blog 16 Sunday may 20th!

today is day 1 in Venice! so hello from Venice. :) we are currently staying at a bed an breakfast, which is the best decision we could have made, our bed and breakfast renters have been very helpful. they got us bus tickets and also picked us up and dropped us off from the airport and back into Venice. they are named Fausto and Debra. and he looks like george clooney from nose up. tomorrow we get breakfast at 8am. anything I better than 3am like this morning. we got picked up by a private car service which was a van, and the doorman from our apartment watched us as we climbed into this unmarked van, it probably looked like a very strange situation. lol. there was a surprisingly number of cars on the road at 3:45 am...thankfully not as many as there could have been. because that would have not made for fun driving. we got to the airport at 4...although it wasn't open until 5. we were first in line to go through security. our plane didn't leave till 7. but we started boarding at 6:15ish. since we had no assigned seats, everyone charges to the Gate, but it didn't matter because once w got through, we were shuttled ona bus and actually able to board the plane from stairs outside...like they do in movies! it was so cool. an our group of 5 made it into the front part of the plane, an area I've never Been in! the plane was supposed to be 1hr and 15 min, instead, it took less than 45 min. and we met Fausto at the airport and he drove us to the bed and breakfast. on a side note, cars in Italy are super small, so we were wondering what about families that are larger than 4 people, and we found out th answer to that, faustos car only had 4 passwnge seats, with one more seat in the trunk, but it was an actual seat! the bed and breakfast is this cute little house that's yellow. it adorable! from there we payed and got information , then dropped off in Venice, where we just started wondering around. and ended up on a gondalo ride, ( the long boats with the driver in the red stripped shirt) he whistled and sang a bit, it only cost 16€ each while we watche another group get charged 200€! lol we got information about various buildings, did u know in venice there are more churches than islands? the gandalo was awesome, and our pictures probably are in a million peoples pictures tonight. we did lots of shopping and randomly walked into a few churches. it started raining and once it starte to downpour, we decided at around 5. to find our bus home..that took a little bit of time, but we did it. our bed and breakfast is right across from a pizza place, that we ate supper at, and now we are all in bed and it's 9pm.
so ttyl! marsha

blog 15! saturday may 19th!

yeppers, this Blog is being written to you pretty early in my day. it's currently 7:13pm my time. and I'm actually getting ready for bed. this will be the 2nd night in two nights that I will be going to bed at 8. before I get to telling you the reason why, I shall inform you about my day. today we went out to visit the catacombs. we met our guide..Andrea. (different Andrea from our cooking instructor) at a church we had never been to called gnovoni... something I can't spell or say. from there we bused/walked to saint sebastians church were the catacombs were located under. we had an English guide who was NOT enthusiastic or easy to listen to. I could hve done a better job. it was still cool to see. after that, we as in Kate, alex, and myself, went to find a mcdonalds. signs here are not very helpful. we found one, but there is nothing called fast food here! when w first arrieved in Rome, we were told the only people who eat mcdonalds are children, teena, and tourists. and this was true. I can't even describe the mcdonalds. excep we waited in one of at least 10 lines ( on the 2nd floor, first floor is the mcafe and ice cream) for at least 13min. once we ordered it took us another 10min to find our seats. we literally had to push people out of way to sit down, and people just sit with strangers because there is no sitting room. after that we were planning on taking the hill back to the Vatican because it had a beautdil view but we couldn't remember the bus, so we came back to the apartment, I facetimes my bro and Sis in law jeff and Sarah then we made supper of homemad macaroni and cheese and now it's time for bed, because the car which is picking us up to go to the airport to go to venice is arriving at 3:45am. so goodnight!
First picture is of gnovoni, 2nd is of saint sebastian, and 3rd a picture of two of my friends at McDonald's.

Friday may 18th! blog 14

Bonjourno! that means good morning! writing this to you the morning after because last night... Somehow I fell asleep by 8 o'clock. pathetic! my last open night in Rome and I fall asleep! oh well. yesterday was our last day meeting up with Paulo as our tour guide. we went and saw some mid-evil churches around Rome, and found out that the English version. of what we call midevil is different to what it was here in Rome. instead of gothic castles, the Romans were trying to prevent the gothic influence, so these churches were built as sanctuaries and monasteries. the first one we saw..which I don't have the nAme of on me...something about four men, was built as a fortress for the pope to protect against German invasions. it's now a monastery. the next church we saw was actually an circular church. This church had paintings on the side depicting the ways various people were put to death as martyrs for Christianity. They were very gruesome. This church is said to be one of the locations or axis for the final judgement, because it is circular. The final church and location we went to see was two houses built in the early centuries under a church. The church is of saint Paul and Peter, because it was said in the houses, they found an urn and they knew it was a sacred urn that held ashes of at least 2 saints, and it's thought to be Paul and Peter. I might of messed that up, but it was something like that. It was again really cool to be in the remains of an ancient house and to see what was still preserved and left over. After we left paulo, Kate, Alex, and I went back to the apartment, we were very proud of our map skills in e again. Once we made it back to the apartment, we geared up and headed back out (after lunch) to go to the pantheon again and really look around. It was once again a very cool site to see. After the pantheon we decided to just walk around towards the Trevi fountain. We stopped at a few stores on the way. ...and somehow ended up by the coliseum. So we just hopped in a bus and headed home. Once home, we took another break, then headed out to find a burkenstock store we had stumbled across once, but didn't mark on a map nor did we stop...of course,we couldn't find it. So we stopped early for a restaurant for supper. This one was prescribed to me by cousin Beth. and it was delicious! All three of us at all our food. And it was such good food!!! We came back to our apartment..and I fell asleep. And that's how our night ended. Today we visit the catacombs, and will also be an early night because we have a flight to Venice we are getting picked up for at 3:30 am. Gross.
Pic 1. With Paulo!
Pic 2, the third church
3. Food
4. Circular church
5. Empty plates
6. First church

May 17th, Thursday

Today we had our exams for class, after our exam, and scavenger hunt, which Kate and I won, we went got pizza sandwich for lunch. Here they weigh the pizza and charge per weight, they also fold it over like a sandwich. It was delicious. Then we met our guide Paulo, and went to the bourghese which is like a villa, garden, and mansion built just for famous sculptures and paintings. The garden area seemed like a central park idea. In the building. We weren't allowed to take anything but our notebooks and bodies, so unfortunately no cameras. We only had 2 hrs, and we had to be escorted out pretty much, we could have spent 2hrs per room, and there were a ton of rooms, each with bunches paintings and sculptures all with unique stories. My favorite was an sculpture of David right before he was to fight goliath. After the bourghese, we made a very proud walk back to the piazza novina to get our favorite gelato, then the plan was to find McDonald's and a few tourist shops, we couldn't find McDonald's...so we ended up at a Chinese restaurant across from our apartment. If was really good, u could taste the freshness if the chicken. Then we came home and did laundry, no we sleep. Ciao
Pics= class w/our teacher, bourghese, and dinner at the restaurant.

Blog may 16th, Wednesday

Today we busted the villa Adriana. Which is actually Haidrians villa. Haidrian was an emperor in older roman times, and he built this village, that had a garden with a palace. It house 3,000 people, 1,000 of them slaves. And it's now a bunch of ruins, similar to ostria. And actually only 1/5th of it has been excavated. It was really beautiful, and crazy what they could do with just stones and cement and clay back then, and how it all still remains. After this, we went to the top of the village of tipoli. Where the villa d'esta was located. This villa was by the d'esta family when one of its dudes who's name escapes me failed at becoming pope, so he became a cardinal of the village of tipoli. So he built this palace with an extravagant garden and fountains. It was beautiful and the fountains many of them still work. And they had many mechanical pieces to them. It was beautiful to walk though, and see the view from the top of the mountain. Also one of the fountains had an organ that was pretty old from the 16th century that played
At like 4:30. It also started raining then too, but it was a nice rain. The bus ride home was better than our ride there. It took an hour at least both ways, but the bus was packed on the way there so some of us stood the whole time, while on the way home all of us got seats. Then when we got home it was a supermarket stop where we got necessities, then we went to eat. We stopped at a tourist restaurant, where the guys convinced us to stop and eat, in the end we each only paid 10€ for a at least, 20€ meal. It had free glass wine which was good, and bread, along with coke cola. And a cappuccino for me, along with the lasagna I ordered which Kate ate bc she didn't like her pizza. So we switched, then because it's rude not to eat all your food, I ate the rest of Alex's lasagna, Then they brought out gelato, which we had told our favorite main gelato place we were coming back to get gelato, and so when our restaurant brought out spoons first was hand fed to Kate, then I had to get my gelato through a kiss. then we went back to our favorite gelato place and ordered smalls and got larges with like twelve different favors it seemed like! Delicious, and they remembered us, and told us to come back tomorrow, which we will have to do, ok I have an exam tomorrow. Ttyl! Marsha

may 15th blog #11? Tuesday!

I'm so lost on what number I'm on, I'm lucky enough to know what day of the week it is. I'm exhausted, like always, and ready to go to bed reallll soon. it 11:02pm an I just finished my supper dishes. we just had supper at 10:45pm. today we had class in the morning. after class, we were supposed to go to the catacombs, but our professor might have had tickets for a concert, which in fact, he did. so we were given the rest of the day off, till we were going to meet at 5:15 for heading to the bus to take us to the concert. so we walked to a few tourist shops on the way back to our apartment, where I took a lovely 1,5 hr nap. :) it was wonderful. we also snacked alot, because we knew we wouldn't really get supper till late. and late it was. the concert we all dressed up for, I wore one of my 2 new dresses! :) the concert was In an area of town we called really modern. and it was a Beethoven and orchestra concert with singers and violins and a conductor who was awesome. we sat in the cheap sections, so instead of seeing the conductor back, we saw his font as he faced the choir/band. he was very animated,..and young! it was relaxing just sittin there. then we got first on the bus so we all stole seats, and finally back home. tomorrow is going to be a very early day. but it will be fun, ok mighty night!
marsha

Blog 10 may 14(Monday)

Once I get this post published, I will officially be caught up! :) yay!!!
Today was a tiring day, I might say that about every day but today especially felt like it. We didn't even do much, except walk around and go to class. We met our teacher at 9:30 this am, although we thought he said 9. So we were all went to do our own thing while we waited for him. I went down to the water under the bridge and almost fell asleep. That was probably the warmest I felt all day. It was freezing today, and I forgot to grab my jacket. It was also super windy and there was a lot of dust and pillow flying through the air, we saw many people walking around with masks on. It got better by the afternoon. First we went into st. Cecilia's church. She was one of three major females who had churches named after them during the Christian period, her story was that she didn't want to convert back from christianit6, so they tried to kill her by suffocation (which failed), by beheading (which failed), and finally by throwing out a window (which worked) but she then became a martyr and when her grave was opens up in the 1600s, they found her lying on her side, with a golden cloak around her, so the church had lots of gold in it. After that, we took a walk along the river again, and especially on the little island on the middle, which houses the hospital. We then started the walk of replication for Aeneas, who was the mythological legend of the founding of Rome, we had to read the story for class. We started at Hercules alter which actually wasn't the real one, although we saw the pieces from the original in the church nearby. Our teacher talked a lot today about various elements from aeneas and such which are really interesting, if you want to hear them. Basically we saw the old and imperial forums from a different angle, more like one he would have seen when he entered the city. If he would have entered it during Virgil ( the writers) time. After the walk, we went to find food, and we had pizza at this little shop where slices were weighed for price, then class where we learned how to ask directions. Then we had to go out and actually ask people how to get someplace, which was difficult, because our school is housed in the tourist district, so all the people we asked were tourists, in the end we asked people in shops, and tried to convey the message that we didn't actually have to to go to the place we were trying to find. After class, Kate, Alex, and myself went shopping in the district around school. I bought a sweatshirt and bag From a souvinar shop, and got hit on by the store owner ;) he gave me 5€ off on both of my items, and Alex too, because she was with me, and all because I said I didn't have a boyfriend, ;) he gave me his business card and told me to come back :) I also got a few gifts for people, which I'm not gonna mention. Came back to apartment and made spagetti for dinner. And then relaxed/shared our technology. Tomorrow we are touring the catacombs! Yay! :) ok ttyl! Ciao! :)
Pic 1. Church near Hercules t
2. St. Cecilia church
3. Water view!