Clive Owen

2.28.08

Clive Owen. Clive Fricken’ Owen! I saw Clive Owen…… everyone be jealous

Apparently Julia Roberts was around too but I didn’t see her. BUT OH MY GOODNESS I SAW CLIVE OWEN. Just walked by him on the street while he was getting ready to shoot something. I don’t know what they are filming for but I can’t wait to see it. They were filming on the street that I walk down about 20 times a day, the one that goes from my apartment to the Pantheon. That just about made my day! He looked at me too, so I smiled. YAY

Of course it has to be a bad hair day and I’m still healing my sunburn so I look like a freak carrying my backpack around so it doesn’t touch my shoulders, but I don’t care right now!

I SAW CLIVE OWEN!

By the way

I'm also posting on the idaho blog page..... I just put one up.... but we are all required to post on there now and then.

http://idahoroma.blogspot.com

I got hit by a car today…..

5.26.2008

Yep I did! Not hurt, driver just wasn’t paying attention (like most drivers in Italy)
The thing about walking around this city is that not many cross walks have lights so you just have to be brave and walk out, the cars wont stop for you if you are just chilling on the side of the road. So I was walking across, the lady was looking the other direction because she was trying to turn out into traffic and she didn’t turn back to look the other way. I jumped my legs out of the way and had my hand on the hood of her car. I think it actually may have freaked her out more than it did me. HONESTLY DON’T WORRY ABOUT ME BEING HURT BECAUSE I’M NOT.

I have always been very careful about crossing the street and don’t go out into a lane until I see the car slow down. The issue is here they don’t slow down until you are out in their lane….. but of course now I will be even more careful.

Pub Crawl

5.24.08

I got a T-shirt last night! We had a blast. There is a nightly pub crawl that starts at the base of the Spanish steps and travels to 4 different bars. All 11 of us went and had a great time, and have t-shirts to show for our adventure. Apparently if you go to www.pubcrawlrome.com you can check out the web page for it. I haven’t been there but I will have to check it out.

Internet around here has been a pain. We have it all set up in the apartment now, but no one has brought by the WEP key for it like they told us they would. So as of right now I still don’t have internet on a daily basis like I thought I would so I’m sorry there is difficulty staying in touch with me.

Mom and Dad, I found out why I kept getting cut off from talking to you. The phone card I bought gives you a decent amount of minutes, but apparently only if you call from a land line and not from a cell phone. So for the 5 euro I paid I got a 10 min conversation out of it, whereas I would have had about 100 min if I had called from out apartment phone. Now I know better, but I might just by one card and use it until I can get Skype and set up an account to call cell phones from that because it is still cheaper than buying the phone card.

Everyone went out to breakfast this morning, but I had been munching on cereal so I wasn’t hungry so right now I’m sitting alone in the apartment waiting for the cleaning guy to be done with the bathroom so that I can take a shower and get some of the bar smell off me from last night. It was really a good time last night, many new stories a few good new quotes, and lots of good times dancing with the group. Oh ya and my blister count went up by two from yesterday as a whole; there was a lot of walking involved yesterday. Never mind there is a lot of walking involved EVERY day

20 layers of skin later…

5.21.2008

…I found my blister. HOLY CRAPOLA that hurts. It had developed under a blister right where my big toe connects with the foot. So when ever I walk I have to skip the part of the step where I would normally go up on the ball of my foot. I am the true gimp as you all know. Yesterday I was favoring my right leg because my calf muscle was so tight that I couldn’t flex my foot very far, and today I’m favoring my right foot due to the stupid blisters!

Wish me luck that I don’t end up dead due to injuries by the end of the trip.

Ancora vino, per favore

5.20.2008

So last night I got sloshed in Rome. Matt and I have decided that it needs to be a nightly tradition to go up to some point in the city and watch the sun set. The first night Stacy, and Morgan joined us, but last night it was just us. The fun part about these trips are that they are accompanied by a bottle of wine. Last night however, the sun didn’t want to give us a good show (it was hiding behind lots of clouds). So we finished off our bottle of wine and went walking to explore the city. This walk included two more bottles of wine along the way.

We found some AMAZING views along the way as we were walking our trek that we are guessing was around 5 miles, in 2 hours. (I feel like I use descriptive words like amazing, spectacular, etc. all the time, but you will have to deal with it because that is the easiest way to describe it with words, doing nothing any justice in the process.)

So sloshed in Rome, SOOOOOO MUCH FUN! I hold the record for our group for the first person to get drunk in Rome, lots of us have drank, but that was the first time anyone was drunk. I was seriously wet while walking around because it was raining (Matt talked me into jumping in a fountain, but just as I was about to he changed his mind and made me stop before I got in). We had a blast just walking around the city with an open bottle of wine finding good lookout points.

This morning though we were both hurting so bad, our legs are incredibly sore from climbing the HUGE hill to get to the good spots. SIDE NOTE: blister count-7

We have been walking like crazy this whole trip so far. Hours at a time on cobblestone streets, very difficult! Expect me to come home with a sprained ankle, either that or a broken arm from a car mirror taking me out. I have also decided that my legs and ass are going to be in the best shape of my life when I get home from all the walking (and hills). I won’t complain one bit about that though.

Today we finally got cell phones. So now we can get a hold of each other when we get lost or need to meet somewhere. Matt B really encourages us to go out on our own and spend time getting to know the city without any of your friends around you. Haven’t started that yet, but I will soon.

Speaking of friends, I am loving this group we are having a great time hanging out together. There might be a few problem spots between personalities here and there but I don’t foresee any big problems.

Oh and since I know you are all wondering the title means and to lazy to look it up: “Can we have some more wine please”

Mopeds, Minis, Smart Cars, and Wheelchairs

5.18.08

Vehicles you often see EVERYWHERE in Rome.

I have decided that moped helmets are the “man bag” of Rome; they are always walking around with them hanging from their arm. Mini Coopers are everywhere! However I have fallen in love with a new little car. The Smart Car is way cool, it only has two seats, but it looks pretty efficient. I’m going to have to do some research when I finally get the internet. (Oh and by the way don’t expect daily blogs once we really get busy with work.) Today alone I saw at least 3 people making their way around Rome in wheelchairs, and only one of them had someone else with them. That has got to be a bumpy ride! I’m sure they have AMAZING arm strength.

So we did a walking tour (was supposed to be late morning, turned into early afternoon since none of us woke up till around noon) to get ourselves oriented in the City. Three hours of walking and only one little blister (one of my shoes was buckled tighter than the other; I wouldn’t have come across the problem otherwise.) I took 150 pictures on the trip though. It is crazy usually when I’m somewhere on “vacation” I’m trying to capture as much as I can on film so that I can recall it later. I realized that here I am actually going to have time to start to get to know the city and I will start to recognize places and know how to direct lost tourists. That is just crazy to me.

I took the world’s coldest shower this morning, I’m hoping that the hot water will kick in soon; I don’t think I can handle two months of ice. I was very tempted to wash my hair in the sink so that I wouldn’t have to get wet, but I was smelly after lots of travel and really need to clean up.

Planes Marshmallows and Poppies

5.17.08

I’m HERE!!! I made it safely! And with all of my luggage (one girl is missing both her bags, and one guy is missing one).

The plane rides were incredibly long I watched Juno and The Rescuers on my first trip, and tried to sleep the rest of the time. Sometimes I succeeded but most of the time right as I was almost out I either got shaken awake or talked to, seeing if I wanted any food. Also for the first time in my life (that I can remember) I threw up on the plane. I have always had issues with take of and landing but as we were pulling into Amsterdam it was just too much for my lack of sleep and stomach to take. JOY!!!

The second plane ride wasn’t bad at all I slept most of it thankfully. And no throwing up, but I didn’t eat on the plane either because I didn’t want to take the chance. Now due to this lack of eating I am pretty light headed as I sit in a wonderfully large apartment writing this to post at a later time since we have no internet here.

As the plane landed in Rome, I first noticed the trees and then I noticed the “marshmallows” being made in the grassy areas surrounding the runways. I felt like I was in the center of farm country, but the trees made me thing of trees on the savannah in Africa. There weren’t any branches or any thing on the lower part of the tree but where they picked up, they spread out like there was something above them keeping them from growing up.

When Herminio and I finally made it to Rome we were supposed to meet up with another student, Will. We however searched everywhere for him and couldn’t find him, so we had to take off on the train without him. The train ride was pretty fun; it was hard staying awake though. I was blaming it on all the poppies that were all over the side of the train tracks. Watching out the window for most of the trip all there was to see was apartments and lots and lots of graffiti.

We made it to the train station just fine to find Will and our teacher, Matt, waiting for us. Not long after Tim, our TA, showed up and took us in a cab to our apartment. (almost scarier than the cabs in NY)

After unpacking and the four of us waited for the next group of students to show up but they were running behind schedule due to delayed flights and lost baggage. So we went out walking to get some dinner (my light headedness is gone now thank goodness!) We had pizza at this cute little shop across from where last years studio space was. (Our waitress even recognized Tim, it was crazy) The rest of the group caught up with us there and we said goodbye to Matt so he could go home to his family. Then we went to get gelato! OH MY GOODNESS IT WAS AMAZING! I got the Tiramisu flavor and Crema flavor. I was quite happy with it.

So as for walking around and looking at some of the sights, the only think I could think of is that pictures do NOT capture the enormity of everything. Most of the photographs are taken from a few floors up, so they capture the whole building. They are so huge that I couldn’t see the top floors of them. There is a statue on the top of the church in a piazza near by, and I don’t even know what it is, I just saw pieces of it. AND THE PANTHEON…..oh my goodness that thing is larger than life. We didn’t get to go inside it tonight because it was to late but I can’t wait to see the grandness of the inside. I know from my history classes that the outside is very unassuming, but that the inside will take your breath away.

Off to Rome

Goodbye everyone. I love you and will see you at the end of the summer!

Leaving

I leave in 2 days! CRAZY

There is so much going through my mind of things I have to do before I leave and things I am looking forward to that I can’t focus on any one thing. There isn’t much I have to do to prep to leave anymore. Mom had me working so hard that I got my bags all packed around noon today. (So uncharacteristic for me)

I have to get ready to live next door to the Pantheon, in an apartment with 6 guys, 5 girls, and only 2 bathrooms. (Surprisingly this is only 3 people less than the max amount of people I have lived and shared two bathrooms with in my old apartment.)

I have to get ready to walk by ancient ruins of one of the greatest cities in the world on a daily basis (and not take 500 pictures of the same thing from the same place every time I pass).

I have to get ready to have the time of my life! To take in everything I can while I have the chance. Wish me luck!