downtown Rome and its public transportation. We were split into groups, and had to navigate the city to find two assigned obelisks, which are Egyptian monuments brought back to Rome by different emperors. Most of them have Christian symbols/engravings on them now. When we got back we gave a short presentation.

It was an awesome day, aside from the rain. We saw a ton of different famous sites, ate our first Centro bag lunch, learned from a girl on the bus that there's an "ice bar" in Italy where all drinks are served in glasses made out of ice, and managed to get pretty lost.

Here are a few highlights from yesterday, when I walked into Rome with 2 girls from my program to look around, and today. The weather hasn't been great. But it's beautiful here even when it rains.

We live in the neighborhood of Monteverde, on Gianicolo (the name of the hill). Down these steps is Trastevere, which is right across the Tiber from Rome. (Climbing back up these was incredibly difficult.)

A Roman drinking fountain. You can find them all over. You cover the end of the spout, and the water comes up out of a small hole in it. This is Sophie...she had a little trouble at first.
Downtown Rome at sunset. I took this right after we discovered the column of Trajan.
The Vatican. This is the first one from our adventure today. That's me in the center, with my touristy looking backpack. I already have much more sympathy for the tourists in NY that I always looked down on. At least we travel in a group here, so it's obvious what we're doing, but the Centro staff did warn us against being Brutti Americani, the "ugly" Americans that talk loudly, negatively compare everything in Rome to America, and wear high white socks, sweatsuits, and baseball caps that say "Roma". I think I have avoided all those things so far.
Here's our first obelisk, in the Piazza del San Pietro. They still had a huge creche set up on the other side, the the tree to the left is a Christmas tree.
Here's a few of us in front of the Trevi Fountain, which we passed on our way to our second Obelisk.
The base of the second Obelisk (in the Piazza della Minerva) is on the right, and the Pantheon is in the background.
The coffered dome ceiling and the oculus in the Pantheon. Definitely the most impressive sight of the day.

That's all for now. Class officially starts tomorrow (I'm taking Greek, Latin, and the Ancient City course, which counts as two classes and takes up the majority of our time with field trips.) So I will probably update this much less frequently. But I hope you liked the photos. (I'm trying to avoid making a zillion Facebook albums. I'm trying to avoid Facebook in general...)

Ciao!
Mary

The Centro

Front and street view of the Centro (it used to be a convent). All 38 of us live, eat and take our classes here. There are 5 American professors who live nearby and teach the classes. A lot of our time is going to be spent on field trips to various locations in Rome (and two extended field trips; one to Palermo and one to Sicily). All the students live on the 2nd and 3rd floors in singles or doubles (I'm really glad I requested a single. It's good to have some space.)


Our backyard! There's also a small fish pool with some goldfish, some intersting plants, a ping pong table made out of concrete (weird), and...

a lemon tree!? We also have an orange tree. We ate one and were pretty impressed.

Tomorrow we start at 8am with breakfast, then we are walking around the neighborhood (Trastevere) to become familiar with it. We went for dinner tonight...we're mostly surrounded by apartments, with some stores and restaurants. The American Academy is nearby, and there's a beautiful park right down the block I'm looking forward to seeing.

That's all for now. I need to go to sleep (I think I slept a total of 1.5 hours last night because of flying/time change.)

I'm finally here! I got in about 30 mins ago...

I will start with real posts (pictures, mostly) soon!

Mary