Second full week in Rome at the start...
Day Seven
The first saturday of the trip was also the first free weekend. Brandon was the only one who left so most of the group was still around to create chaos which I imagine they did. I elected to spend the day catching up on this (teh blog) and relaxing a little bit away from people. No matter how much you like people, eventually, you want to be away from them for a bit. Plus I got to spend some time working on some photoshop projects which is long detailed meticulous work and makes me feel a lot better in general. In the early evening, we all went to the Piazza Navolo for food. Jackie and I went to a really cheap pizzeria and got to sample some liquors at the shop close by. After that I came home with the expectation of sleep only to found that people were still up and about and wired (or hadn't even come home). Sometime in the late evening/early morning, Natalia and I were joined in our room by Macy and Lauren. We sat and chatted for a long while before a guy came back to the still open door with a bunch of snack foods and offered them in exchange for the chance to stay and chat from us. He ended up being a guy from Brown University (who are leaving this week) and was pretty cool all around. His main goal was to get hallway cred by knowing people from another college (we make sure to say hi when we see him with people). Saturday bled fairly solidly into Sunday since he didn't leave and we didn't go to bed until 6AM, more than a little tired but in fairly good moods.
Day Eight
Sunday morning came entirely too early for someone who had slipped away to sleep at 6:15ish in that AM. By 10AM I was up and awake and hating life. Despite plans to go to the beach that had been made on Saturday, it looked like I was in for more of a repeat day from the one before. Yet, when we told Dr. Behr that we weren't going out, he scolded us all severely so when Lauren returned from her run around 1:30, I asked her and we decided to go ahead and go to a beach in Nettuno, about an hour away by super slow train. Brandon decided to come along with (despite not having a bathing suit and apparently having a dislike of sand...) and we made the trip fairly easily. We'd missed just barely when we got to the station so we had to make time there for awhile but once we got to the beach we found a nice place to swim for free. The water was not clear blue (more like that strangish brown in the Gulf) but it was very clear and very cold and fantastic to swim in. When my hair dried, it felt like I had just washed it so nice was the water. We didn't stay overly long since the tide was already beginning to get dangerous so we got out and went to a restaurant (as much to change clothes as to eat) and then walked along the streets until our train left much later. It was a rather awesome day and I have every intention of going back as often as possible.
Day Nine
Monday brought another class day. We went over Socrates in Dr. Behr's class and over the beginnings of the end of the Roman Republic in Dr. Costello's. Afterwards was mostly a lazy day and I did laundry and worked on some other photoshop projects as well. In the evening, we went out to the Scholar's Lounge as a large group to eat dinner and have a few drinks. I didn't stay there very long and ended up back at home fairly early. But unable to sleep I was till up when the last group came home just as I was returning to my room from the bathroom. I went up to them to ask how things were since they went to another bar after we'd left and we all stopped for a few seconds when a woman came out and tried to take a picture of us and accused us loudly of waking her up constantly. When we turned away and retreated, she yelled loud curses after us and so we eventually decided to withdraw to the downstairs lounge to discuss when and how to talk to the RA's about the issue. Thus, I was up til super late...again.