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.
