Where's Hallie??

You know it's the end of the semester when I start neglecting my blog. I am so busy running around trying to spend time with my friends and squeezing school work into the cracks of time when I'm not sleeping. Dearest Mom and Dad I will be sleeping for the first 48 hours when I get home. Sorry.

I had a very boring weekend, sorry to keep you guys waiting for such a dull post, but here we go.

Friday I did research and started my Conservation paper about Ponte Sant'Angelo's angels by Bernini. That evening when Sophia, Gatto, and Ginny returned from their field study we had our own little field study. Anna, my Italian teacher, assigned each person in our class a location in Ostiense to research and present on for our oral exam. I had to research La Citta delle Altra Economia and Julie was assigned Caffe Letterario. Gatto e Sophia joined us to visit our locations that evening. First we got very lost trying to find my place, even backtracking to the club area of Testaccio where my pubcrawl was. Eventually we thought we found it but turns out we found il MACRO, the contemporary art museum which was having an opening night for a Steve McCurry exhibit. We walked in like we knew what we were doing and nobody asked questions so even though it wasn't my location we saw a fantastic photography show and possibly Steve McCurry was there? Somebody was signing books. Caffe Letterario is a book bar on Via Ostiense and our next stop. A book bar has nooks and reading corners and during the day serves as a cafe but at night is a bar like Americans like of and yes you can still sit there with a glass of wine and do your homework. I know because she did. While I never found La Citta delle Altra Economia the research I did online makes it sound really cool. It's an old mattatoio converted into a bar, restaurant, shop, and large open market for organic goods. The shop sells recycled goods like the purses made from candy wrappers. Right now they have a Christmas market so I'd love to go back but it's rather far from Ponte.

A coffee maker turned lamp

La Citta delle Altra Economia

Photo exibit

Sophia checking out the photos

Props to whoever designed this!!

La Gatta

Saturday morning I woke up planning to be so productive! Nico told me about a library that was actually open on the weekends! Something nearly unheard of in Italy. I looked it up and checked the bus routes, packed my bag and was out the door. Sadly I became horrible terribly lost somewhere in Trastevere. Not where I had planned to end up. I was going to come back home and work since my roomies were all off on academic field trips or internships. This is the point I realized Julie took my keys in the morning, leaving me with no keys and nobody to let me in the house. Sooooo I wondered around, thankfully it hadn't started raining yet, and eventually found myself at the doors of Circus Arts Cafe! I went in and found two other IES girls working on projects with the free wifi. I chatted with my favorite barista who is only half British by the way, he's also half French and is fluent in English, French, Spanish, and Italian. He served up some risotto for lunch and I was surprisingly productive! The only other highlight of Saturday was the delicious stirfry I made myself for dinner. mmmmm!

Circus Art Cafe!

Sunday I wrote my Conservation paper.... all day. It was not terribly fun. For one of my study breaks I walked the three minutes to Ponte Sant'Angelo to take photos of my subjects during the five minutes of sunshine that weekend. While fiddling with zooms and checking the quality of my pictures someone tapped me on the shoulder and asked in accented English "Excuse me, can I help you?" my instantaneous response was "Non grazie" but when I looked up it was my PT friend! He was on his way to work at Fillippo's and caught me standing like a fool in the middle of the bridge. We chatted for a moment but he was late to work. Having friendly Italians around can improve one's day dramatically!

Monday Monday, back to school. I came home after classes and did homework for most of the afternoon or chatted with my roommates about the wonderful teachers we have or have had in our lives and why we chose our majors. The usual avoiding homework kind of conversations. Since Aven's 21st birthday is Tuesday (TODAY!!) we started the celebrations with a dinner at Dar Poeta a pizzeria I've wanted to go to for a while now. The whole gang, Prati, Ponte, Kylie, Chris, and Kristen were all in attendance. We sang loudly and out of tune when they presented him with a ricotta nutella calzone for dessert. After dinner the plans were to continue celebrating until midnight, his actual birthday. I could not join, instead I went home and wrapped up my bibliography for my Conservation paper. At home Ginny and I were studiously at work at the table when Isotta, Silvio, and Roberto come clambering up the stairs for a movie night with Nico! What fun! We goofed around as they made tea from Bibliotea. Roberto put on a fashion show in Julie's shoes, Izzy's scarf, and my sunglasses while Silvio decorated our tree with pingpong balls and told me about La Citta delle Altra Economia. He's such a good teacher I hope he works for IES in the spring like he plans! This is also the night I was proven right! You can eat cereal too loudly! Take that Gatto e Julie! I'm just being a good roommate.

We all stayed up far too late that night because most everyone came back to our house after Trastevere. We're young. What else are we going to do but stay up way too late and laugh too loud?

This morning seemed early as a result of last night. I had soup for breakfast finally! A delicious idea I stole from Meg's Food Blog. It was warming and filling before Julie and I hit up St. Ivo with our Baroque class. What a fascinating design! Julie gave an incredible presentation on Bernini's Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi. I've seen this fountain before (like the first night?) but her presentation caused me to really examine it and appreciate it's skill and beauty. What a genius! Even better we went inside St. Agnes, the Pamphilj chapel directly behind it which is another breathtaking Borromini. After that we saw St. Maria delle Pace directly outside the Steeler's bar so I've seen it before. It was my last field study with Federica sadly, what a wonderful woman she is. I hope I make her proud on my exams.

St. Ivo

St. Ivo

The Nile is all covered up!

Four Rivers

Fountain

St. Agnes in Agony

St. Agnes

Pope Innocent X

Santa Maria della Pace

I presented on La Citta delle Altra Economia this evening in Italian after a quick pizza snack from Fillippo's. My PT friend was working again, they all have such weird hours/ schedules. Hopefully we'll get to see Aven tonight for his real birthday or maybe we'll go to Buccoco and visit Nico at work!