The past few days a Roma

Ok, so I can't find my little cord thing for my camera so I can't upload pictures. I know it's somewhere in my room... I will find it soon. But in the meantime, I will catch you up on what I've been doing.
On Friday we had classes and then we went to the catacombs of St Sebastian. That was pretty cool, but I have seen the replicas in DC so many times that it didn't seem new to me. It was hard to grasp the fact that I was in the real place, where there were actually martyrs buried, and where Christians had hidden and prayed almost two thousand years ago. There are seven miles of tunnels and three levels. Above the tunnels Constantine built and church and put St Sebastian in it, and so it is today. The whole thing is on the old Via Appia, where so many famous people in history and religion have walked. That evening the school took us all out to eat at a ristorante on lake Albano. The food was delicious, lots of antipasta and then pizza and dessert. After that about 30 or 35 of us went to Saints and Sinners and missed the bus back (actually the bus was just really really late, as it turned out) and we all had to walk 4k back to campus. Oh well.
Saturday was the scavenger hunt. We were broken up into teams, the school helped us take the bus and metro into Roma, we all met up in the Piazza del Populo, and we set off in search of things like a pigeon, a nun, people kissing, and the house of Keats and Shelly, to name a few. Every picture had to include at least six members of the group and a sign that said "we were here" but in Italian. If we got 15 we got metro and bus tickets, if we got 25 we got the tickets and cap bar cards, and if we won we got a free dinner. We definitely did not win, but we got about 25. They haven't yet told us who got what, so we'll see.
After the scavenger hunt, Alexandra and I walked over to San Pietro and sat outside of a bar/caffe thing, wrote postcards, ate peanuts, and thought about how cool it was that we could see the beautiful dome of St Peters over the cars and buses and graffitied walls.
We made it back to campus in time to change into nicer clothes and go to the wine tasting at 8:00. I have to say, I've never seen my classmates looking so classy as we did all standing around with our wine and cheese in our nice clothes. The meal and wine were great. Are you seeing a theme here? Italy has really good food. The wine tasting, that Monseigneur put on for us btw, lasted two or three hours and included antipasta, three kinds of pasta for the main course, two kinds of tarts for dessert, and four different wines. We had one sparkling, one other white, and two reds. The white was my favorite, but we were all pretty split on which was the best. Let is suffice to say that they were all very good and far more expensive than I am able to afford.
Sunday was a day of rest for me and Alex. We read Phaedo, went to the grocery store, went to dinner, and then read Oedipus Rex with the class.
Today we had three ninety minute classes back to back. That was tough, but the classes were good. Alexandra and I went into the city with Spencer and Andy. We walked around and ended up losing track of/ditching/being ditched by the boys. We wandered, ran across the Trevi fountain, and then ended up somewhere... we don't really know where. On the way we found a really nice old bookstore which was lovely. We had dinner at a little place in some piazza somewhere and sat outside. It was nice. We missed out Monday night meeting, though, which was not very good, but these things happen.

Post Script, the above is what I wrote last night before the internet decided it did not like me anymore. Now it is Tuesday morning, I don't have class til 9:45 and I am going to do a little reading.

Campus and Albano

So the last couple days have been spent mostly on campus. Yesterday we had all five of our classes back to back in the Aula Magna (our big classroom). It was tiring. After classes Alex and I went to DEM once again. Later in the afternoon we had a meeting about student life. I wasn't feeling well and it seemed to go on forever. We spent the evening hanging out on campus. Spencer and I watched Kill Bill. It was a very uneventful evening.
Today we didn't have classes until the afternoon. This morning we had room inventory and then Alexandra and I have to go do permisso at the post office. Permisso is getting all checked in with immigration. We opted not to take the ride back to campus and wandered around Albano after we finished at the post office. There was an open-air market thing where we found an alarm clock, a thing with shelves to hang in the closet, and a laundry hamper. We found our bus stop after asking a very nice Romanian lady who took us to it and explained how to find the right bus. After we were sure we knew how to get home we went to a bar by the bus stop for lunch. In Italy bars are not places where you go to drink in the evenings, they sell food and other things. Sometimes they have convenience store type things, like packaged snacks and bottled soda and beer. A lot also have espresso. A few have lottery tickets. They are all quite random. I had pizza (which they fold together like a sandwhich) and Alex had some sort of breaded/fried fish and veggie pastry....
We must now go to dinner. They we are off to Saints and Sinners tonight.... Tomorrow we are going to the catacombs.

second day....

After six hours of sleep I woke up at 4:30am and couldn't get back to sleep, possibly because it was so cold. I ended up in the cap bar where there is a free phone and called Katie back on the Irving campus; it was 11:30pm there.
After a quick breakfast, we left for Roma at 6:30. We went to St. Peter's and had Mass before there were really many people around. No one had ever told me how mind-blowing of an experience St Peter's is. My classmates and I were overwhelmed. I, am I'm fairly certain many of my friends, wept during that Mass. It was too incredible to be sitting in such a huge, beautiful cathedral, on the site of our first pope's crucifixion, with so many relics of so many saints, and knowing that as incredible as that all is, it was and is all for the glory of God, who is so much greater than all that beauty and all that history. I'm not sure I have ever been that overwhelmed just by being somewhere ever in my life.
Seeing Rome was also fantastic. After Mass and seeing St Peter's, we broke up into a few small groups (smaller than our 110ish person class) and toured the city a bit. We saw the pantheon, the forum, a few piazzas, all of which had history that I don't really remember right now. We got espresso and gelato, both of which were lovely, and were all back on the bus to campus by 2pm to have lunch.
In the afternoon we had a nap, and then a meeting about classes and such. After dinner there was an improtu Cheap Wine Tasting in the dorm lounge. We had about 10 or 15 bottles of wine, ranging from 1 to 3 euros each. We tasted them and rated them from "really, really bad" to "pretty OK."
After the wine tasting, about 12 or more of us went in search of a pub called Saints and Sinners, or Santi e Peccatori, or something. We lost half of our group when the bus didn't magically show up after 5 minutes. The six of us who stuck it out for ten minutes made it on the bus and to Albano, the town 4km from campus. We went to the pub, had a few drinks, played cards, and then attempted to make it back to campus by the midnight curfew. Somehow Andy and I ended up separated from the others. We waited nicely for the bus, only to see it drive right on past us. At this point I was quite cold and not at all interested in walking home. I was on the verge of tears when Andy led me back to the pub and asked the owner (Evano, I think) to drive us home. This seemed like a huge imposition to me, but he had no problem with it. Apparently this happens a lot with UD students. Evano is just a couple years older than us, and is very nice to UD students. I'm assuming because we tend to spend money at his pub. It turned out that the others had not, as we had assumed, made it back before us. They ended up getting on the wrong bus and having to walk for a while. But in the end we all made it back safely.
I am not sure I have ever had such a full day before. It is now 1:30am. I should not still be awake. I do not know how I am managing this. I am sorry for typos; I am surprised I can type at all.

Oh, and no pictures from today because my camera was dead. There will be Vatican and Roma pictures another day.

First day in Italy!

I am sitting on a tile floor in room 401 in the dorms on the UD Dui Santi campus in Italy.  It is about 7:45pm here, but about 1:45pm est. I have been awake for about 28 hours. Alexandra and I are trying to keep each other awake until 8:15 when we can go and stuff ourselves full of good Italian food and wine in the mensa and then pass out in our new room. The alarm will go off at 5:30am tomorrow morning so that we can go to early morning Mass at St Peter's. Our room is pretty nice but is lacking in drawers.... We have one bunk-bed (I have the top bunk and Alex has the bottom) and our other roommate Candice has a loft bed, under which are our three closets. We don't have suite mates like most of the rooms for some reason, so it's just the three of us sharing one bathroom, which is fairly large and has two showers and two sinks. The campus is beautiful! I'm far too sleep-deprived to describe it, but the view from our room is fantastic. I will write more when I have had some sleep.

First view of Italy from the plane! It was so beautiful.

this is the out-door wood-oven/pizza kitchen thing.... it's very cool

This is the little seating area above the outdoor kitchen

The walk down from the gate to the buildings on campus.

The vineyard is on the right side of the road

our beds. but sideways.