Tuesday 2-23-2010

Today was interesting. We woke up this morning to perhaps the warmest day that we have had in the last two months. The sun was breaking through the clouds the whole day, and the blue skies and rare heat were a nice surprise. We all met up at the Portone at around 12:30 and made our way to the first metro ride of the day. It took us to the outskirts of the city where we met up once again with our friend the Italian-American professor from Cornell. Once we met up with him, we had a very interesting conversation about the gentrification of poorer people in Rome and the architecture that has the ability to tell the stories of so many second-generation immigrants.







After this we continued our tour through the city: seeing a grocery store that was a former factory, an interesting park, and a comfortable wall. Despite all of the movement Natalia still had time to register for classes at the internet point during the tour. As we said goodbye to our gracious tour guide the adventure began. We hopped on a bus and headed for the metro.

We sat on the metro and waited through about thirteen or fourteen stops then got off to be welcomed once again by the bright blue skies and warm arms of the sun. While we soaked up some sun outside the station we waited for where we were going next, only to realize that we had missed the right station by ten stops because we had been given the wrong directions. By this time it was already 4:30 so some of us left while Nick and Guilia went with Julie to the chocolate factory. Because it was such a beautiful day no one was all that mad or upset with missing the chocolate factory because we walked off the bus to a scenic scene of the sun shining down on the Circio Maximo. Today like so many others, was an adventure but we all had a great time and picked up some new facts from our guy with the awesome accent. Pray that the weather stays nice. Catch up with you soon.