GL 350; week quarto

                                                                        Roma, the beautiful

            Oh, Lions, tigers, and bears, a day at the zoo that is filled with animals and a place that is my favorite to go to. So I was able to go to the Roma zoo in the Borghese gardens. The zoo was small but fun either way, I saw a lot of monkeys, there was probably over forty in this one exhibit. I felt like a child again going to the zoo, getting excited over all of the animals. Also written in my agenda for that weekend was seeing the new James Bond movie, Skyfall and, it was better than I thought because I have never seen a Bond movie before. Then on that Sunday we went to Santa Susanna, the American Catholic Church in Rome, for mass. So as the week began, we were given our schedule that included Piazza della Rotonda and Navona and Aventine Hill.

            On the first for the week were Piazza della Rotonda and Piazza Novona. Now, to get to Pazza della Rotonda we had to ride good old bus 64, not as terrible as our first experience on it. The bus was worse the very first time because none of us had been in a situation like that before and we were all still jet lagged, in my opinion. In the Rotonda, there were no cars in the square, well big oval but there were a ton of street artists. We saw the four rivers fountain in the piazza, very cool and the detail on the fountain was amazing. I was most impressed by the lion and alligator at the bottom and the fact that people back then knew how to create fountains like that back in the day. We went into this church well, we went into several churches that day and each one just as beautiful as the next. We also saw and went into the Pantheon, an amazing structure with a hole in the ceiling but the coolest part is that it has catholic saints inside and Roman Gods as well, a common display of different religions. The only part of the tour that was a little disappointing was the fact that subway was closed for lunch when we went but it was funny and interesting when the hostess to the restaurant next door was telling us that they bought out subway and should eat at his place, which we did not.

            Then, on the agenda for the next day was Aventine Hill. We got off at the metro station of Circo Massimo and the first thing we saw was the Circo Massimo, where the first chariot races were held in Rome. Our wonderful professor, enlightened me with a little fact about these chariot races, the races went counterclockwise and that is the reason why the Nascar races now a day’s goes counterclockwise! Then we went to this door or structure at this church and the old folk tale about it is that if you tell a lie when you stick your hand in the mouth of the figure, it bits your hand off and, I told a lie, my hand is still attached. We walked a lot on this tour but I enjoyed it the city was beautiful. We had class on top of this hill and overlooking a balcony, you could see a panoramic view of Rome and Saint Peters basilica off in the distance, beautiful, just beautiful.

            So in the readings this week, it was all about “The Smiles of Rome”, we had two stories to read and one especially caught my attention. The first reading, well it was about this author who lived in Rome and always lived in some kind of historic apartment, a semi- boring story. Now, the second story was about this author, Alice Steinbach, who visited the city and had a frightful experience. It all started when she went for a coffee at cafe Greco in Piazza de Spania. While she was drinking her expresso, she noticed this man in a coat at the bar, she did not think much of it until she left and figured out she was being followed. She kept walking and then faster because she noticed more men and knew that she was in trouble, more specifically mugged. She ran and screamed, luckily getting away. This story caught my attention because the other week in Rome I went off by myself to explore. My plan was to go back to the Jewish ghetto and get my brother a star of David. I was not scared or nervous at all, achually I was excited because I was free to be on my own schedule and do what I wanted to do, I got lost in Rome and was able to find my way around. I accomplished a lot that day and did not have any issues besides the flats I wore not being water proof. After reading that story, I was a little sick to my stomach, thinking “oh my, what if something like that happened to me”, but it did not so no worries.

            As the week was winding down, we were all prepping for our trip to Florence. I was over ecstatic to be riding a high speed train, hitting over 230 kmh. It was again a good week in Rome, no issues with anything and things running semi-smoothly. The only thing bad that happened this week was my camera dying on me, twice. Why? Because I forget to charge it, so maybe I will learn from my mistake and remember to charge it. Actually, I will still forget to charge it and forgetting to charge it will happen again, no thinking positive on that one.