The end

To sum it all up- I really enjoyed my experience abroad. Let me tell you about my last few days. I listened to NPR podcasts as I worked, and finally we had our review on Friday, Dec 10^th. Our professors brought cornetti e café to keep us awake and functioning throughout the day. I’m glad they did, because I was in the second half of people to go. In fact, Allie and I were the second to last group. We presented in pairs, and were grouped based on our projects. Allie and I both had the idea of an urban farm/garden. Our reviewers were a mixture of primarily Italian speakers and primarily English speakers. I think there was some difficulty with the language barrier, because not many of our reviewers spoke. Allie and I were fortunate that during our review, almost all of them spoke about our projects- we inspired them with our designs!

After our review, there was an exhibition of work in the Penn State studio. The architecture and landscape architecture classes pinned up the projects they had been working on all semester, along with their Materials and methods project. Our Materials and Methods projects had been pinned up (I had no idea they were going to be there), and images from the photography class were also displayed. I think that the photography class was my favorite, and it was interesting to compare the two products for the Materials and Methods class. Our professors came, along with some of our reviewers and there was a nice spread of drinks and food. One of the Kenyon College students started DJ-ing, and Tulane started the dance party. I had been upstairs talking to one of our Italian reviewers when I looked down from the mezzanine, I saw everyone dancing!

Tiffany encouraged us to go to Testacchio, so we went and ended up being there way too early. You see, Testacchio is a place that doesn’t come alive until about 11 pm, and we were there around 9:30 pm. We had no conception of time, especially since a lot of people hadn’t slept. I was one of the lucky ones who slept for about 3 hours. We hung out at a bar, and then went to the dance club. And we brought the party (again!). After we walked into the empty club, more people started coming in- it was a lot of fun.

Sunday night we had a group dinner in Tiffany’s apartment. It was New Orleans themed, and Karrah made the best gumbo I’ve ever had. We also had red beans and rice, corn bread, pasta, and a delicious cake. The next couple of days I packed and finished up some of the classwork I needed to do, and then it was off to Ireland on Tuesday night!