Days of walking



The Colosseum! I haven't been inside yet though

 Buongiorno!

We had all of our classes moved to Friday, instead of Thursday. For our drawing class in the morning, we ended up going to Trajan's Forum (left) and sketching. It was really fun and beautiful. All the arches are just magnificent.
For studio we got our new site/project. The program is undefined (we get to decide what it is), and we get to choose the site, between 3 options. We went for a site visit on Friday with class- it's about a 20 minute metro ride outside of the city center. The first site is really linear and currently a parking area in the middle of the street. The second sight is next to it, in a wedge shape with a bar and some gas stations, and the third site is an L shape on the next block. I'm thinking of developing the first site, maybe putting in a cafe and photo gallery...we'll see. :)



Kristy and I swinging at a playground we found near our new site

 Friday night was our group dinner- Zach made delicious eggplant parmesan and salad. We're trying to have them every couple of weeks- the chefs get 100 euro to buy all the food. Tiffany came towards the end, and ended up giving people haircuts (she can cut hair). A bunch of people headed out dancing, but Mira, Allie, Kristy, Marda, and I grabbbed some bottles of wine, and went out to the Piazza to hang out. On the way down we stopped at the third floor and invited some Penn State guys to hang out with us. They ended up coming, and we had a great time hanging out and talking.
Yesterday I went with Mira, Marda, Sarah, and Corey to visit the site again- I sketched a lot and developed my ideas further. By the time we decided to head out, it was around 2, so we took the metro to Vittorio Emanuele. We had lunch at this place called "Indian Fast Food." Name sounds kind of cheesy, but it was delicious! I had white rice with mutton curry. It was a little confusing, and they had the lunch rush when we were there so I think they got a little frustrated with us for not knowing what to do, but we figured it out. The best part was that we got free water!! That never happens in Italy. And it was a good thing, because that food was spicy. And we know that my spicy tolerance isn't that great :) We decided to walk back from there, and it took about an hour, but it was an absolutely beautiful walk, and if I hadn't been in a hurry, I would've stopped to take pictures.

And I was in a hurry because...Fernando and I were going to the MACRO museum in Testacchio to see a new photography exhibit (my excuse: it was research for our new project). We missed our stop to get off the bus, so we took it to the end of the line and came back- we were on that bus for about an hour. And then the map we had took us in the opposite direction of the museum. But when we finally got there, it was great! The images were very emotionally evocative. There were these large images of these young children crying- looking at them made me want to cry too. Their pain was real and you could feel it. A lot of the pictures reminded me of photojournalism- these pictures were telling a story. And I got in for free with my student ID- even better. It was built in an old train station it looked like, and had alcoves filled with photography. Pretty neat.

We got back around 9 pm and I made dinner and read- I wasn't about to go anywhere- I was a little tired from all the walking. Nate and Amanda, two Penn State friends, came up and we hung out in the kitchen talking. And this morning Amanda and I went for a run. She's actually from Maryland too (!!!), and Nate is from Pennsylvania.