Tuesday, January 12

I woke up to my roommate Derek saying, "Hey uh guys . . . you might want to get up class starts in fifteen minutes." For about 2 seconds I panicked thinking "Oh man I'm gonna be so late even my closest class is like fifteen minutes away." Then it hit me. I'm not in Seattle anymore and my classroom is less than a minute away. I relaxed and took a few more leisurely minutes in bed before throwing on some jeans and a long sleeve t and strolling to class, stopping long enough to buy a banana at the market right outside my door in Campo de' Fiori. I arrived right on time for Day 1 of our Italian class, taught by the lovely and vivacious Professora Federica Bianchi. She began by asking about our preexisting skill with Italian which was comparable to Brad Pitt's "extensive" knowledge in Inglorious Basterds. The next two hours seemed to fly by as we focused on greetings and introductions, numbers, and addresses and by the end I was feeling downright Italian already.

After class was dismissed we had 3 hours till we had to return to the Rome Center for the first day of another class, Art History. I took advantage of the time to run a few errands, checking out a camcorder for the video blog that will be gracing this page soon as well as trying out my shiny, new Italian words at the Campo as I picked up a few ingredients for lunch. I made French toast bedecked with strawberries. Pleasantly full I spent the next hour catching up on some of the prescribed reading for my upcoming class that I had here-to-fore neglected.

The group slowly assembled at the portone, italian for door, meandering in in cliques of varying sizes returning from whatever adventures they had been on in between classes. Once fully assembled Lisa wasted no time in leading us through the twisting streets of Rome to Capitaline Hill. There, as we sat nearly in the shadow of the towering equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, we learned of Romulus and Remus and Aeneas the protagonists of the myths surrounding the formation of Rome. With the metaphorical stage set we entered the Capitaline Museum. While everything in the museum was incredible the highlights include: fragments of a colossal statue of Emperor Constantine, some of the oldest bronze statues in world, in particular one depicting Romulus and Remus nursing from a she-wolf, the original foundations of the Temple of Jupiter and an extensive collection of busts. My personal favorite was an eloquent fountain featuring the river god of the Tiber. I could go on and on but in the interest of succinctness I will leave it at that. I'll include some photographs from the museum soon which provide better descriptions than I am capable of. Once class was dismissed we were free to wander the museum which I took full advantage all the while still a bit dazed that this was the format my class would be in for the next few weeks. I cannot emphasize enough how incredible it is, Rome is our classroom.

Arrivederci,
Tim Persson

Beautiful view of the remains of the Roman Forum