Week 3 of Classes

I have a lot of updating for you! This week has been full of classes, drawing, and battling the internet connection in my apartment! It is working now (finally) so I can finally let you know what I’ve been up to.

This week we focused on sketching space and the movement of people. On Monday, we were supposed to draw at the Pantheon, but it was raining and FREEZING cold, so we went back to the studio to draw indoors… it seemed so boring after two weeks of drawing out in the city! On Tuesday, we went to Trajan’s market, the ancient shopping area of Rome, to sketch scenes of movement through space. The space inside the museum is not heated, so it was pretty cold and a little miserable there too, but it was fun to draw architecture finally!

Then, on Wednesday, my modern design class took a trip to the Ara Pacis Museum (one of the only modern buildings in the entire city of Rome) to see the “Designo” exhibit. It was an exhibit full of designs that have won the Golden Compass Award throughout the years. It was so much fun to see the huge array of things that need to be designed, and the things that we use everyday without ever realizing that someone designed it to be that way! Some of my favorites: The spiral noodle, which was designed to be “al dente” (the outside of the spiral gets soft and the core holds it all together and stays crunchier! Brilliant!). I also liked the espresso machine that directs steam from boiling water through coffee and into an upper chamber. There were also cars, lamps, shoes, and furniture, among a lot of other things. I want to design something awesome like one of these things someday!


Espresso maker that won a design award in 2004


A wall full of patents

After the exhibit, I headed over to the train station to sketch people moving through space. Then, on Thursday, my drawing class went to Campo di Fiori (a square that holds markets during the day and restaurants/bars at night) to continue drawing people in space. At the market, there was a stand selling dried fruit and the man kept giving me different kinds of fruit to try. My favorite was actually a dehydrated tomato! I was so surprised since I hate fresh tomatoes! Mom, when I get home we should dehydrate some tomatoes together!


My class's drawings at Campo di Fiori

Then, today I went on a history walk with my history teacher. We learned about the Jewish Ghetto area of Rome and went to the Crypta Balbi Museum, which houses so many artifacts of ancient Rome within the Jewish Ghetto. There was even pottery with the paint still on it!

Crypta Balbi Museum

So far, Rome is great! I love living right in the city, there are always so many things to do!

Weekend in Florence

This weekend I went to Florence and it was great! It was a lot different than I expected, but fun nonetheless. We left Rome early in the morning to catch a bus to the train station and then a train to Florence. The trains had little rooms in them with seats facing each other, just like in Harry Potter! We arrived in Florence in the afternoon and checked into our hostel. I was a little creeped out by the hostel situation at first, but it turned out to be ok. We arrived at a building and found the name of the Hostel Veronique on a doorbell. We rang it and a lady told us to come in and go up to the top floor. We got in the building and started going up the stairs in complete darkness—we couldn’t find the lights anywhere. Once we made it to the second floor, a lady came into the hallway to turn the lights on for us and led us to the fourth floor. We entered a room where a man took our money (and put it into his own wallet!) and showed us our room. It was pretty cute, but we were all worried that we were going to get scabies from the blankets!


Our hostel room

After putting our stuff away we headed out into Florence. The first thing we did was climb Brunelleschi’s Duomo, the dome that he designed before building the one at St. Peters. 463 steps later, we were at the top of the dome looking out at the beautiful view of Florence below. The weather was perfect—blue skies and sun, which made the pictures great and standing outside bearable. After taking numerous pictures, we headed back down to look at the church that it was attached to, which was a beautiful gothic style church with vaulted ceilings and arches everywhere.


The outside of the Duomo


The beautiful view!


Another...


Me at the top!


After the Duomo we headed through the leather markets to take a look at the merchandise, looked at a few churches that we studied in school a few years ago, and went to see the Ponte Vecchio, a bridge with houses built into the sides. It is seriously the coolest/cutest bridge I have ever seen. The houses have been converted into really expensive jewelry shops with the prettiest jewelry ever! After wandering around we went to dinner at MamMaMia! I had the best gnocchi with cheese sauce that I’ve ever had and the waitress even gave us free champagne with dinner! After dinner we went to a little gelato shop and got ripped off by some crabby ladies (8 euro for a gelato when she told us that it was only 3.75!!!) Then we hung out at a pub for a while before heading to bed.

Ponte Vecchio


Ponte Vecchio again!


Sunday was freezing cold! We woke up early to get the most out of Florence before we had to leave, but most places didn’t even open until noon! (Leah, you should move to Florence! Haha) We shopped a lot and climbed a hill to the top of Florence where the Boboli gardens are. We spent a lot of time in and out of stores just so that we could warm up! Then we headed back to the train station to catch a 6:00 train back to Rome. It’s really weird how good it felt to come back to Rome… I am already starting to feel comfortable here!


Look at how steep the hill was that we climbed!

Ardeatine Caves

I have just a quick update for you this time… Yesterday I had my drawing class and we went to the Ardeatine Caves to draw earth. This was by far my favorite site so far. It was out in the Catacombs and it is a site with a terrible history, but a beautiful monument. On this site over 300 Italians were massacred during WWII; some were Jews, some were prisoners, and some were just plain old citizens that the Nazis picked up off the streets one day. The massacre took place because a small group of Italian citizens set off bombs on German soldiers who were walking by on day. Hitler was so upset about this that he ordered 10 Italians to be killed for every one German that was killed by the bomb. He wanted it done by a certain night and since the Nazis couldn’t find enough prisoners, they brought with Jews and random citizens to make sure that they had enough people for the massacre. They took them out to the site and they were all killed inside the cave and they set off explosives afterwards to hide the site. It was discovered later and the victims were all properly buried in a memorial right by the cave. It was really amazing to see a Holocaust site in Europe, because it is evident how much the war still affects a large part of the population here. There were still so many fresh flowers by the graves even though it seems like the event took place a long time ago.


Inside the Memorial

Today, I had my Roman history walking tour and our teacher took us all over the city for 3.5 hours. She took us to the Pantheon and a bunch of columns and the Church of Santa Maria, which was my favorite. It is one of very few gothic churches in Rome and it is absolutely beautiful.


Inside dome of the Pantheon


Church of Santa Maria

I am going to Florence tomorrow with some people in my class, I will let you know about it when I get back!

Week 2 of Classes

I’m halfway through the second week of classes in Rome and things are starting to speed up! This week we are working on drawing the four elements (water, air, fire, and earth) and we go out walking to various sites in Rome each day to draw for 3 hours. On Monday, my class focused on water and we went around to various fountains throughout Rome to draw water at different speeds. Look at the one below—It was used in the ancient baths of Caracalla and it is actually shaped like a bathtub! At the end of class, we climbed up a huge hill that looked over the city of Rome, and it was beautiful.


The bathtub fountain!


View from the top of the hill

On Tuesday, we focused on drawing air. We did this by analyzing the ways in which buildings curve and how the curves add to a person’s sense of the air within the site. We went to the Palazzo de Quattro Fontaines, which is an intersection with fountains at each of the four corners. It was busy and cold and wet and I was having a pretty difficult time. But then, we went inside the beautiful church of St. Charles where I was able to bounce back and I got pretty into my drawings. It was really fun. Unfortunately, my camera ran out of batteries, so I have no pictures of the church, but if I go back there I will take some pictures for you, it is absolutely gorgeous.

Today, we had our Modern Art and Architecture class and they walked us all over the city. We talked about the history of Rome and how the buildings changed according to who held the power within the city (first it was emperors, then popes, and then kings). They showed us a lot of buildings and explained how they transformed over time. We also went to a museum with a very modern addition (rare in Rome), it is kind of controversial to put modern architecture in such a historical city, but I personally liked it. After seeing the modern addition, we went inside the old part and saw the modern art of Calder. Then, after our lunch break, my drawing class went to focus on drawing fire. To do this we focused on the ephemeral aspect of architecture and how some things are only designed to last for a short period of time.


An ancient roman building melded with a renaissance building


This is what the streets of Ancient Rome looked like-- this is a shopping street and the holes are the ancient storefronts


The modern addition to the Museum


Our Fire site

I finally took pictures of our studio!


Our studio building from the outside


My Studio!


Our Lecture Hall

A Beautiful Weekend.

This weekend was beautiful. Saturday was so warm that I needed to take my sweatshirt off while walking around for a while! That morning we woke up and walked over to the Baths of Caracalla. We walked around the perimeter of the Baths and up onto a hill overlooking them. While sitting up there I started thinking about how the ancient Romans were able to build such enormous buildings in such a short amount of time without machinery or any of our modern technology. AND how they are still standing after all of these years! The ancient Romans were geniuses. Wow.


The Baths of Caracalla

After admiring the awesome architecture, we explored the area, which was less dense than the rest of Rome—lots of parks and wide streets—it almost looked like the US if you ignored all of the monuments! We found a little market and shopped around for a while and then wandered back to our apartment where we made a late lunch and started showering and getting ready.

Then we went to the cutest restaurant in the world. It was in the alleyway of an alleyway and really hard to find. Luckily we went with a girl who had been there the night before and knew where she was going. When we made it to the restaurant, we had to walk through the kitchen to get to the dining room. Our waitress was really nice and served me the best lasagna that I have ever tasted! Then, someone from the kitchen came and asked to speak out back with someone from our table. We all thought it was a little weird… but he came back with the check and the guy told him that whenever we go to the restaurant we will get 10% off of our bill! They must have been really happy to have tourists in the restaurant! Then it got even cuter. When we were getting up to leave, the man from the back stood with our waitress and they shook our hands and said goodbye as we walked out the door. It was the cutest place I have ever been to, and I plan to go back many, many times!

This morning I went to get my first Italian breakfast—a capuchinno and a croissant with nutella—with my roommates at a little café near our apartment. Then we went to the largest market in Rome where we were overwhelmed by deals! There were a ton of things to buy there and even though we stayed for three hours we didn’t even make it halfway through the market. We decided that it will be our new Sunday morning tradition since the market is only open Sunday mornings until 2. I can’t wait to go back there!

After the market we came back to the apartment to work on our drawing assignments and hang out since our feet are pretty sore from the nonstop walking that we have been doing the past 10 days.

The First Week of Classes

It’s officially the weekend! I just completed my first week of classes in Rome and it was great. Our school is about a 5 minute walk from our apartment, we just go across a bridge and through a few blocks to reach the “Palazzo delle Cinque Scole”. The school itself is in a historic building with a large marble staircase, beautiful frescoes on the walls, and cute windows with shutters! (I haven’t taken pictures yet, but I will post them once I do!)

As far as classes go, I think that the semester will be pretty time consuming but really fun. We are starting the semester with an Italian language class, a drawing class, a class about modern art and architecture in Rome, and a Roman history class. We don’t start studio until almost spring break! My two favorite classes are going to be my drawing class and the Roman history class. For drawing, we just did basic learning things this week, but next week we are going to start walking around to different sites in the city to draw the four elements (fire, water, earth, and air). Basically, we get to draw for four hours every day, it doesn’t get much better than that! :)

I had my history class today and it was amazing. We walked around to different sites in Rome (The Roman Forum, the Palatine hill, and the Colosseum) with our professor. It’s like having our own private tour guide with us!


A view from the outside of the Colosseum


On top of the Palantine Hill in the Roman Forum


The Roman Forum


The inside of the Colosseum


The "Belly Button of Rome" this is where everything is measured from in Rome

Other than that, this week is full of getting acclimated to the city. We figured out how to make the pasta taste good (the pasta sauce over here is just tomato paste I think, so you have to add a bunch of spices to make it taste decent!). We also went out with some of our classmates last night and met other architecture students who are studying abroad here from Northeastern University. We talked about taking the train up to Florence this weekend, but I think we might just end up staying here and going to see Vatican City and some of the other sites that are still on our list.

I will try to keep updating my blog and let you know about my adventures! I should correct my last entry though, my Grandpa pointed out to me that the height of the Pantheon is not the same as the circumference; it is the same as the diameter! Oops!

"Marry me, no money"

Since my last post, I have been getting pretty accustomed to life in Rome. Together, my roommates and I have made it to the grocery store multiple times, the art supply store, and to various monuments without even using a map! I have also learned a lot of lessons for how to survive in Rome...

1. Weigh your fruit before going to the check-out line. I didn't know that I was supposed to do that, and when I got to the checkout the man held up my apples and said, "balance?" a bunch of times. When he realized that I had no idea what he was trying to say he jumped up and said "I'll do it!" and ran over to the fruit aisle to do it for me. oopsie.
2.Don't hand money to people. You have to put it in a dish and they will take it from there. I still don't understand this rule.

Today was one of my favorite days so far. I went with Meagan and Laura (2 of my roommates) to walk around and see the monuments of Rome. We headed towards the Colosseum but before we got there we found the Roman Forum. We couldn't find the entrance right away so we just walked around the perimeter and took pictures. I can't wait to go back and actually walk around inside.


The Roman Forum


By the time we were done admiring the Forum, it was time to meet friends at the Pantheon. We knew the general direction to head in and we made it to the Pantheon without a map and without getting lost! (can you believe it??) The Pantheon was amazing! It is huge and beautiful and made me feel really tiny. I remember learning in one of my history classes that the circumference of the building is equal to the height, and the perfect proportions definitely had a powerful effect in this building. I loved it. Outside of the Pantheon, a man dressed as a Roman warrior offered to take a picture with each of us for one euro each. When we refused he said, "marry me, no money!" So... I'm married now. :)


This was outside of the Pantheon. I thought it was so cute!


From the Pantheon we walked through some very touristy streets and had our first taste of gelato in Italy-- yummmmm. We also went to McDonalds (yes, they have a McDonalds in Rome) to see if the rumor is true that Coke tastes different in Europe. It's false. It tasted exactly the same as the Coke in the US! We also went to see the Trevi fountain, which was beautiful. We shopped for a while and then headed back to our apartment to make some dinner and get ready for classes to start tomorrow.

Yummy gelato!



Trevi Fountain



This is the view from a bridge right near our apartment. It is what I will be seeing everyday when I walk to class!

I’m in Rome!!

Yesterday was a long day of travel, unpacking, and getting situated, but everything went smoothly. This was not the case for almost half of our group, who got stuck in the snowstorms in Iowa or England!

We arrived in Rome around noon and took a cab to our apartment. After finding the housing office (not an easy task!) we moved in. It’s HUGE! There are nine girls and we all share a spacious living room, dining room, and kitchen. In addition, three of us who sleep in the same room have our own sleeping room, dressing room and bathroom. There is also an attached courtyard with orange trees, old stairways, and an ancient washroom that I want to explore.

After unpacking, we explored the surrounding area in an attempt to find some dinner. We found a cute little restaurant with some really good pizza as well as a lot of shops that I plan on exploring today.

Overall, my first impression of Rome is great! It’s a lot more modern than I thought it would be, with cars everywhere and some modern buildings, but it’s still really charming with cobblestone streets and tiny shops everywhere.