December

After Jon left on December 2nd it was MAJOR crunch time for me.  I had already missed to project deadlines, one by 2 weeks and the other was now a week past due.  Luckily both of my teachers understood that November was crazy and we had family and friends visit there in the mean time so it was hard to meet some of the deadlines.  The deadlines they had given us were not the official deadlines only a suggested time line to follow for the semester with everything being due December 16th for our final show here in Rome.  December went by just as fast as November did because we were all so busy trying to catch up with projects.  It took me about the first week of December to get caught up with the two projects that I been behind on and then had to finish the others I had on the back burner for my other classes.

We also found some time to have fun and take a break from studying in the past 2 week also.  On the 3rd we found out there was a free Santogold concert in Rome very close to our apartment.  Myspace was putting it on and to get in free you had to print off you profile page and show that to them as your ticket.  Non of us had myspace so we all created one right before the show and printed off our new profiles, most of us only having one friend; Tom the default. I gave them mine and he commented about me only having one friend and that he was sure I would make some that night and have 50 by the next morning. I proceeded to go home and delete the account first thing.  It was a cool concert though, a really small building but we were able to get close to the front.  I was the tallest person there by about 4 inches so I had no problem seeing, when I turned around it was like the red sea parting behind me.  There was a pretty distinct past where nobody could see around me. O well; it pays off to be tall sometimes.

Our other study break was for a soccer game.  I didn’t think we were going to be able to but we did make it to a Lazio vs. Inter Milan game.  Lazio is one of the two Rome home soccer teams.  The soccer game was a lot of fun and and a new experience for all of us and cool to see how much they get into soccer like we do football.  The stadium was also the one that was used for the Olympics when they were in Rome, it was way bigger than any of the stadiums I have ever been to.  It was about half full and got loud when something happened, I can only imagine what it would be like during a big rivalry game and a full house.  The game brought us to the week of the 7th and thats when the real buckling down and work started.

The second week of December turned into the week that we all try to avoid when it comes to design; and that is the thought of all nighters.  Sunday I was up till 3:30 am working. Monday up till 3:30 am. Tuesday up till 4:00 am. Wednesday up till 3:30 am. Thursday up till 4:00 am. Friday up till 3:00 am and Saturday ended up being an all nighter and I didn’t to sleep until 2 pm on Sunday.  That whole week I spent 12-16 hours at out dining room table on a very uncomfortable chair working on stuff with breaks to eat and thats about it.  It was a long week to say the least. The only thing that saved me was that I only had class at 3 on Tuesday, 9 on Wednesday and 9 on Friday so I did get to sleep in quite a bit. At one point it was about 6 am here and 11 pm back home when I was video chatting with my family, they said ‘well we are going to bed, talk to you later’ normally I’m the one that says that being 7 hour ahead.  That week I was only 4 hours ahead, I thought about just keeping up that schedule and have an easier time adjusting when I do get back. I did get everything finished up during that 36 hours of no sleeping so it was worth the effort.  I had monday to sleep in go to studio to print out all of my project and then get ready for our show on Tuesday night.  I got it all done with a day to spare.

The final show on the 16th was also a good  showing of all of the hard work we have put in this semester and it was good to see everyones stuff displayed together since I hadn’t see some of the stuff people had done.  We cleaned up the studio that morning and covered our studio tables with black paper to make it look nicer, the show wasn’t until 6 pm so most of us headed home for a nap and then went back later.  My roommate Derek and I had gotten Italian suits the week before so we decided to get all dressed up for the occasion.  I also bought some brown loafers in Florence so for at least one night I could say everything I was wearing was Italian.  We got a bunch of looks on the bus over to studio as well.  The show officially marked the end of the semester and all I had to do now was hang out in Rome a few more days until I head home on the 22nd. 

The day after the show was spent sleeping, I don’t think I woke up until 4 pm that afternoon since we could all finally relax and the exhaustion set in.  The past couple days (the 20th now) I have just been walking around enjoying my last couple days of Rome and we have had the perfect weather to do it. Highs of mid to high 50s and nice sunny weather (compared to snow, ice, cold, blizzards, windchill, not to mention COLD) back home.  Friday the 19th I walked around for about 5 hours just taking pictures of a few things I hadn’t been to yet and made it back to a couple shops I needed to get to before I go, also got the last of my Christmas shopping done which will make packing everything up a little interesting.  It was nice to be able to walk around on a nice day now worrying about getting a project done and just taking my time, I pretty much did a big loop around the city weaving through all of the little Via’s that make up Rome.  Saturday (the 2oth) we seen the first 3 off to the airport at 6:30 am and then Jake and just walked around again checking out different stuff all day.  He needed to hit a few shops and since it was prefect outside I was up for the walk also.  I had started packing stuff up the night before and realized that I was getting close to 50 lbs with just he fun stuff I had accumulated over the past 4 months so I also re-arranged some stuff today to re-distribute the weight. I got rid of quite a bit of my clothes to since our washer is not the greatest and we have had to hang dry our clothes every-time they were kind of worn out so that helped a little. As of now I am at 46 pounds with just a couple things to put in right before I leave so I think I will be in good shape, if all else fails I will just toss a couple more shirts at the airport to make weight.  We seen the 4th roommate off tonight so we are down to two and the apartment is way to quiet thats for sure.  

Jake and I will be leaving at 3:30 am Monday morning when the car we arranged comes to pick us up with the two others that are flying back with us.  Our flight to Amsterdam leaves at 6:10 am and then we have a 4 hour layover before we leave for Memphis and then on to Des Moines.  It will be a long day of traveling but will be worth it to be home, now we just have to hope for good weather all the way and we will be in good shape. I moved some of the pictures in my albums around the other night so they should be all caught up in the next couple days, be sure to check those out.  The next time I talk to you all I will be back home!

I left for Rome 111 Days 10 Hours 30 Min 5 Sec ago, time to come home now.

Later

November

So now that is is December 18th and I am finally done with all of my projects and classes I have time to finally get the blog caught up.  This entry with be the November edition and December will follow.

We’ll start by going all the way back to the very beginning of the month and getting ready for our North Field trip. This really was a month of travel, we only had 10 days of class in the entire month.  The first trip we took was our class trip to North Italy and we even made a couple stops in Switzerland and Germany.  We left Rome on the 4th at 6:30 pm to catch an over night train to Basel, it was going to be a 12 hour train ride. It was going to be a long train ride no matter what but the cold I had gotten the week before halloween came back and I got really sick.  I had chills, sore through, swollen throat glads, stuffed up sinus’, and the medicine I had brought over for the minor stuff wasn’t working and then I ran out of it.  I tried to just take ibuprofen and drink lots of fluids to get over it but that didn’t work at all.  It got to the point where a couple of the teachers were getting worried and wanted me to go to the doctor.  Instead of going to the doctor I had one of them go to the pharmacy with me and help translate for me to see if I could get some better medicine.  The lady at the pharmacy gave me two things to try, one was a throat spray that was supposed to help kill the infection and help the swelling go down.  The other was a type of antibiotic pill, that was also supposed to help clear up the sinus infection part of it.  With medicine in me I felt a little bit better about going on the trip, hopefully it would be enough to make the trip comfortable and still have fun to.  So getting back to the train ride, we got on and started the long trip up through Italy. Since it was already dark there wasn’t much to look at and I had taken some nyquill so I just went to sleep and slept pretty much the whole way there.  It wasn’t comfortable at all, if I never have to travel on a sleeper train that would be fine with me.  That morning when we got to Basel they woke us up and got us a nice pastry for breakfast and a cup of coffee, that is a really nice way to get the morning going. We got on another train and had a 2 hour ride to Bern and we stayed there for one night.  The hostel we stayed at was nice but wasn’t anything fancy.  In Bern we went to the school of design to look at their poster collection. They have a huge collection of posters that are all original prints from famous well known designers.  He pulled what he thought were a bunch of the better ones and showed us all of those and explained a little but about all of them.  They were all swiss design poster, something we look at quite a bit for different kinds of inspiration.  After that we had a couple hours to go and explore the town and get some lunch, they had some sort of festival going on so there were a bunch of little shops and vendors set up all over town. After that we went back to the hostel for our night there and then packed up the next morning to catch a train to Zurich.  Before we got to Zurich we made a brief stop at the Vitra museum in Germany.  It is a furniture design company and museums showing all the different types of chairs and stuff they are producing.  It was cool but by the end of the day I was about ready to fall asleep and the medicine was wearing off so I wasn’t feeling the best also. Zurich is a very cool town. Everything is in english to so that also made it very easy to get around and know what was going on. They use a different currency in Switzerland so we all had to exchange our euros or just go to an atm to get money out. Again in Zurich we went to a couple more poster collections and graphic design collections. The poster collections were a lot like what we had seen before but just different topics and some different designers.  One of them was a collection of design posters and other stuff as well; corporate manuals, books, magazines, logos, all kinds of stuff.  Since a lot of it was really old we had to use rubber gloves to touch the pages if we wanted to look at it. We headed back to the hostel after that, we were there for 2 nights, and it was rated as one of the best youth hostel in europe.  It was really nice.  On day two we had a couple well known designers come and speak to us. Rosemary Tissi and Odermatt, two swiss designers showed some work they had done and talked about how they go about different types of designing.  By this time in the trip I had been taking that medicine for a few days so I was feeling a little better but still not great, just a little easier to tolerate.  That was our last day in Zurich, we had some time to hang out again and see the city before we left the next day.  We all took a train back to Milan in Italy, this time it was during the day so we got to see the alps and all of the little mountain lakes and villages.  It was really picturesque, I could have gotten off the train and taken pictures for hours.  I really wanted to have a bike there to ride, there would have been some really cool mountain roads to ride on.  The next time I’m in Europe I will have a bike with me to ride.  When we got to Milan it was about 2 in the afternoon and that is where our teaches left us.  It was kind of nice having that part of the trip out of the way, it was a lot of fun but was also exhausting. We could have ridden all the way back to Rome with them but a couple of us decided to take a train to Florence for a couple of days.

Florence is a really cool city as well, it’s like Rome but it wasn’t near as busy, loud, or dirty.  We found our hostel and then crashed for a little while and relaxed since we were all wiped out.  We found some dinner and were going to walk around and see the town at night but we all fell asleep by 10 pm.  The next day we got up on-time and went and looked at all of the sights in Florence. We went to see the David, the Duomo, and the famous bridge that has shops built on top of it.  The David was really cool, the museum it was it was really boring but then you walk around the corner and there is the giant David statue.  I didn’t really realize how big of carving it was until you get right up next to it, we went early in the morning so there wasn’t that much of a crowd around it.  We probably could have stayed there and just looked at it all day but had to move on to the next place on the list.  The Duomo is really best viewed from the outside, the marble on the outside is amazing.  We went into the inside and it is really kind of boring compared to the outside and all of the other churches we have visited.  The only frescos were on the dome, the rest of the walls and ceilings were just painted white.  You can walk to the top of the dome but the day we were there it was closed off for some reason, we could go to the top of the campanile next to it though.  To walk all the way to the top it is about 416 steps, we were all breathing pretty heavy by the time we go to the top.  Since it was a clear day you could see a long ways, and the whole city.  I think it was actually a better view that from the dome since you could actually see the whole church.  After that we went to that bridge that you see in all of the pictures.  By that time we were all kind of tired and headed back to the hostel to get cleaned up and take a break before dinner. The hostel we were at was really nice, they had a brochure with some good restaurants on it so we decided to eat at of the more ‘traditional’ place.  It was a good deal to; we got a first course, second course, bread, dessert, and wine for only 10 euro. We had lasagna for the first, chicken and potatoes for the second, and a type of cake for dessert. We were so full after dinner that we went back to the hostel and crashed again.  Florence is also known for the leather markets and other open markets so we hit those the next day.  We walked around and you could pretty much find any kind of scarf in any color if you want to. I had fun spending money that day. I bought a couple scarves, a pair of leather loafers, and I got a good chunk of my christmas shopping done to.  It had been a long trip and we were all ready to get back to Rome and get back to our daily schedule and get some work done to.  We all had a lot to do in order to catch up for it wasn’t going to happen right away.

The week after we got back we had a group project to work on and had a guest designer come in to help critique us or work.  Primo Angeli is a well known packaging designer and it was our job to redesign the package for a product.  We chose to do the label for a jam and jelly company.  There were 6 of in the group so we all did some sketches and worked on or own ideas and then brought them together, picked the better ones and them touched them up from there.  The whole project only took a week to do since it was a short one and we split the work up. It was a good thing we had it done in a week since I was going to be gone to Ireland that weekend and then we had the final presentation on Tuesday morning.

On the 14th I left for Cork, Ireland with a couple people for the weekend. Of of her friends had studied in Cork last year and gave us the number of a couple of the friends she made while she was there and told us go give them a call. Our plane got in a little later than we had expected so we didn’t there till about midnight.  We thought it might have been to late to call but we got to our hostel and then gave him a call.  He was still out and about so we took a cab over there and hung out with him, his name was Alan.  At first I thought it was going to be one of those weird situations when you go meet somebody and say hi and then its all awkward but it wasn’t at all.  He was a really cool guy and he made it his personal goal for the weekend to make sure we had a good time.  Just like Switzerland english is one of the national languages so it was really nice to be able to read everything and be able to talk to everyone.  I took full advantage of that and went to the pharmacy there and explained to the lady how i was feeling, it was impossible to get anything cold and sinus in Rome but that’s what she gave me, and it helped a ton.  There was even a night pill to help knock me out and get some sleep for once. That round of medicine was a good help to feel a little bit better again.  Still not 100% but better. Alan took us around Cork the next day and showed us all of the little things you might never see if you didn’t know somebody that lived there. He took us to his college campus and it was really cool, much smaller than the ISU campus. Then he took us around town. The towns we were driving and walking around in really reminded me of part of Des Moines, they are way different than Rome to, much more my style.  Alan drove us out to the Jameson Whisky factory and we took a tour there, it was a lot like the Sam Adams tour I did in Boston this summer.  They showed us some of the barrels that it’s stored in and then told us about the production process; at the end we got to sample some as well. He even took us to a store that was exactly like a Wal-Mart, it was the coolest thing any of us had seen in a long time, it would have been perfect had there been a Mt. Dew but no go on that one. That night be took us to an interesting place for dinner, they just wrap your burger and fries in a sheet of brown butcher paper.  It was good and it was a ton of food.  He took us back to his apartment to eat and his roommate was there to, we watched their version of american idol while we were there to. that was the first tv I had watched and understood in over 2 months.  He took us out to a irish pub were he goes with his friends that night. It was already Sunday by then so we had to get to the airport and head back to Rome. That week after I got back I had to work like crazy to catch up again and that didn’t really happen either.  I had 5 days to work that week before the next adventure started when Jon got here.

My buddy Jon from back home was able to get a cheap ticket out here for Thanksgiving break and come visit for 10 days which I was excited about. But that also meant that was 10 days that I couldn’t really work on stuff again. The other best part about Jon coming was he was going to be bringing some medicine from home for me to get better, real prescription medicine. I had my art history final the next monday so I had to study for that the first couple days here was here which was kind of a bummer. It was ok though, it gave him a couple days to get over the jet lag and used to the style of Rome.  After my test I could go into vacation mode like him and forget about projects for a few more days.  I had been here for 85 days at the time and still hadn’t been to the Colosseum and the Vatican so that was for sure on our list of things to do.  We went to the Colosseum one morning and spent about an hour there.  It was really cool to think about how old it was and what kind of events took place there.  That afternoon we took the metro out to the Vatican and went through the museum there and seen the Sistine Chapel, which is amazing.  The rest of the museum is packed with artworks I had just studied for my final so it was cool to see them all right in front of me.  We went into St. Peters and got to see the inside of that to, very impressive, it’s really big inside.  We had another day in Rome after that so we just walked around and I took Jon to the different pizza places we liked and showed him all of the stuff we have been living in for the past 4 months. We then headed to Florence the next day and spent 3 days there. It was kind of north trip redo for me since we stayed at the same hostel since it was really nice and accidently at at the same restaurant for dinner.  I did the same thing Florence, showed him around and we seen the sights again, I could have spent another day at the market. They were really cool. It rained or sprinkled the whole time we were there but it was still a lot of fun. The rain kind of put a damper on our plans to go to Siena for a day but we did make it to Pisa, that ended up being it’s own adventure and a half. We bought train tickets to get there and either got on the wrong train or got off at the wrong stop and ended up in Pistoia, Italy not Pisa.  We wandered around there for an hour checking it out.  The only cool thing was the professional cyclist we seen on his bike. He was dressed head to toe in Team Lampre clothes and had a top of the line bike to go with it.  We were 99% sure he had to have been out on a training ride.  After that I was just frustrated that we messed up the train and I was going to prove to myself that we could make it there.  I asked the guy selling tickets how to get here and he printed a timesheet for me. Now we had to take a train to Lucca and then transfer to Pisa.  That took about an hour, we finally made it there, it was dark but it was the tower. We were there for about 20 min. and we had seen enough.  Luckily there was a train straight back to Florence so it only took about an hour and a half to get back there to.  We headed back to Rome the next day, we were both traveled out and I was getting anxious to get back to work and get caught up.  Jon still had one more day in Rome so we went to one of the bike shops we had found and I bought a jersey there.  He took off the next day so he got to bed on time and had to be out the door early in the morning.  Jon leaving was the end of November, so that got me to the final stretch and the medicine had got me feeling much better.  That is probably the only thing that got me through up to now. If I would have been sick it would have not been a fun lsat month at all.

Well that is November in a blog.  You can check out the pictures from all of these thing on the web gallery also.  I will work on the December download tomorrow and me all caught up just in time to go home!

November Update Part 1

So now that the month of November is over I thought I had better finally take a little bit of time to get my photos and blog updated.  Tonight I created albums for the the trips that I have taken, and places we have gone over the past month.  To check out the pictures go to:

http://gallery.me.com/cgroten1

The next step is to get a blog updates typed out.  That will take me a couple days so check out the new pictures in the mean time.

Trying to catch up…

The month of November has been crazy!  I have spent a lot of time traveling around, and a lot of time trying to catch up on projects because of that.  I did not have a chance to post pictures from our North trip and Ireland yet, that hasn’t been to high on the to-do list right now.  

Ireland was really fun though. We got there kind of late that friday night since flight left about 40 min late. The weather was good and it was a nice change of pace and scenery.  One of the girls we were with had a connection through a friend so when we got there go took us out to a popular Irish pub and the next day drove us all over so we wouldn’t have to take a taxi.  He showed us his college campus and then just walked us around town all day showing us what he thought we should see.  One of the neighborhoods we drove though reminded me of Des Moines a lot.  It was also really nice to see and hear english all over the place.  Some people had a really heavy accent so it was really hard to understand them, but english is english.  After that weekend I had 2 weeks in Rome to hang out here and try to get as much work done as possible.  It was nice to be in town for a weekend finally and be able to take it easy.  During that time I found out one of my friends from back home was going to be able to come over and visit.  Jon got here on the 21st and will be here until Dec. 2 so that whole week and a half will fly by also.  He is almost over the jet lag then he will be able to keep up much better.  A bunch of us went to the open market this morning, that was a crazy experience our first time and we had been here a month, I can’t imagine what it seemed like 3 days into a trip. We plan to go to the Colosseum and the Sistine Chapel this week among other sight seeing, I have been here for 84 days and have seen the Colosseum at least twice everyday and still haven’t been inside. I think it’s about time.  We have a couple extra days off for Thanksgiving this week so I think we are going to head to Siena for a couple days and check that out and I want to go up to Pisa for a couple hours to check out the leaning tower.  When we get back from that and Jon leaves I think I will be living in the studio almost 24/7.  All of our projects are due Dec. 10 and I have quite the to do list to tackle before that point.  I will have to do a complete November update when all of that is taken care us to get you all updated.  Yesterday marked the 30 day countdown so we are on the final stretch, only a few weeks left.

North Trip Update

I made it back from our North trip late Monday night, we didn’t know if we would make if home at first since they railway went on strike and stopped trains.  Luckily there were trains back to Rome all day.  A quick update on the trip is that we took an overnight train to Basel (12 hours) and then took another train to Bern and stayed there for one night after a quick afternoon in Germany at a museum.  After that we took a train to Zurich and were there for 2 nights and went to some poster collection museums and heard a couple designers speak.  After Zurich we all took a train back to Milan and we had the option to either break off and do our own thing or go back to Rome.  A couple girls and I went to Florence for 2 nights and checked out the sights there, then obviously came back to Rome on Monday night.  The whole trip was a ton of fun but it was also exhausting.  It will take me a few days to type up a full update from that trip so hopefully I can get that up before this weekend.  I will be in Cork, Ireland for the weekend so I’ll probably wait and post all of those pictures at the same time.  I am really busy with classes and projects this week so it may take a couple days to update but don’t worry it will come.  I did update my Google map with the spots we went to on the map so you can look at those if you want to.  The new map is posted below.

North Trip Map Update

View Larger Map

Halloween In Roma

I haven’t updated in quite awhile, mainly since there hasn’t been anything out of the ordinary to share.  The halfway point has come and gone by a week already.  Only a month and a half left here in Rome and I feel like there is still so much we need to see before we go.  I have spent the last 3 weeks busy with studio classes trying to get as much done as possible before November got here.  The last 3 weeks went way to fast.  I’m pretty sure November is going to fly by twice since I will be traveling about half the time.  We only have 10 days of class this month which means we have to find time to get a lot done inbetween trips.  We will be leaving this Wednesday night for our north field trip.  I’ll give the detail of that trip later on but a quick summary is we go to Milan, Bern, Basel, Zurich, Switzerland then back to Milan as a group.  Then are going to Florence for 2 days after our trip is over when they leave us in Milan.  Look forward to that update. And of course we all had to celebrate halloween here even though the Romans don’t.  We were trying to figure out what to dress up as.  It’s was harder this year since we can’t just go to the costume store and pick up something, we had to make our costumes.  We are all obviously graphic design students and use our Apple computers everyday, so we decided to work off of that.  We decided to all go as a OS X dock, the dock you put your icons on on the bottom of the screen (kind of like the Start bar for you pc users).  We all picked an icon that in some way described our personality and then got out the paints and painted it on a box.  I decided to be the Stickies icon, since I have sticky notes all over the place on my computer.  In all we had 9 icons and a mouse/spinning wheel of death.  While we were painting we were all joking that we had to have the nerdiest costume of the year and wondered if we could get onto Gizmodo.  Gizmodo is a tech blog that shows new products and shows of anything Apple.  Our roommate Joe emailed them one of the pictures and later that day we were on the homepage!  We were all pretty excited about making it up there, you can look at the page on this link, you just have to scroll down a little bit:

http://gizmodo.com/5073529/instant-nostalgia-apple+themed-halloween-costumes

As a side note the picture is taken in Derek and I’s bedroom, like the pink paint and chandelier?

So we have Derek the Finder, Anna the System Preferences, Greg the iTunes, Lydia the cursor/spinning wheel of death, Rob the iCal, Jake the iChat, Collin the Stickies, and Joe the trash. I can’t image what was going through the heads of the locals when they seen 10 boxes walking down the street, and when we all jumped on a bus we got some crazy looks and laughs.  Totally worth it though.

That’s it for now, time to get back to work.  I’ll be gone on our trip till the 10th so check back for photos and updates that week sometime!

Putting a virtual pin in the globe

View Larger Map

South field trip and Capri

So last Thursday was the start of our South field trip, we take two trips as an entire group, we will go on our North trip in early November.  The plan for this trip was to take a train to Naples visit a couple museums and then we would get on a bus to Sorrento where we would be spending the night, and then on Friday we would head out to Pompeii for the day.  This trip started out bright and early at 5:30 am in order for all of us to get ready and take the metro train over to Termini Station where our train would be leaving from.  Once we found our car we all went back to sleep for awhile as best we could to get ready for the day.  We were going to be heading to our first stop straight from the train station.  We arrived in Naples and realized that it is actually a really dirty town, in a clean sense and crime rate to, they told us that the Mob is really influential on how the city runs, kind of a weird though (and rumor has it the day after we left the military was called in because something was going down.)  In Naples we went to the National Architectural Museum where they have a lot of art and sculptures, it would have been a cool museum but a lot of the exhibits were closed due to renovation so that stop only lasted a couple hours.  We also visited the Fine Art Museum, that was really neat, thousands of paintings were up on the wall.  We got back on the bus and rode or a little while and went to Sorrento, we stayed at a convent that night.  This place is run my 6 nuns, when we got there they were so happy to see us and showed us to our rooms right away.  It was really funny because they were all about 4 feet tall so I looked even taller.  We only had about 15 min to get in and drop our stuff and get changed for dinner.  Every year they do the Rome trip they take the student to The Lemon Tree, and really nice restaurant, there in town.  The had us pick what meal we wanted ahead of time so that we wouldn’t have to wait 5 hours ordering.  I’ve never had a full 5 course meal before so it was really cool.  They brought out bread appetizers first, then 2 pasta courses, a main course of fish and potatoes, and then a creme puff type dessert.  And don’t forget the wine to go with it, normally I don’t like white wine but it was really good there.  I was stuffed after all of that.  We took the train back to the convent and called it a night, but enjoyed the views from our balcony first.  The next day we got up and the nuns had been getting breakfast ready for us.  They had pastries brought in from somewhere, jam to go with those, little pieces of toast and some really good coffee.  After breakfast well hopped back on the bus and went to Pompeii for the day (the only bad thing about these trips is you end up stuffing everything in your backpack and carrying it with you if there is no bag check, luckily Pompeii did have one).  Pompeii is an ancient city that was destroyed when the near by volcano erupted and covered the entire town, until just recently in the past 30 years they have made a lot of progress digging out the remains.  The way the soot fell so fast many of the people didn’t have time to evacuate and where their bodies were formed negative space that was filled in with plaster making a perfect mold so you could literally see how they were when it happened.  There were also a lot of paintings on the walls that had survived the years of wear and tear.  We had seen really everything we wanted to in a couple hours and since we weren’t going back to Rome with the rest of the group we were free to leave when we wanted.  We picked up our bags and headed to the train station to go back to Sorrento where we would catch the ferry out to Capri, as we waited it started to down pour rain so we had 8 people all huddled under 4 umbrellas.  I’m sure that was funny to see.  When we got to Sorrento we went and found the ticket booth and then had to wait 45 min for our boat to leave so we killed time just walking around.  The ride out to the island was really cool, the view from the water was amazing and the whole trip only took 30 min, the boat was cruising.  When we go to Capri we had to catch a bus up to Anacapri which is the other town on the island, took us a little while to figure that out but we made it.  What really surprised us was how nice people were, when we got off the bus we all looked confused and kind of lost I’m sure and a guy came out of his shop and told us where to go.  When we checked into our hostel the people working were super happy to see us and brought us juice which was kind of different.  On Saturday we woke up kind of early and started out our day, we wanted to go to the blue grotto but it was closed because there to many waves.  We did a hike that took about an hour and looked at The Natural Arch, and some other well known rocks.  We took our time soaking in the views and taking pictures.  We headed back to the hostel laster in day and got all cleaned up, we wanted to go somewhere nice for dinner and get some good seafood.  I ordered the fried fish of the day, ended up being a plate with a little octopus, sardines, and a couple other types of calamari.  The squid was kind of a weird texture but it was actually pretty good, can’t say I will develop a taste for it though.  After dinner went found a little night club called the Red Lounge, they had an italian stand up comedian that was doing an act, we had no idea what was going on but it was still fun.  On Sunday the grotto was still closed so we had to cross that off the list again, we rode a ski lift up to the top of the mountain, it was a 12 min ride to the top.  It was super quiet the whole way up which was a nice change.  We hung out on the top and took a bunch of picture and then headed back down to the hostel for a quick swimsuit change, girls had found a small beach and a spot to go cliff jumping the day before so we all headed over there.  We swam out to this rock and climbed up, it was about a 15-20 foot drop by the time you added in your jump height, it was a lot of fun.  What we didn’t know was that there were jelly fish in the water, a couple people got small stings to that kind of killed the swimming for the day.  Since it was Sunday already everyone had to head back to Rome; Garrett, Tim, and I had decided to stay an extra night so we headed back to the hostel and took a much needed nap.  For dinner we got cleaned up and went to the Capri side of the island, I got seafood pasta this time, amazing.  The clams and stuff were still in the shell and the noodles were really good.  We also found what might be the best gelato we have had since we have been here.  This area of Capri is like their 5th Ave. in New York, every high priced store you could want all in a row.  D&G, Armani, Prada, Hugo Boss, Rolex, and all the expensive Italian store to.  We walked down the street just thinking about how much money we could spend, there was a really nice suit in one of the windows, €3600.  There was a store called Harmot and Blaine that had a weiner dog as their logo, and since that’s pretty much my favorite dog I thought it would be cool to get something with that logo on it.  There was a stocking cap on the manikin in the window-asked how much it was….€150….made of 100% cashmere.  After all that fun we rode the bus back to the hostel and sadly did a little bit of homework so we didn’t feel so far behind, but we were so worn our from the weekend we had the lights out by 10:30, I don’t remember the last time I went to bed at 10:30.  Monday was our last chance for the grotto to be open but it was still closed, the tides were still to high for boats to go in so we just started to make out way back to Rome which was a small adventure in itself.  We caught a ferry back to Naples this time so that we could leave straight from there and not have to deal with going back to Sorrento.  I had called the girls who left the day before and asked how to get back to the train station and they said they took a cab since that was the easiest way to do it.  We got a cab and I told him to take us to Napoli Centrali which was easy enough, but once they hit the gas they are off to the races.  I wasn’t scared sitting in the front, more in amazement that everyone drives that crazy and there aren’t more accidents.  We had been driving a little but when he yells ‘Mama Mia!’ and pulls a u-turn and starts weaving down a bunch of side streets and we had no idea what was going on.  I guess there was a bunch of traffic that he was trying to avoid but it was all over.  We made it to a different main road but traffic was almost at a standstill.  It took about 20 min to get to the station and when he dropped us off he kept motioning that it was very busy and traffic was crazy and he was laughing about it, it was a crazy ride.  It was actually really good timing because we bought train tickets back and there was a train back to Rome leaving in 30 min so we just went right to the platform.  Got back to Rome at about 3:30, I walked back to our apartment so I could stop at the store and get milk since I knew I was out at home.  All in all it was an very good weekend, I put up some of the pictures on the web gallery so you will have to check those out.

http://gallery.me.com/cgroten1#gallery

Since we have been back it has been a very busy week, we had our sketchbook journals due on Wednesday so I spent a couple days getting that wrapped up.  We also had an art history quiz today that I was busy studying for.  The busy part of the week is over but now we have a project due on Tuesday so that will keep us busy this weekend.  It was originally supposed to be due Wed. with the sketchbook but they extended the deadline to next Tuesday which we all needed.  Should have plenty of time to get it done now.

No other big travel plans for the rest of the month, need to spend some time crossing off my Rome list to.

Talk to you all later,

Collin

Day trip to Assisi and a breath of fresh air

I don’t usually update the blog during the week since it’s pretty much business as usually and we are pretty busy with class and then working on projects so weekends are definitely the time to go sightseeing and check stuff out.  

We had one of our first real projects due last friday so that kept us all busy for the whole week, we were all pretty burnt out after that week.  Luckily we knew we had a day trip to Assisi plus every weekend is a 3 day weekend for us so plenty of time to take a break before we ramp up to the next week. On Saturday we all had to be up and at studio by 7:45 am to get on the bus to Assisi, it was a group of about 60 so almost everyone here went.  Assisi is a small town that is built up on a hill, it’s about a 2.5 hour bus ride to get there. We were all pretty tired from the night before so  I think everybody just plugged in and fell asleep, I slept the whole way and I can’t sleep in cars at all so that was really nice.  My neck didn’t feel so nice once we got there though, weird position the entire way there.  The reason we went to Assisi is for the two churches that are in the town and the artists that have paintings on the walls and ceilings.  The trip was more intended for the people in studio arts but everyone was invited so we took the chance to go see it.  We got dropped off at the beginning of town and were told to be back by 5:15 for the bus ride home so we had the whole day to do what ever we wanted.  I would much rather just explore that have somebody lead us around all day.  Since it was about 11:00 when we got there we found a little sit down restaurant and got some food. We walked around and checked out the churches and were all in awe at how big they really are and how long they have lasted.  We couldn’t take pictures in the churches but that was probably ok, that just meant I didn’t see everything through the lens for once.  When we could take pictures I was kind of mad at myself because I forgot to grab my bigger zoom lens and throw it in my bag.  It would have been kind of nice to have but o well.  We walked up to the top of the hill were there was a big castle, we hung out there and took goofy pictures for a little while.  It was really cool as in temperature on the top of the hill and was also kind of breezy.  The air was nice and fresh, it was quiet, and there weren’t thousands of motorinis flying around.  The views also reminded us of Iowa, lots of fields, rolling hills and lots of wooded areas to. By the time we did all of that it was time to talk back down to the bus.  We got back to our apartment about 10:00 and we were all pretty tired so I just hung out and looked at the pictures from the day and crashed.  Assisi was a cool place but I’m glad it was only a day trip, of course I could have taken pictures there for hours and and night it would have looked pretty cool but one day is enough to see it all for once.  I uploaded some picture from Assisi to a new album so you can look at those here:

http://gallery.me.com/cgroten1#100083

Today we took our italian final and are done with that for the semester, hopefully we all pass that class.  We only have two days this week then we leave on Thursday for our south field trip, we will go to Naples, Sorrento and Pompeii as a group.  We could have come back Friday afternoon but we are going to stay down there and go to the island of Capri for a couple days.  I’ll be sure to do an update after that trip, it probably won’t be until later next week since we have a project due Wednesday again, there may be a few late nights getting that one done.

For the different view of the apartment you can check out our roommate Greg’s blog.  He does a pretty good job of showing off the lighter side of things in our apartment.

http://web.me.com/gregervanian/Roma/Blog/Blog.html

That’s all for now