Last weekend we had a free weekend! Friday I had a much needed lazy day where I caught up on sleep!! Saturday we had an art visit in the morning at a house in Rome that was painted by Raphael. It still amazes me that a famous artist was hired to paint a house that someone lives in! After this Devan and I went to the Trevi Fountain and just walked from there. We didn’t have a destination planned, we just walked. We found a nice bench and sat and people watched for about a half hour. After a lot of laughs, we headed back home. It was time to study for our Renaissance Art mid-term that was Monday. Jenna and I made a slide-show of all the art that we needed to know, including the title, artist, location, and year it was done. We had about 50 slides in total, and we all sat around the dining room table taking turns naming these facts. What a fun Saturday night!!
Sunday morning we were up very early to head to Perugia for the chocolate festival! We met a group of girls on the train who were high school students studying for the whole year. I have never felt more older than somebody than in this moment. Not only did they physically look smaller, but after hearing about the restrictions their program put on them, I felt so much older! We followed them off the train and to the bus (which we had no idea which to take but thank God they did their research). After walking up a huge hill we were met with a huge crowd of people. We had to hold on to one another in order not to lose a member of our group. We made our way to a food tent and somehow managed to order a sausage with peppers and unions. There were a bunch of other tents filled with chocolate items for sale. We stopped and each bought a chocolate bar and then swapped pieces. Yum!! After that we just walked around looking at all the items and then walked to the wall to look a the view of the city below. That view still amazes me. We have seen it a few different times so far: the rolling hills with buildings popping up. We decided to go back to the area near the train station and get some wine before heading back to Rome. We split a bottle of wine and chatted and then headed to the train station with a half hour to spare. Turns out that there are two different signs for the trains. The first is the incoming train with the track number, and the other is the departing train with the track number. Apparently we were looking at the wrong board, which still doesn’t make much sense to me, but all-in-all we missed our train. We couldn’t stop laughing at the fact that we had literally sat there and watched our train leave. We went back to the station and saw that another train was leaving in two hours, so without missing a beat we headed back to the same restaurant. We ordered some more wine along with some pizza. We made the next train to the Termini station, and then thankfully caught the last metro of the night back to our house. What a fun day!!
Yesterday we went to mass at The Church of England for Theology class. I wasn’t sure what to expect and went in blindly. As we were walking in the church, was more of a room in a building than a church, the woman preacher shook all our hands. A woman preacher!!! That alone made me smile through the whole mass. The rest of the mass was similar to that of Catholic mass, but a lot less formal. At the end of the service, as it is customary, we all went around and introduced ourselves, and then went to the next room for a delicious lunch! I loved the mass so much and felt so welcomed!
My experience at the Church of England was a complete contrast to the mass I went to tonight. For Theology we have to go to masses celebrated in different languages, so tonight we went to one in Latin. It was how mass was celebrated years ago. We were back to the massive church. We got there and knelled right away on the hard wooden kneelers for the most of mass. Apparently at these masses the priest faces the same was the parishioners do as if he is leading them in the mass. Although I like this explanation, it was like the priest was whispering the whole time. Even if the mass was in English I wouldn’t have been able to understand what he was saying. This made it impossible to enjoy and was more like a quiet mass for reflection. I couldn’t get out of the church fast enough. Thank God that’s the only time in my life I have to experience something like that.
Tomorrow is already the end of our week! We are going to an event for Halloween! Although Halloween isn’t really celebrated here, there are many American study abroad students so they can still make money out of the holiday!!
Friday Jenna, Devan, Sinead, and I leave for Venice for the weekend!!!
Thanks for reading!!! xoxo
slreed24 