The Chronicles of Narnia

Cascata Delle Marmore with our tour guide's hair at the bottom!
Waterfalls...
Me being a Velocaraptor on the bridge
Waterfalls!
Narni
Narni
Narni again..
Me and Heather
Narni from the bus (that's why the picture is not that great when you blow it up, it was taken from the inside of a window)
Same here..
Rocca Albornoz (Castle)? I think?
Alley in Narni
Heather and our DELICIOUS lunch...That pasta was HAND MADE that morning mmmmmm
Me with our delicious lunch!
Heather and I by the Cascata Delle Marmore

Yesterday we went to Narni, which is in a region of Italy known as Umbria. They gave us a little sheet with background information on the area so, I'll type that in here for you!

Umbria: Il Cuore Verde D'Italia
This region, "the green heart of Italy," is known for its medieval hilltop towns, verdant valleys and hearty cuisine. Umbria's history is both turbulent, with factions from these small villages constantly at war, and peaceful, with such figures as St. Francis.

Narni - Pictures of this above
Narni's foundations date to Neolithic times, but the first consistent references to the township can be traced to its Roman origins, when it was called "Narnia." In fact, it is said that C.S. Lewis was inspired by the town, its name, and the local Santa Lucia (Lucy) in his creation of the Chronicles of Narnia.

Cascata Delle Marmore - Pictures of this above
The spectacular Cascata delle Marmore is a waterfall built by the ancient Romans as part of a canal that deviated the Velino river, protecting the town of Rieti from floods. At 514 ft., this cascata is one of the tallest in Europe and is the tallest man made waterfall in the world. Today it is part of a regional park complete with trails and viewpoints.

We also went inside this Church which I believe was called Church of Santa Maria Impensole - it was inside this cave in the mountainside. Apparently it's been used and re-used by tons of different people in different time periods. Some of the rooms were used as torture rooms where Monks kept prisoners. We saw those rooms, which were really cool, and I took a bunch of pictures with my 35mm camera and really fast ISO black and white film (3600 I believe), so they should come out. I'm really excited to drop my film off and see. There was one room that had graffiti all over the walls, which was apparently where the prisoner was kept while he wasn't being tortured, and he scratched graffiti into the walls using his chains, including some on the ceiling! It was really cool. After our visit to the Church we went to another area by the Cascata Delle Marmore and had lunch. We got hand made pasta that had been made that morning, which was ABSOLUTELY amazing...and then we embarked on our trip up to the waterfalls. They were pretty gorgeous, HUGE waterfalls, and as we got closer the umbrellas came out because the spray from the falls got really intense toward the top! After the waterfalls we had an hour to walk around and stuff and then we left to go back home to Roma. It was about a 2 hour bus ride, which is not bad at all. All in all, it was really fun and I'm so glad that we got to experience it!!! :) Enjoy the pictures and everything!!

Trastevere!!

This is where I live and go to school and walk around every day!!

Walk down here to get to school every day
Church in Piazza S. Maria
Via Della Scala I believe...I walk down here to get to school
Gelateria by school
John Cabot University!
Entrance to our apartment with a fun gate that locks behind you!
The place in our apartment building right when you walk in where "Alessandro" sits when he's on shift - he's our doorman, he's really nice!
Viale Di Trastevere - the main road by my apartment
Via di Nievo (I think? I forget) - the road that goes off of Viale Trastevere to get to my little road Via Costanza Baudana Vaccolini!
The tram that takes me everywhere in Trastevere!

SMART CARS!!! EVERYWHERE!!!
La Scala - really great restaurant right by school!
Road to school
Courtyard at school!
Funky windows - crazy Italians...
Piazza S. Maria - walk through this on the way to school
Ok so this isn't Trastevere, it's Piazza Del Poppolo, but it's me and a fountain...
Me looking at lanterns that took me about an hour to find - Lindsay was with me here and she goes "Look at all the lanterns!" and I was like "What? Lanterns? Where? Lanterns?" and then 45 minutes later I found the lanterns...I was looking for like paper bags with candles in them, those types of lanterns by the way...

Giselle - A night at the ballet...

So we went to see Giselle and it was amazing. We got Student tickets for 1/2 off so they ended up being 25 euro! And our seats were in a box on the second floor. We got there really early so that we could try to get the two front seats (there are 6 seats in a box and whoever gets there first gets the two seats in the front of the box and then there are 4 seats behind those but they're not on an incline so sitting there kind of stinks). We get there, run to our box and we made it! We were the first ones there...and actually the only ones with tickets who would ever be there. The show started and we were still the only ones in our box! So fun! After intermission, we came back and there were 2 girls in our box and they just asked if they could sit behind us, I think they didn't have tickets, so we said "of course" and returned to our seats for the 2nd half! The show was amazing and unfortunately we could not take pictures of our box and everything because we didn't bring Heather's camera - she had read on-line before we left that you couldn't bring cameras in so we didn't even bother. Well, anyways, here are a couple pictures of me in Mom's black lace cocktail dress from 1984 or something like that - the perfect little black dress! :) Next up on our agenda is the Opera whenever we can find tickets to that! Enjoy the pictures!

VENEZIA!!! February 16-18, 2007

Beautiful sunset..
View from the Gondola once we got out to bigger water
CRAZY masks...
The streets of Venice...
Heather and I with our masks doing our lion faces
This person was amazing...the costumes were crazy!!
Ok so maybe it was a little busy...
The second night we got our faces painted instead of wearing our masks!
Gondola ride! From left to right: Jamie, Rada, Heather, Lindsey, Me
I wanted this mask sooooo bad!!!!


Ok...so I'm REALLY sorry it's taken me so long to get this updated...Venice was amazing, we stayed at a hotel that was a ways outside of Venice (didn't know that at the time of booking it...) so we took a bus from the airport to the heart of Venice thinking that our hotel was somewhere close to there. We get there and find out that our hotel is actually in Casale Sul Sile, which is like a 20 minute drive from the heart of Venice. We grab a cab and get to the hotel which is very adorable and out in the middle of nowhere...we drop our stuff off, get changed and hop back in the cab to go back to Venice. Mind you...we have been up since 4AM and I had went to bed at 1:30AM...so that's a good 2 and a half hours of sleep - fun times (I did sleep on the hour plane ride and most of the bus ride too so that's good)! So we get back to the heart of Venice and walk around all day. We go on a gondola ride! and thoroughly enjoy ourselves. We had a good night both nights there were concerts out in the main piazza...and here I'll show you some pictures since they take FOREVER to load and writing this is going to take away from picture uploading time!!! So the pictures are above, please enjoy :)

Feb. 4-10, 2007

This past week has been pretty great!!! Let's see...after I updated this on the 4th, I went back to the apartment with Katie and when we got off the tram we almost ran into these 3 guys fighting. We, obviously, took the other way off the platform and then, again obviously, stood across the street and watched haha. It was these 2 guys kicking, punching, and really beating up this other guy. We didn't know what to do, it's at moments like that when I wish I was a guy so I could just go over and break it up - I don't even really know how to call the police here so, I felt pretty helpless. Finally, a couple cars stopped and some guys got out and tried to break up the fight and everytime they'd break them up the one guy getting beat up would go back after the other two guys. After a while they gave up trying to break it up, since cars were backing up behind their stopped cars in the street...We eventually went home and had a nice dinner.

The next night was Monday night and we all went out to good caffe. I didn't really want to go out because my stomach had been bothering me, but they all said it would be pretty low key so I decided to suck it up and go. But then the girl who had been like "i'll come home with you after the caffe while they all go on to other bars" decided she wasn't going to go home after all so i ended up having to go out because i wasnt going to walk home by myself. So then we ended up getting to the bar where they were going and we couldn't get in because our names weren't on the list so I just left with Michelle who was equally annoyed at that point.

Tuesday I had class all day and got to talk to some friends on-line so that was really nice. Wednesday I went and got my monthly bus/tram pass (30 euro!! eew!!) and got headphones/"hearphones" as one of our tour guides kept calling them haha and then met Katie back at the apartment to go out and explore! We went to JCU and worked on the internet for a little while and then took the bus to the photo supply store I needed to go to. I got all my supplies :) and then we had to get to the bookstore for Katie, on the opposite side of town. We really had no idea how to do that, what bus to take, etc. so we just walked around for a little while, found a store that had SOUR CANDY!!!! :) :) :) you can only imagine how excited I was!!! and how bad my teeth hurt...hahaha and then we found a bus that was going the wrong way but was the right bus. So Katie decides that we'll just take that bus back to the bus station and wait for it to turn around hahaha, which is indeed what we did - hey! we had all day! So we take the bus to the bus station, and then back to where we really needed to go. We get off and try to catch another bus that would take us right by the book store. Unfortunately we couldn't find one that was going the right way so we just improvised and took another bus to Piazza Venezia and then walked from there. It was quite an adventure. We just took bus after bus after bus hahaha here's us on the bus responding to the question "how ridiculous do you feel for jumping on bus after bus after bus having no idea where you're really going?"After that we looked around for a while for "going out" tops for Katie and then I took the tram back to JCU to watch "Tre Metri Sopra Il Cielo" with mine and a couple other Italian classes. We have "makeup" days sometimes during the semester, and they're usually on Fridays which is a "bruta" day to have classes, so our teachers decided instead of a makeup class we'd just watch a movie that was really popular here in Italy, with english subtitles. It was actually a pretty good movie - very mushy and romantic, but kind of action-y too!! Kind of like the fast and the furious only with motorcyles...That was pretty much the end of that night, I believe.

Thursday was a busy day since I was in class from 10:30am until 7:15pm, but I really can't complain. I had my first photography class and we went on an outing to Piazza Navona and the Pantheon to take photos, a church where a couple of Caravaggio's paintings are on display and a photo gallery nearby. We actually met the photographer whose pictures were on display at the gallery and he explained a lot of his technique, his thoughts about digital - he loves it! though he doesn't do anything in digital that he could not do with a film camera, it was a really great experience! After that I went home and got some lunch and then headed back for more classes. I got home around 8, took a shower and then went out with Laura, Giuseppe and Davide (2 of the guys we met from Calabria last week when we were out until 7am). They took us to this really cool "lounge" type place with couches and chairs everywhere. We just sat and had a couple of bottles of wine and chatted the whole night. Davide and I made a pact that I would only speak in Italian and he would only speak in English - it was hard, but we did have a dictionary handy and it was a lot of fun! We had a great time laughing and chatting and practicing our second languages!! We got home at about 2am because Laura had to go to Florence the next morning with one of her classes. Giuseppe actually picked her up and drove her to the airport, what a sweetheart!

Friday I got up and walked around Trastevere taking pictures for class next Thursday. It was a rainy day, which you'd think would be not very good for taking pictures, but actually it creates some really interesting light conditions and also reflections in the water on the streets, etc. I almost finished my roll and I decided to go home because it was getting too dark out to take any real good pictures without a tripod. I got home, had some dinner, and went to the gym. I ran for about a half hour and did some weight machines and then walked home in the pouring rain!!! I got home and jumped in the shower and got ready to go out to Art Caffe with Amanda, Michelle, Katie, Kalli and Erin (another girl in my program). We know this guy Alfredo, as a lot of people do, but he actually knows us, so we get into the most exclusive places - it's hilarious! Art Caffe is THE MOST exclusive club in Rome, and we get in no problem while other people wait for hours at the door, solely because we know Alfredo who is a promoter and works for all these exclusive clubs. That's also the reason we got into Joia so quickly on Laura's birthday. Anyways, it was a pretty cool club - they played a lot of American music and a bit of Italian music as well. By the end of the night my feet hurt SO badly, as did Amanda's and Michelle's, so we left and got a couple cabs back to our apartment (Art Caffe is too far away to walk from the last tram stop so we have to take a cab - it's only like 2 euro a piece though so it's not too bad). We got back, I crawled into bed, and went to sleep! (pictures soon, I didn't have my camera so I have to wait for my friends to put them up for me - my battery died again :( so I think I'm just going to go get a new one from the photo store down the street)..

Today is rainy again - booo Italy!!! booooo!...Davide says it will clear up soon and get warm in a month or so, so that's nice to look forward to! I got up, went to the photo shop down the street to drop off my film to be developed for class this Thursday, cleaned, went grocery shopping, and now I'm here at Good Caffe downloading the latest Grey's Anatomy (stop laughing, i'm addicted ok? hahaha) and talking to my friend back home! Tonight Amanda, Katie, Kalli, Michelle and I are all going to go to SanMaria (I think?) - well it's this restaurant with really cheap wine and good food by the hotel we stayed at when we first got here. We figured we should all go out for dinner since there's so few of us - compared to the usual ten! It's so weird that the house feels empty with 5 people in it hahaha...After dinner I think we're going to go to a casual bar somewhere and just have some wine or something - nothing too crazy because our last night was crazy enough!! All in all, it should be a great night! I hope everything is going well at home!! Love and miss you all!!

Update since Jan 27th

MORE CALCIO PICTURES!!!
ROMA WONNN!!!!!!! YAYYYY!!!!!!!!


Well! Last week...was not really that exciting, but still fun none-the-less since I'm in Romaaaaa. Let's see...Since I last updated this I've been to una partita di calcio (soccer game) - Roma vs. Milan - which was ... AMAZING - here are a couple pictures that I stole from people because my camera battery keeps dying (more on that later..)

flares erupting in the crowd - they make the LOUDEST bang i don't know how the players are used to it haha
where we sat!! pretty fantastic, eh?!

so the soccer game was pretty awesome...in other news, Heather and I booked our Spring Break trip to.....drum roll please.....the canary islands!!! wahoo!!!! 6 nights at an all-inclusive resort that is ON it's own private beach for under $1000 each....SO excited...let's see what else...Carnevale in Venice is February 16th-18th with Heather, Lindsey, Rada and Jamie (all really great girls!!!) OH and I had my first sushi experience here! Actually not real sushi - avocado rolls so they're pretty hard to screw up - anyways, it's right down the street from my apartment and it was really good! Heather's a picky eater and she tried an avocado roll and really liked it! So that's good - I have a sushi friend...This past Friday night we went out to dinner at a restaurant called Le Fate down the street from our apartment and thought it was going to be great! but it ended up being kind of disappointing. We saw this thing on the menu called "Little Green Gnocchi with Speck" so we were idiots and didn't ask what Speck is and just got it figuring it sounded good (it said like spinach and cheese and stuff) so when we got it apparently speck is ham or spam or something I don't know...so it was just chunks of "speck" in the sauce so I could eat just the gnocchi but it tasted a lot like hot dogs in mac and cheese - which was definitely not worth 10 euro...Other than that though, we had a nice bottle of wine and chatted all night so it was good - just the food was not so good, and a bit expensive. After dinner we went to our friend Jon and Scott's apartment and hung out with them and chatted all night. The next night Kalli, Katie and Laura and I went to Good Caffe by JCU and chatted and stuff and then went to a bar with these really nice guys we met - one of them (Davide) owns a hotel in Calabria (the south of Italy). It was his Dad's and he's going to school right now in Rome to study tourism so that he can take over for his Dad. He said if we ever want to come visit we can stay at the hotel which is on the beach - near the beach? I don't remember...but there was beach involved..so that's pretty awesome. I also mentioned that I love soccer and he does too so he's going to take me to the next few Roma games there are hopefully - it's nice to have someone there who speaks Italian and can help you learn the songs - because I REALLY want to learn the songs....there's one that's like ROMMMA ROMMMA ROMAAAAAAAAAA something in italian......da dade doooo - anyways - the whole night we were out with them I was talking with Davide and I was trying my best to speak in Italian and he was trying his best to speak in English so it worked out pretty well! Here's a picture of me and Laura before we went out last night while we were still at the apartment (I'm wearing my new purple coat that I love and got for 20 euro....!)
(I SWEAR I will try to figure out how to turn the pictures the right way....stupid blogger)

Well, that's all for now! I'm doing great and I actually have a test this coming week (booooo) so I'm going to go read for that! Happy Superbowl everyone! If I want to watch it I have to go to a caffe or pub or whatever at 12:15 AM so we'll see if that actually happens...!!! All my love!!!