Living Like the Amish

If you haven't noticed, my daily blogs abruptly ended on the night of Friday, June 10.  At that point in time, our internet crashed leaving my roommates, classmates living a floor above me, and myself in a world without internet access.  We quickly learned how to live without this modern amenity.  However, at 2:00 pm on Sunday, we lost power in our apartment.  This is where all heck broke lose.  I had a load of laundry going when the power went out.  The washing machine locks during a cycle, so for a long time, my clothes were swimming in dirty water.  I finally broke it open later that night and the water spilled all over the floor.  Fun cleaning that up with a small flashlight!  The other concern was the food in the refrigerator.  Now, just so you know, European refrigerators don't keep food as cold as the refrigerators in the U.S.  So you can guess it, in the morning we had a fridge that smelled like S#!T.  We pretty much threw everything out that was perishable.  Anyway, we finally got power and internet back on at 10:00 this morning, only to have it go off again at 11:30.  This time however, we already knew how to restore the power.

Now to the fun stuff, and this week and weekend was full of it.  On Friday, I traveled with my class to the town of Palestrina.  Palestrina is located in the mountains to the East of Rome.  There is an old Roman building that was revealed during a bombing raid by the Allies on Italy during WWII.  We had learned about this place in our landscape history classes in Ames.  It was cool to actually be in the place that I had learned about.  It was crazy getting around in this city though.  Everything was on a vertical hill.  Annie Remmerde, Kyle McMahon, Nick King, and I all decided that it would be a good idea to climb to the top of the mountain when we had an hour of free-time.  Ha!  I about died.  It took us 45 minutes to make it to the top.  Needless to say, my legs were definitely burning at the end of the day!  We ate lunch as a class near the base of the town and we made our way back to Rome.  We got slightly lost when we took the wrong bus, but it was quickly straightened out and we made it back to Rome.

Saturday was probably the highlight of my weekend.  I met up with my friend Shalyn from Iowa State and her friend Nathan at Termini train station in the morning.  We made our way out to see the sights.  On our way to the Coliseum, we ran into a girl from Brazil, Christiane, who was lost and trying to find the Coliseum.  We told her that we were on our way there and to tag along.  In the end, she stayed with us the rest of the day.  She was very intelligent and was very helpful when we needed to talk to an Italian.  She spoke something like 5 languages!  We hit up the Coliseum, the Roman Forum, Trevi Fountain, Piazza Navonna, and many other places.  We met up with some more of Shalyn's friends and ate lunch near the Pantheon.  It was during lunch that it was mentioned that Lady Gaga was performing at a free concert.  Everyone wanted to go, so when we finished lunch that is where we all headed.  We stood at the concert for 4 hours waiting for Gaga to come out.  She finally did and the crowd went nuts!  We were only 100 feet from the stage.  I couldn't believe I was actually there.

Sunday was a very relaxed day.  In the morning I attended Pentecost mass at the Pantheon.  At the end of this mass, they drop rose petals from the Oculus.  It was really neat.  There was a cardinal in attendance even.  In the afternoon, because we had no electricity, my roommates and I decided to go to the beach.  We spent most of the afternoon there and then returned.  I ate an excellent dinner across the street from the Crypt of Bones.  I had lemon sauce veal with a mixed salad with salmon.  One of the people I was eating with bought us a bottle of pretty expensive wine to share.  It was the best red wine I have had since arriving in Italy.  We walked around Rome for a while and then returned to my dark apartment.  Because there was nothing to do, I went to bed.

Monday was a boring day.  We got power back and I spent the rest of the day working on school projects in studio.  Well, I should probably get this posted before the electricity cuts out again.  Until tomorrow, ciao!