Weekend!

Today is Thursday which makes it the official last day of class for the week (not that we've been going to classes). IES gives us every Friday off for weekend trips or exploring Rome, the only exceptions are Field Studies with our classes. I have one trip with one of my art history classes and we'll be going down the Almalfi coast and visiting Pompeii!!! The art nerd inside of me is freaking out a little. That'll be mid-September.  We've gone over all our classes, though I still will meet with an advisor to review my individual choices with her, and I've been placed in my intensive Italian class for next week's suuuuper long Italian classes. Sadly it's a little lower than I was expecting but I was on the cusp so my instructor said I could ask to be moved up a level if I find the work too simple. We've been through lots of pointless orientation sessions, probably about only half of these big meeting/presentations are useful or informative [for the 90% who read the massive texts they sent home].

Today I officially received permission to stay in Roma! Not only do we need a passport and a visa but once here we need Permesso di Soggornio to live here since we don't belong to the EU. I had to go to the copy shop down the street for a couple extra copies [besides being stupid and walking in when they were closed for their lunch/siesta hour] it was really successful. I told them what I wanted and went the cashier to pay and asked how much it all was etc felt pretty proud. I'm getting the hang of this.

OH MY GOD! Big news! So last night the roomies and I went to Piazza Navona because one of my roomies knows a ridiculous amount about architecture in Rome! She's wonderful :)  so first we took a bunch of side streets looking for a restaurants when lo and behold I saw a bumper sticker on the chalk board outside a bar that said "Steelers Nation".... my reaction? "OMG OMG STOP GUYS I HAVE TO GO IN!!!" haha yeah. So I took a peek inside to see Steelers, Penguins, Pitt jerseys everywhere!! Pennant flags from Edinboro (sup Kleebs?!) and Pitt. It was beautifully decorated in my opinion. There was someone there with a yinzer accent and the owner is from the North Side. It made my night. So the other girl from the Pgh area and I will be going to watch some games. Hopefully the early afternoon ones cause that'll be much better than starting games at like midnight. I'M SO HAPPY it'll be my little indulgence of US life.

After the excitement we went to dinner, only so-so but it's hard to mess up mozz and tomatoes on bread mmmm.  Then we got a personal tour of the piazza from my roomie and got some gelato. There is a small but to scale version of St. Peter's (with the bell towers still attached) in the Piazza which is the size of like two blocks, it was one guys personal church and now the city owns it I think. There were three fountains and in the center one was an obelisk, pillaged from Egypt and brought back to Rome. Very cool! It was a little touristy meaning lots of random people walking around trying to get your money shoving toys and flowers in your face. It makes me not too happy about going to even more touristy areas like the vatican and pantheon. Oh well thus is the price of living within walking distance of such amazing artifacts!   We ended the night at a bar even closer to home and split a bottle of wine before coming back and hitting the hay [I did sneak in a skype with Mama B though! family first].  Lake tomorrow with the whole program, beach on Saturday!! yay!

Not my picture but it gives you a good idea of the landmarks:

Here's a pic of my beautiful roommates (no ISC):

Ps. these posts will prob get shorter as I am busier or traveling more so enough them while they last