It's the end of the world as we know it...

And I don't really feel fine. Now I must be honest, there were times during finals when I would have gladly taken the next available flight back to the U.S. but that was a gut reaction to flee finals, not Rome! So while I am still VERY excited to get home and eventually back to Houston... I am greatly saddened to leave. The fact that I have packed up most of my things and have a cab coming at 6:45 tomorrow morning is entirely surreal. I'm not ready to leave, because I don't know how to let this experience end.

The last few days have been busy. I finished my finals on Wednesday and although they were tough I think they'll turn out okay. Thursday was a day of recovery and in the evening since everyone had finished finals it was a night of celebration. A few of us had a very relaxed time at a Birreria. On Friday, Rachel and I wandered around the city, doing last minute "Rome" things. We went to Giolitti's for the best gelato in town, walked past a couple obelisks, and each threw a coin into Trevi Fountain. Friday night was the "Farewell Dinner" with (as to be expected) amazing food and everyone together for one last time. After dinner there was a slideshow put together from a bunch of student photos. The guy who made it spent a lot of time on it and the end result is amazing. It really encapsulated the semester. I took a couple pictures from it for this post and if anyone wants to see what my abroad experience was really like (with a bunch of inside jokes) ask me to show you the slide show. After that everyone went to the wine bar in our neighborhood where we tend to go. It was crowded with all of us there at once, but so worth it to have everyone in one place.

A lot of people left this morning, with the rest of us leaving either tomorrow morning or later in the week. A few people are traveling before returning to the U.S. It's hard to watch people go, and the thought of leaving tomorrow makes me tear up a little bit.

Here are a few things I'm going to miss about Rome and my program:

The 44 & 75 buses
The breakfast/lunch/dinner bell
Speaking (poor) Italian and having people understand me
Umbrella Pines
Nerdy Inside Jokes (Lambda!)
Walking to the Roman Forum for class
The fantastic drinking water
Gelato!
Seeing the Colosseum out of a bus window
People watching at a bar (again bar = cafe) with a delicious cappucino

Now on a positive note, some things I'm excited to return to the U.S. for:

Sushi, Tex-Mex, and Chicken Kitchen
Driving
Hanging out in Borders with a Coffee beverage
Going to Target to buy contact solution and leaving with some apples and a new skirt
Getting voicemail messages (a.k.a. having people call me)

I am very very excited to have my cell phone back. I used Skype a little bit to make some calls but it's so cumbersome to have to call from a computer and the time change always made things so tricky. Plus not receiving calls is kind of sad.

Now for some final photos:

This is a pic from Halloween. My costume is my hair, that's about it.

This is a tree in Campania (somewhere...) that is actually growing upside down into a cave. Eric is hiding(?) in it.

Me inside the Colosseum. See, I was in Rome!

This is Lauren being attacked by a pigeon in Venice. To the pigeon's credit she is purposefully feeding it.

The Centristi "trying" to move a giant stone drum.

Our terrific professors posing on a rock.

ICCS Fall '06

Alright well it's time for me to get more things together and eventually have dinner. I'll be leaving for the airport in about 12 hours, which is kind of terrifying. This will be my last post since this is called "Emily in Rome." Thanks to anyone reading and especially anyone commenting. You all lit up my days with your words.

Goodbyes make me introspective...

The hardest part about leaving is giving up the potential of this trip. When I found out I was accepted to my program in Rome last spring I was ecstatic. There's so much excitement and promise surrounding going abroad. From March on I had the next 9 months of my life planned out(and for me having a plan is fun): finish spring semester, live in Houston for the summer working and planning O-Week, actually *do* O-Week, then go abroad for 3+ months and have the time of my life in Rome. All of those things have come and gone so quickly and now I'm more than halfway done with college and only two months away from my 21st birthday. These things are pretty obvious facts, but I'm not very familiar with them and so I feel like I have to write them down anyway.

There are very few actual milestones in life. Maybe I'm not saying this correctly, but what I mean is that there are no real fresh starts. There are birthdays, New Years, graduations, etc. but it's hard to really distinguish my life before and after these alleged turning points. There's not a single day that sticks out to me from the past 6 months as a "milestone," but I can say that somewhere in that time I've grown. It's like that creeping feeling I get when I look back on something I wrote in high school, or remember how a song made me feel a year ago, and it makes me realize I've matured or at least changed in some way.

I think what I've learned most thoroughly over the last several months is that growing up is accidental. If given the choice (especially at this junction when I don't have any of the rest of my life planned out) I would choose not to grow up. The thing is, growing up is hardly a conscious process. Instead it's going through things that are hard or unpleasant and surviving. It's crying for hours about something and feeling like things will never get better, until they do get better. And then using that for the future. I hate to admit this now, because I never believed it when I was younger, but there are a lot of things in life that you just have to live through to understand.

I wish I knew where my life was going. Not knowing at 16 or 18 was fine, because hey I hadn't even started college, and you figure things out in college. Well now I'm in college and I've been in college for a while now and at the very best I've found a few things that I don't want to do with my life, but I certainly don't have a five year plan or anything. What's frustrating is that I know everyone goes through this, and for some reason that bothers me. I don't want to be one of the befuddled mass of undergraduates! I want to be self-possessed and focused, because being unsure makes me afraid that I will end up in a cardboard box. I want to get a job because I'm tired of school, but maybe I need more school to get a good job!

At the moment I think my priority should be to not fail my finals, so I should do a little studying. I have my final paper completed but I still have three finals in the next three days. Eep.

Two posts in one week? I must have something very important I'm avoiding....

It's true. I have a lot to do, and little desire to do anything. I had a good last week of classes, it contained four field trips, an oral presentation, and a quiz. Now I have three finals and a final paper and I'll be finished with everything in less than a week! I leave a week from Sunday and a week is a rather small unit of time.

This semester has been wonderful. I hope that from my stories and pictures everyone has gotten a small sample of what I've experienced. I've been so lucky to see the things I've seen and visit everywhere that I have visited. What's even more amazing is that I've had a lot of wonderful people visit me! My mom, aunt, and cousin, Sofia, Jodi, Valerie, and this weekend I have the pleasure of seeing Sarah and Amy who are visiting from Salmanca and Aix respectively. We had a delicious dinner last night and spent time discussing the similarities of Spanish, French, and Italian. Our little table was filled with a strange combination of those three languages as well as lots of English.

Today (instead of rewriting my paper... whoops I guess there will be time for that later tonight) I went to meet them at St. Peters and by chance we saw a papal address! None of us are Catholic so we didn't realize that this Friday was a holy day of obligation. It was fortunate that we were there because we got to see the pope from his window and hear his address. It was one of the cooler things I've seen in Rome. After we had lunch we went into St. Peter's (no lines!) and looked around. It's truly magnificent inside. Alright time to get some things accomplished before dinner. Enjoy the pictures:

Guarda, e' il Papa! (I circled the Pope's window in red for you.)

St. Peter's Basilica




Dome of St. Peter's



Tomb of St. Peter



Amy and Sarah with a view of Rome in the background.

Did you miss me?

I miss all of you!

I have a million things to write about, so prepare yourself for a massive post. You might want to tackle it in parts, the way I would my Latin translation...

In exactly two weeks I will be on a plane flying back to the United States, which means my study abroad experience will officially be over. It's a very weird mix of feelings. At the beginning of the semester 3 and a half months felt like an eternity. It seemed as if I would live in the land of pasta, ancient ruins, and frantic gesticulation for all time. I went on field trip after exhausting field trip, and the weeks slipped by. Now only four field trips remain and we only have one more trip on the bus!

I am very anxious to come home. Absence truly makes the heart grow fonder as there are things I never expected to miss, that I am absolutely homesick for, like an American grocery store or simply listening to the radio. I am not so foolish to wish the rest of my time here away. The moment I step on that plane my adventures abroad will be over (for now), and that is a sad thought. I am lucky enough that I will probably return, but there are no definite plans. I doubt I can even imagine all of the things (and people!) I will miss when I leave. Over the course of my semester I have often wished that I could be in two places at once and I can imagine that that feeling will continue even after I return.

I have been busy (always so busy!) the last month. We took our second all program trip, this time to southern Italy in the region of Campania. I saw the beautiful Naples, and also went to Pompeii. Visiting the archeological park at Pompeii was definitely a highlight of my whole semester. We spent a full day there (from when it opened until the sun set and the park closed) and it was truly amazing. Of course spending that much time outside wandering around was tiring, but I really did enjoy all of the time. As soon as I got back from Campania, my friend Valerie, who is studying in Paris, came to visit Rome and I got to spend quality time with her for the weekend. It was nice to catch up and just be in the same place as her for a while, I'm definitely looking forward to next semester when we'll be suitemates! The following weekend my friend Jodi, who is working in London, came and we had an amazing time hanging out, and as an added bonus I finally got to see the Sistine Chapel. I believe that catches us up to this weekend, which was a bit of a disappointment. I had planned all along to visit Sofia O. in Florence this weekend, but our plans were foiled by a strike of the Italian train workers! I'm even more thankful now that I got to see her in Rome, she won't be back at Rice until next fall!


This the Forum of Pompeii. In the background is Mt. Vesuvius, which is the volcano that erupted and covered the city in ash, tragically killing everyone, yet preserving all of the structures.



One of the amazing aspects of my program is that it has been around for several decades and has cultivated relationships with a lot of people. Because of this we get special permission to see things that are not open to the public. Above is a mosaic from inside a bath complex in Pompeii, that most people never get to see!


This my friend Rachel and me looking into the sun as we take a picture. We're at a villa in Pompeii.


This is a wall fresco from one of the "exclusive" villas we were allowed to see. The coloration and detail is so amazing but it was made before 79 AD when the volcano erupted!


This is carbonized bread that was left on a table during the eruption. The museum had several other artifacts like carbonized grains, fruits, and many personal items.

This is a shot taken on the bus. We spend so much time on the bus it seemed like an important thing to include.


This is a row of fountains taken at a Villa we stopped at. It's not classical and I don't really know anything about it... except that it's pretty!!


This is a structure I gave a report on. It's the Serapeum at Hadrian's Villa. The half-dome ceiling is actually constructed "like a pumpkin" as an ancient architect criticized. The dome is alternated between four sections of flat roofing and four sections of concave roofing. Water would stream down the walls by a complex series of piping, and they would hold dinner parties here. I could tell you more but even I'm getting bored....




Here are two crazy Centristi (Lisa Geiger and Grant) posing on statue bases.


We saw this sign on Thanksgiving. It struck me as pretty hilarious. I have not eaten at a McDonalds in Rome, but I hear it's actually pretty tasty. It's also kind of expensive 6 euros or something...


This is Trajan's column (in Rome) we were going to go up into it (there are stairs inside!) but it was apparently a safety hazard or something.

These are the remains of the Temple of August. Nikkei is doing a good job to show the scale of the temple.


Alright I'll try and post more before I leave. I've already made a list of things I'm looking forward to and things I'm going to miss!