Well, I'll start with Pisa...

[Feb 8-9]

Clearly you should not be expecting much from me when it comes to this blog. Keeping up with it is not much of a priority, I'm not even really sure why though!

Anyways, a couple weekends ago my roommates and I went to PISA!! It was a wonderful weekend. We only spent one night there which was more than enough for such a small town. Here's a quick run-down on what we did, with pictures, and not to much writing...

We saw the tower:

It was very cool! We also made sure to look as touristy as we could and took every ridiculous "leaning tower" picture we could... here are some of my favorites! :)

<--|I was just glad I got to feel tall for once in this one ;)

Me kicking the tower over!

I would have liked it a little better if I had been standing closer to the camera, that way I could have kicked higher on the tower. But really, it took us an astoundingly long time to discuss and figure out how to best frame and take these pictures.

In the end though, I figured out how to take a picture so it looked like this!! Ha, I am pretty happy at how this one turned out!

We also got to walk around at night and I got some pretty decent night shots of this beautiful area!

Currently the Background on my Computer

My roommate Jesica!

My roommate Victoria!

Me!

The next day we went to the Tower again, and then went to the Gardens that are in Pisa. I can see that it would be BEAUTIFUL in summer, but alas, we were there in Winter so the colors were a little drained... Here are some doctored up pics though, I used the "color saturation" tool on my computer:

There was this little park area, and they had mini trampolines!! 

I just loved how this little sitting area looked!
(I did enrich the color a little though!)

By the end of our stay, we were exhausted. And it started sleeting a little bit so we waited in the train station for a little while before we headed back to Rome:

Ciao!

Margaret

Sunday...

Well anyways, I will now tell you about my Sunday, in a rather short post.

First, I tried to go to a Church that I found online (St. Andrews if you want to look it up mom!) It looked really good, and it is somehow tied to the Scottish so it reminded me of my pastor from school too! Unfortunately, I couldn't figure out how to get there! I looked it up again, and I think I have a better idea of where it is... although the Google maps street view of their address is not what their picture online looks like so we'll see!... I will try again this Sunday!

After that, I got home and I was tired of just being home all the time, so Sunday I wanted to go and see a castle in Bracciano which is only about an hour train ride away. We haven't really done all that much since getting here... Friday was the museum, Saturday I stayed home feeling rather homesick, and sleepy, and doing a little work... so TO THE CASTLE!!

Il Castello Odescalchi di Bracciano is where we went. It translates to "the Odescalchi castle in Bracciano" but I'm not sure what Odescalchi means (if anything). This is the castle where Tome Cruise married someone or other who he's now divorced (as you can tell I don't care much--but say castle and I'll want to see it!). It IS beautiful though! It's located on a hill overlooking this lake:

Bellissimo!

And the castle looks a little like:

Well, it's a little far away, but you get the idea... Here's another:

We were going to go INSIDE and get a tour of this spectacular thing, however, it was closed. Why? Who knows! But they weren't opening it up again until THIS Sunday. So, we can only assume it was closed for some fancy event... and we'll have to try again later.

Meanwhile, I took a few pretty cool shots of it from the outside, and we ate some lunch and looked around the little town.

It was funny because there were kids running around spraying silly string (and spray paint also I believe) at each other. We assumed it was part of their Carnivale celebration for that weekend.
Carnivale is biggest in Venice, where masks are worn and everyone dresses up and it is a HUGE deal, supposedly fantastic but we didn't get the chance to go unfortunately! But other places have little celebrations as well, and we assume that's what this was part of, we saw two little girls in fancy costume-like dresses :)

We also tried a lot of dessert at lunch. haha sometimes it's hard to resist yummy pastries:

That little one in the middle? SOAKED in some sort of alcohol. It was pretty good, but a little strong, and more than I expected (especially because I can't speak Italian so I was surprised to find alcohol in it at all!).

Anyways, Pisa tomorrow!
I'll try and post again by Wednesday on Pisa, I have a PowerPoint to make for class on Tuesday or I'd promise to write sooner!


Talk to you soon!

Weekends are Wonderful.

Alright, now that you understand my classes, you can figure out that during the week it's usually pretty calm. No crazy adventures, not many new discoveries, just hard work and everyday life..

But the WEEKENDS... well there's something different.

Friday:

We went to Musei Capitolini!

Absolutely one of my major reasons for loving Rome so much is the art! It's absolutely incredible, and it was SO much fun getting to see the (mostly) marble sculptures in this museum.

The museum is itself two different buildings across a courtyard from each other which are connected by and underground passage way.

So there is far FAR too much art to share in a blog post, and unfortunately my memory is terrible... but here are a few pictures of things I loved, and can remember some about!

This GIANT head, is a piece of a broken statue of Constantine. There was also his foot, bicep, knee cap, and other parts that were left from this statue. When you are standing next to them you can see how enormous this statue must have been...

Here is his foot:

THIS is Bernini's statue of Medusa:

This statue was extremely interesting to me, because of what it is actually depicting.
Medusa is the woman from the myth with snakes as hair...Here is her story:

Medusa was once an ordinary woman, who was VERY beautiful. Her hair especially was spectacularly gorgeous. Beautiful, and vain. Medusa KNEW how beautiful she was. Medusa was so vain, she constantly admired herself, and commented on how beautiful she was. One day this vain woman dared say that her hair was even more beautiful than the goddess Athena. When Athena heard this, she was furious, and decided to teach this Medusa a lesson. Athena turned Medusa into a monster, and her hair turned into snakes upon hear head.
Along with this curse, Medusa was given eternal life, destined to live out her misery as a monster until the day someone (eventually Perseus) beheaded her.*

Cool story right? Well, this statue here is the very  MOMENT where Medusa's hair is being transformed. You can see the agony on her face as she realizes what is happening, a beautiful ordinary woman (though perhaps she was more vain than the ordinary woman) watching in a glass as she is changed into a monster and she can do nothing about it.

In this slightly closer shot you can see how we know it is the moment of her transformation.
Though the top of her head has mostly transformed already, you can still see her ordinary hair, just beginning to morph into live snakes, by her left cheek.



Anyway, I just loved this story, and I thought the art was beautiful.

    * There are other versions of this story as well,

but this is the one that our guide told us.

NOW, this next statue I will share was also a big interest to me, mostly because I love the movie Gladiator!

This is a statue of Commodus. Yes, this is how the real Emperor Commodus wished to be portrayed in art, for everyone to see and remember:

Actually, the movie (Gladiator) was apparently fairly accurate in its portrayal of his character (though his actions weren't quite accurate: he did NOT kill his father, and actually reigned about 12 years, not 3 or 4 like the movie makes it seem like).

Well, like I said, they got his character right.
This sculpture is very meaningful, and shows a lot about his true character...

The lion head he is wearing, and the three apples(?) he is holding, along with the club are common in statues of Hercules. In other words, Commodus wished to be portrayed as a new Hercules (who, if you don't know the story at all, became a God after triumphing over 12 trials.)

The ball at the very base of the statue (I'll show it below) is also very significant and tells a lot about how Commodus saw himself...

This sphere has a band going around it (you can see it a little, but not too clearly) and in the band are various constellation signs. Thus, we can deduct that the sphere is a representation of the universe. Clearly Commodus wanted to be in charge.

So now, we have an accurate representation of the wanna-be "god-man" Commodus.*

*There are more symbols in this statue, but I don't exactly

remember what they are, and I'm sure

you get the point by now. ;)

And of course, I can't leave out Marcus Aurelius:

 This statue is made of bronze, but when the restoration workers were cleaning it up, they discovered that it had at one time been gilded, showing that this was even more precious than it had previously been thought to be.

Surprisingly though, it was only by a (rather fortunate  mistake that this statue was preserved at all. After Rome had become largely Catholic, many secular things were not preserved. This statue survived because it was originally thought to be Constantine (who was praised for making . However, it is now known that Constantine was never depicted with a beard (remember the giant head in the beginning-- no facial hair). Marcus Aurelius however, DID have a beard.

 Well, I guess I'll stop here, there are so many more cool art things to share, and I still have to tell you about my Friday, but that can wait until tomorrow :)


Talk to you later!

It's been a while...

Alright Mom, I get the hint, I had better start writing ;)

Rome is great! I'm going into my third week here, and my second week of classes.

I won't will talk about class much, it's really no different than home. That is due to the fact that my university is accredited in the U.S. It's not an Italian school, but a branch of a U.S. based school. It is really tiny, but I love it. It reminds me of Grove City which makes the transition really easy, except the professors all seem to REALLY enjoy their jobs. As my business law prof. explained, most of the professors in the business department have already made money, and are only teaching in Rome now because they ENJOY it (he wasn't sure if they were any good though, haha).

Now, I don't know how accurate his comment was (as I do not personally have access to my professors financial situations...) but I will gladly take his word for it. It is incredibly easy to tell that all of my professors love their jobs. Each one is particularly enthusiastic about their jobs, non of my classes leave me sleeping. And don't get me wrong, it's not the class... I'm taking Business Law, Macroeconomics, and Principles of Marketing... it is definitely the professors!

However, since it is not much different from Grove City, it does mean that I have to WORK this semester. There will be no slacking off in Europe for me! Which, in a way is severely disappointing, but in another it is very good. After this semester I will need to (hopefully) work at an internship, and then I'll be moving in to SENIOR year, it will be good not to slow down on academics while I'm here. I'll just need to get better about budgeting my time and planning ahead :)


Anyways, I promise the boring "school stuff" is over now... I'll post on my weekend next :