Roma

Last Friday Renee, Gina, Kevin, Emily, Pati, and I all got on a train to Rome. We felt like we were in Harry Potter... we had our own compartment! The train ride was pretty. We realized that we'd missed calls from Lorenzo, the program director, but we thought it was maybe them just calling to make sure we'd made it to Rome or something.
We were wrong lol.
We left our apartment at 2:45... our landlady came at 4 PM because we told her we thought the oven was broken. She arrived to find that our apartment had been broken into! No electronics had been stolen (but I would have laughed if they stole my laptop... have fun with a dying computer.) All four laptops, three ipods, two TVs, a DVD player... they didn't take any of it. This told the police that we had been robbed by GYPSIES! GYPSIES! The girls were pretty freaked out, and Kevin and I just made a big joke out of it. Pati was really helpful, because she speaks Italian and so she could figure out where we were supposed to go while the other girls tried to get Lorenzo to go back to the apartment and see what exactly was stolen. It turned out that only Gina had been stolen from... she had nice jewelry that Kevin gave her last year for Christmas. They were bummed, but they both hid it pretty well.
Our first night out we just went and got dinner and settled into our "bungalow." Our hostel was a campground with RVs and little duplexes. We could talk to each other through the walls. It was nice though, and not super expensive.

The next day we woke up early and went to the Colosseum! It was really cool! We listened in on some tours and I read some of the boards, so I learned some stuff about it. One year, a whale washed up on a beach nearby. To celebrate, they built a giant wooden whale and then somewhere between 50-500 bears came out of its mouth. Lol, Romans were weird.

After that we walked around the Roman ruins. Our 12 Euro included this giant complex too. It was pretty great... it sprinkled for a lot of it though. We took a metro to the city center and saw these things called the Spanish Steps. They're famous for some reason. Then we walked to the Trevi Fountain, which I was super excited for! It was really fantastic.
We wandered around and we found this little piazza. My friends were like, Look at that beautiful building! It was just a police station. But right across from it was a church. Gina peeked in but didn't want to go in because a service was going on. I peeked in and I was a goner. It was seriously the most beautiful church EVER. It was the Church of Saint Ignatius Loyola, or something close to that, and the Vatican is not at pretty. Nothing is as pretty. Gina almost cried. We all just sat in there for like an hour looking at how beautiful it was. There was marble everywhere, and magnificent paintings, and all kinds of things. I don't even know how to describe it. I didn't want to take pictures... it was too beautiful.

We had dinner at a little place. We paid in coins because we are poor students.

We walked along the river and took pictures and had a good time in general. We spent some time with some other CAPA girls in their hostel, and then we went home to the bungalow.

Sunday we went to the Vatican. I didn't really want to go that bad... I've never been particularly interested in the Sistene Chapel. I ended up being my groups tour guide in there though. I got to tell them about the different panels, and who the different characters were.
We missed St. Peter's Basilica, which I was super bummed about because I wanted to see the Pieta. Apparently we also missed getting blessed by the Pope, which I am less bummed about. Not bummed at all, in fact.

We caught a trian home and then we cleaned up our aparment. Gypsies threw our clothes everywhere. GYPSIES! Ugh. Gina said she'd kick them if they ever came on our street again, and I believe her.

I have to go to Italian, but I'll finish afterwards.