School has started!

Trip Start Mar 22, 2008

Trip End Jun 23, 2008

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Flag of Italy Rome, Italy
Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Classes have begun and I am realizing that I will likely be a bit busier than I anticipated. Again, it is partially due to the fact that everything takes longer here and the days just run out. So far I have only been through one class period for each of my classes: Design Studio, History of Rome/Drawing, and Italian. The history and drawing class is combined and is conducted as on-site tours in and around the city. Today we walked to Villa Farnesina in the Trestevere neighborhood. Trestevere literally means "across the river" so it's one of those "other side" kind of neighborhoods (or at least it was at one point). It was originally the working class or blue-collar neighborhood of Rome, so most of the buildings are a bit less grand, smaller in scale, and generally more simple. It seems pretty lively at this point but is definitely different from the neighborhood where I live.

For my studio class, I am to select a site somewhere in the city and decide what I want to design in it

garbage in the river....

. I have chosen a building just around the corner from my apartment; it dates back to 1255 according a waiter at the restaurant which it currently houses. I'll be designing a jewelry shop so (poor me) I have to walk around the city and check out jewelry shops tomorrow. My design or concept must relate in some way to a god, myth, or saint. I have chosen Vulcan, who is the god of fire and blacksmith to the gods.

We have a guy named Paolo teaching us Italian. I've already taken a little bit prior to coming here, so it has been review so far. I really prefer to be able to communicate at least a little in the native language here, but it is interesting that even when you start an interaction in Italian, many times they answer in English. At first we were slightly offended, like "wow, is my Italian really THAT bad??" but apparently many of the Romans like to practice their English and they want to show off a bit that they can speak English. I'll just assume this is the case!

OK, enough about school. I'm sure it's boring but it's all I've got right now!

I'm trying to refrain from ending any of these entries with "ciao" because it's so annoying when Americans do this. I did learn a bit of interesting trivia about the origins of the word "ciao" today; it comes from the ancient Venetian word "schiavo" which means slave. So saying "ciao" literally means "I am your slave." So now you can think twice before throwing it around like some kind of fashionable word!

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Trestevere neighborhood	how can you not love this?	view from park in Trestevere	site for my jewelry shop 1
site for my jewelry shop 2	site for my jewelry shop 3