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May 13th, 2006
11:57 pm
Curtain Call
Augustus - Brett
Tiberius - Elizabeth
Caligula - Franny
Claudius - Glenny
Nero - Chris Carrol
Galba - Kim
Otho - Luke
Vitellius - Ed
Vespasian - Crease (Josh)
Titus - Katherine
Domitian - Alyssa
Nerva - Heather
Trajan - Alicen
Hadrian - Dom
Antoninus Pius - Kali
Marcus Aurelius - Nick
Lucius Verus - Andrew
Commodus - Tulisha
Pertinax - Jessica
Didius Julianus - Kati
Septimius Severus - Chris Laco
Caracalla - Rosemary
Geta - Kerry
Macrinus - Jon
Elagabalus - Meg
Alexander Severus - Megan
Maximinus - Ellie
Gordian I - Niall
Gordian II - Mike
Balbinus - Jetta
Gordian III - Mary Hartley
Philip I - Sick Nasty (Josh Smith)
Philip II - Victoria
Decius - Melanie
Trebonianus - Eli
Aemilian - Mark
Also starring - Professor Maas, Professor Klaassen (and family), Professor Fenton, Professor Walsh (and Mira), Professor Tegmeyer, Barbara, Franco and Pina (and family), and the rest of the Centro Staff.
Once Centristi, always Centristi.
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03:40 pm
I forgot to mention the other awesome thing I did yesterday. After lunch, a few of us got some gelato and then Ed, Kerry, Andrew, Eli, and I went to the park. We just hung out on a blanket for a while and then played a little frisbee. The little space with four benches and an iron portico type thing was all covered in vines and roses. So pretty. It was such a nice day out. I heart playing frisbee in no shoes. We (and by we, I mean I) managed to get the frisbee stuck up in a tree. We then managed to get one of my shoes also stuck up in the tree in an attempt to get the frisbee down. Fortunately we retrieved them all. It was a great afternoon.
The cookout this afternoon was definitely a success. Lots of food, lots of people. Awesome.
I just said goodbye to the Klaassens. :( I will admit I did start to cry a little - Judy called me out on it! I will really miss them. They've made this semester so much fun.
Now I just need to buy a towel and finish up with the packing. I hate that. I don't want to be spending my last afternoon inside on such a beautiful day packing. The Centro seems really empty. Not that many people have left yet but a lot of people are either out or in their rooms packing frantically.
Professor Maas was at the cookout and Professor Fenton showed up for a while. I didn't really say any official sort of goodbye to them but at least I saw them one more time. I didn't really get a chance to say goodbye to Professor Klaassen because I was too busy saying goodbye to her kids . . . and trying not to cry. Professor Walsh hasn't been back since the farewell dinner last night and he left rather unceremoniously. Not sure if I'll see him again to say goodbye. Oh well. I'm sure I'll keep in touch with most of them. If not, I'm sure they know how great I thought this semester was. I'm gonna miss this place. I still don't think it's sunk in that this will be my last night here . . .
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09:56 am
Finals are done!!!
I had my Art History exam yesterday. I don't really want to talk about that though. Suffice it to say, I'm sure I did fine . . . of course, I'm sure I could have done much better. Oh well. It's over.
Yesterday was our farewell dinner. It was amazing. So much tasty food and fun. Everyone was there. It was great. I'm definitely going to miss this group a ton.
Peter Klaassen said the cutest thing to me at one point during dinner. Judy had come over to my table and then Peter came over too. At some point, Judy ran off to go watch cartoons or do something but Peter was still kind of standing there, a little ways off. He just looked at me and said, "You know . . . people like you . . . . . . you don't forget them." I obviously said something about how I'd never forget him (or Judy or Timmy) and how I'll miss them and all that stuff and then he kind of shuffled off. It was so cute - I was really close to crying (and since all of you know me quite well, you'll know I'm not much of a crier, if I can avoid it). I'm going to miss those kids so much. They're all great in their own ways. I walked/ran them home again last night but luckily it wasn't the final goodbye. A lot of the Centristi are having a cookout in the garden again today for lunch and Professor Klaassen said she was going to stop by with the kids. Judy gave me her sweater to hold onto so I can give it back to her later today when I see her. ;)
Since some people are heading out today, last night was our last night as a group. A bunch of us went out to Abbey Theater and pretty much took over the backroom. It was a good group. Megan, Brett, Alyssa, Eli, Ed, Kerry, Katherine, Jon, Mark, a friend of Jon and Mark's, a couple of her friends, Rosemary, Kali, Tulisha and me. Andrew called it an early night since he had to head to the airport at 7 or 8 AM! That was my first goodbye. Awww. I'll miss that kid. He's great. Fellow Minnesotan - can't go wrong! We decided a bit over halfway into the semester that he's like the big brother I never had. Hopefully I'll see him at some point over the summer, but he'll be in Yellowstone for a lot of it, so who knows.
We stayed at Abbey for a bit longer and then it was closing time (only 2 AM!). Some of us headed to Scholars' Lounge, where it was in full dance club mode. Not my favorite scene but it was still fun. At this point it was me, Kali, Jon, and Jon's friend. We saw Ellie and some others as we were leaving Abbey and when we got to Scholars'. She was pretty far gone but having a blast - and she had people watching out for her so it was all good. Kali and I met a guy from Oxford while waiting for the bathroom. His introduction was, "Hey, you speak English!" Yes, yes we do. ;) His name was Matt, I believe, it was kind of hard to hear. That was random but he was nice. Kali and I hung out with the other Centristi there for a while and then decided to head out. It was definitely a fun night.
Today is the lunchtime cookout, buying a towel for my week in England (since I didn't bring one, as the Centro provides them), last minute packing, and probably just generally hanging out. I can't believe it's almost over. I don't think you realize how quickly a semester goes by until you've spent one with an entirely new group of people, many of whom you may never see again. It's amazing how quickly a place can feel like home and new people seem like old friends. All right - I'm going to try not to get too sentimental right now. I'm sure I'll update one more time before I pack up my computer tonight.
Kerry and I head out around 8 AM tomorrow morning for Paris, then England, then back to Rome for a couple days. Good times, I'm sure!
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May 11th, 2006
12:10 am
Quick birthday update:
A group of us went out to Abbey Theater after dinner. It was me, Eli, Alyssa, Kali, Ed, Kerry, Jon, Megan, Andrew, and Mark. We headed out a bit after dinner, maybe 9:30 or so, because we all wanted to make it an early night (stupid finals). Abbey Theater was really, really empty - for the whole night. Granted it was a Tuesday night so I guess that's not too big of a surprise. It was a really nice time though. Possibly not as debauched as a 21st birthday celebration should be, but I really enjoyed it. It was a great group of people and it was just really chill. I had a lot of fun.
Jon, Alyssa, Eli, and I watched the first part of a Dr. Who episode but then were all too tired to continue. I wonder if we'll finish it before we all head out . . . I hope so. Dr. Who and the Ark in Space - high quality, honest. ;)
I have two finals left. Ancient City and Art History. I'm not too worried about Ancient City since we were able to write our essays out before hand and the rest of the test shouldn't be too hard. Art History will probably kick my ass though. Oh well, such is life. I have all of tomorrow after the Ancient City test and then a little bit of Friday morning to study. I've also started packing, which is really depressing. I need to make sure I do laundry before the week is up - otherwise I'll be really slumming it around Europe next week!
I miss ND and Minnesota a lot, but I'm not ready to leave Italy.
Torn between Rome and home.
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May 10th, 2006
11:50 am
Operation Roma Motorino:
So, as some of you may remember from some earlier post, Professor Walsh and I share a birthday. In honor of this, I came up with the idea (quite some time ago) that his motorino needed to be decorated for his birthday. As Professor Walsh is a huge Lazio fan, and has gotten several of us to be equally big fans, and since the Lazio-Roma rivalry is huge - I thought it would be amusing the deck out said motorino in Roma gear. At around 11:30 on Monday night, the group of us gathered to prepare our supplies and begin the decoration. Alyssa and Eli had purchased a Roma scarf and tiny Totti jersey at the Porta Portese flea market several weeks ago and Andrew had just recently purchased a sweet Roma flag at the market the week before. I had acquired little Roma "trading card" things from various packs of Ringo cookies and Kerry cut out pictures from the La Repubblica newspaper. Jon was in charge of finding an awesome Totti pictures - and he did a great job. All in all, our rag-tag group was: me, Kerry, Ed, Jon, Andrew, Alyssa, and Eli, with Katherine observing and Brett coming to take the group photo at the end.
Photos of our escapade can be found here - http://www.nd.edu/~aforesma/Roma/Operation%20Roma%20Motorino/
We finished just before midnight and upon coming back inside and settling down, I got several birthday wishes. Yay!
The plan for the next morning was to watch out for Professor Walsh coming in. Fortunately both my room and Kerry's room had good views over the motorino. Glenny didn't have an exam on Tuesday though, so she was going to be sleeping in and I didn't want to disturb her. I went into Kerry's room and we waited. No sign of Professor Walsh before breakfast. The breakfast bell rang and we headed downstairs to get some food. I wasn't feeling too well but it worked out ok because I just had a glass of juice and then went back up to Kerry's room and crashed. I looked out the window every time I heard the gate open. Still no Prof. Walsh. He had to show up eventually - we had a final at 8:45. Ed came upstairs, followed shortly by Kerry. Finally, we hear the gate open and this time it is Prof. Walsh. From our angle, we can't see his expression but I have a feeling he was smirking as he shook his head.
Eventually it was time to head upstairs for the Greek final. I had a feeling he would be suspecting me of being responsible but I had no intention of letting on. However, he tried to get us back. He comes into the room and says to the class, "Have you seen my motorino? Not a good idea on the day of the final. Do any of you know who did that?" Now, I had seen him from Kerry's window and he definitely didn't look angry when he saw it - so I wasn't about to fall for this. However, there was still a tiny part of me that was a bit frightened. It wouldn't surprise me too much for Professor Walsh to be an idiot and get upset about this. So he asks again and Dom mumbles something about seeing it the night before but not knowing who did it. I just kind of kept a blank face and tried not to smile since I was pretty sure he was faking being upset. Finally he smiles and says, "Just kidding. But seriously have you seen the motorino?"
I would qualify this operation as a success. He never directly called any of us out but I have a feeling he's pretty sure who was responsible. I figure it's only fair that I get him back for all the times he's made fun of me over the course of the semester.
Also, my birthday was great. I'll update about that at some later time. Now, I should get back to studying . . . fun . . .
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May 8th, 2006
04:19 pm
Things done:
- pedagogy project paper
- presentation hand-outs and notes
- Ancient City course essay for final, some studying
- most of Greek review
Things left to do:
- finish preparing Greek final essay thoughts
- take Greek final
- give pedagogy presentation
- finish Ancient City studying
- take Ancient City final (Thursday)
- begin (and presumably finish) Art History studying
- take Ancient City final (Friday)
- organize all travel details for week and half following finals
- pack
- Operation Roma Motorino (going down tonight - update to follow, I'm sure)
Here's me, Judy, and Timmy at the pancake party over at the Klaassen's yesterday. Judy and I are just too excited and Timmy's making his scary face!
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May 6th, 2006
06:59 pm
Yesterday was a good day.
It started out a bit rough - getting to the Villa Borghese for an optional Art History trip just barely in time. Our appointment was at 11, and for the Villa you only get a two hour slot in which to visit. The traffic was terrible so even though we left around 9:45, we just barely made it to the museum by 11. No worries though - we got to see everything we needed/wanted. Only four of the six Caravaggio's that they have were there but it's better than none. Also several Bernini statues. All very cool.
Then it was back to the Centro for lunch and working on finals stuff. My final project is pretty much done. The paper and annotated bibliography and syllabus are all finished, printed, stapled, and ready to go. My presentation notes are done, but I still need to go over them and time myself to make sure I'm not wildly under 20 minutes.
Dinner was awesome. I was, once again, at the Klaassen's table with Kerry and Ed. It was tasty penne pasta and then caprese (buffalo mozzarella with tomatoes, mmmmmmm). Then, since it was Peter's birthday (well, technically it's today but since they don't serve meals on the weekends, this was close enough) they had a cake. It was delicious cake - and the conversation that ensued was second only to the meatlog dinner conversation.
After dinner, Judy wanted me to walk back with them again - so I did. It was a fun time, running down the street, chasing Timmy and Judy. I love those kids. The Klaassens are having a pancake party tomorrow - that should be fun.
When I got back to the Centro, I watched a little WWE with Jon and some others hanging out in the TV room - that is a funny, funny show. Then Kerry, Ed, Katherine, Jon, Andrew, and I went out to the Scholars' Lounge. Many thanks and much love go to Andrew and/or Jon for picking up my tab, since the ATMs I tried were both down and I was temporarily broke.
I just got back from going out with MJ. It was great to see her! She's looking awesome and is having a great time in Bologna. We met up with some ND people she knows and played some flip cup. It was a good time - though getting home was a bit of a pain. I am now sleepy. I began writing this at 7, got a call from MJ, headed out to meet her, and am now finishing the entry at 12:30 - nice.
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May 3rd, 2006
04:58 pm
Yesterday, Ed, Kerry, Rosemary, and I took a day trip out to Orvieto. It's a little Italian town about an hour/hour and a half away from Rome on train. It was a lot of fun.
It was a beautiful day and the city is really pretty. It's a cute, little Italian city - with narrow, medieval streets and a nice big Duomo in the center of town. It also has a couple small museums with lots of Etruscan stuff. The site of Orvieto has been inhabited since the Etruscans (native Italians, big before the Romans) and they dug down into the tufa to reach the water table. Because of this (and because the later inhabitants continued to use them), these caves are still there and we took a little tour of them. There are tons of caves, but the tour only goes into two of them, which is a little disappointing but oh well. It was still cool. After the tour, it was just about lunch time, so we ate our wonderful (or close enough to) bag lunches from the Centro in the little grassy area with a sweet view of the countryside. Rolling green hills, a monastery turned restaurant and hotel, agricultural fields, trees - the whole deal. It was way too pretty.
After lunch, we went into the Musei Faina e Civico, because the Duomo wasn't going to be open again until 2:30. This is one of the museums that has some of the Etruscan stuff. It's not a particularly big museum or collection, but that's to be expected in a town of Orvieto's size. It was still a very nice museum. Ed is doing his final project (the pedagogy project) on the Etruscans so it was nice for him to be able to pretend like this was research! We walked over to another church in town while waiting for the Duomo to open back up. Then we wandered through the little backstreets and wasted some time.
We went into the Duomo eventually and it was a nice church. Not as decorated of an interior as other Duomos and churches I've seen since being in Italy but it was still nice. It was almost more peaceful that way. The outside was really beautiful though. It was black and white striped similar to the church in Sienna and the facade was clearly a later addition but it was really, really ornately decorated. I was able to buy two postcards of frescoes from the San Brizio chapel - since you have to pay to get in there. They were done by Luca Signorelli and are considered to be one of the works which influenced Michelangelo's Last Judgment from the Sistine Chapel.
We bought some Orvieto Classico wine, which is supposed to be (and indeed is) very good. Then we sat in the sun on the Duomo steps and eventually Rosemary went to do a little souvenir shopping but the rest of us felt like being lazy and staying in the sun. At that point we had seen most of what Orvieto had to offer and it was time to head back down to the train station - which, by the way, is at the bottom of the hill and you have to take this funny little bus/trolley thing to get between the two places. Well, technically I suppose you could walk but that would be a hassle. So we caught the bus/trolley thing and bought our tickets to go back to Rome. The train was late getting in but it was sunny and warm out so we sat on the platform and Ed and Kerry played some cards.
We were back in Rome and back at the Centro in time for dinner - so the day was most definitely a success.
In other news, my pedagogy project paper is 11 pages long and "done." I still need to read over it and edit it, but I'm waiting to do that tomorrow because I just can't bring myself to look at that paper again for the rest of the day. I also need to start studying for my other finals and preparing my essay for my Ancient City final - but I feel I need a break. I can't believe I have less than two weeks left here! Once again, not going to think about that yet . . .
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April 30th, 2006
06:53 pm
Ravenna was quite nice. It was 10 hours of driving for not as many hours actually spent in the city, but it's a nice little city, so it's all good. Here's the deal with Ravenna. In the later empire (400s and such, when the West is becoming overshadowed by the Eastern Byzantine side of the Empire), Rome is pretty much only a symbolic capitol city. The capitol was Milan, until Honorius (being a bit of a coward) decided to move it to Ravenna. Ostrogoths eventually take over but don't raze the city - in fact, they patronize it and make beautiful Arian churches. Yay . . . anywho, back to the story.
We left after Art History on Friday. (Teggy actually got us back to the Centro in time, early in fact - mostly because he was coming along on the trip, but also because he had to!) The drive up was fine. I was really tired but I don't think I slept on the bus at all. Oh well.
We had dinner at the hotel, which was quite nice. I was a bit stir crazy after dinner for some reason so Andrew and I decided to walk around. It was a beautiful night. Ravenna was really quite for a Friday night but it was actually kind of nice. We found the tomb of Dante right away and it looked really cool. It's a little white chapel type building and it was all lit up. We walked around a bit more and found Franco, Pina, and Professor Klaassen. Professor Klaassen was going to wander around Ravenna more so we joined up with her and made a trek to the different churches - some which we were going to see the next day, others which we weren't. It was a good time. Professor Klaassen definitely would have gotten lost if it wasn't for us!
Saturday morning was breakfast at the hotel and then out into Ravenna on foot to see the mosaics. We saw the Arian baptistery and the Orthodox (Catholic) baptistery and multiple churches. They pretty much all had mosaics - some of them really, really nice too.
It was rainy all morning which was kind of a bummer but what can you do. (It, of course, became sunny just before we were about to make a 5 hour bus ride back to Rome!)
So Ravenna was a good time. And today was the Lazio-Lecce game. Ed, Kerry, and I got tickets once again - and finally got to see Lazio win!!!!! It was only 1-0 but it was still great. Lazio wasn't playing at their best but we still had a good time. This was the last Lazio game we'll be able to see. *Tear* Forza Lazio!
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April 28th, 2006
12:04 am
Ugh.
We should have booked our flight stuff sooner. No Athens for us now. The price of tickets from London to Athens managed to increase by a good $50 over the course of two nights - as flights, I guess, are prone to do. This wouldn't have been a big deal if the tickets had started at around maybe $50 in the first place - but no, this was a jump from $150 to $200. We were both prepared to rationalize spending the $150 to get to Athens but $200 is a bit rich for both of us. We'll both have jobs over the summer, but that's really putting us in the hole. Alas.
As is, we ended up spending more on the flight to Paris as well - though luckily not as big of a hike.
We're added two extra days to our stay in London and then relaxing in Rome for a day before flying out.
This just gives me more of an incentive to make sure I get off my lazy ass and get back to the Classical World at some point. The American School for Classical Studies at Athens is apparently pretty kick ass - rigorous and probably tough to get into. Maybe I'll set my sights on that for the future.
In other news, still in love with archaeology but dreading the grad school application process. I need to find a topic for an undergraduate honors thesis . . .
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