Photo Comparison Project: Tensions While Asserting Identity

Protest in Rome, Italy (June, 2010).

Protest in Istanbul, Turkey (July, 2010).

A collective national identity can be viewed as a compilation of smaller, individualized identities. In Italy, a stereotypical Italian can be a person from the lazy south, the economy-driven north, or an immigrant who married a native Italian. Similarly, a Turk can live in Asia, Europe or even Kurdistan – a place where people wish to be recognized independently from Turkey. Regardless of the nature of the identity that individuals associate themselves with, in order to assert your accepted or wishful identity people must make their opinion known. Often, this statement takes the form of a public protest. Controlling and maintaining a national identity is also in the interest of a nation’s government. If identity were a coin, the government’s viewpoint, or side, is usually enforced by police who attempt to control protests representing the citizen’s perspective, or the flip side of the coin.

To a foreigner, police presence or force can be surprising and startling, while conversely a demonstration anywhere in the world often sparks curiosity and garners support for a specific cause. Police seem to have this effect on foreigners because each country accepts different police behavior. Therefore, the way in which police and protestors interact provides a clue as to the nature of national identity. For example, is the country a dictatorship or a democracy? From a distance I was able to capture demonstrator and police relations in both Rome and Istanbul. Despite the different reasons for protest, demonstration and police tactics appear very similar in these two major cities.

The first similarity that stands out in the two sets of photographs is the demonstrators’ use of color - both signs display light colored (yellow or white) letters on a red background. This is a strategic mechanism employed to gain attention and increase public awareness about the issue at hand. One can imagine that although the goal of a demonstration is to promote consciousness, these protestors do not want to provoke or gain excessive attention from the police. Police response to such a statement could give the foreigner a feel for how the government responds to citizen uprising. For example, do they feel threatened because people are not buying the propaganda, or is the government largely popular and not endangered by less popular politics? Interestingly, the flag being carried by the Italian demonstrators is a peace flag. Although I do not know about the general message of the photographed protest, this flag could be another strategic device to alert the polizia of their peaceful intentions.

Additionally, the pictures of police accurately reflect the size of the demonstrations. In Rome, the protest was very large, such that it filled and blocked off a main thoroughfare. The number of polizia and the formation they used to assert their presence, and control the protest, mirrored the arrangement of the demonstrators. On the other hand, the protest in Istanbul was much smaller in scale; essentially the entire group of people can be seen in the photograph. In this context the police appear rather tolerant, as if they are simply required to be there, and are small in number. Regardless of their number, the police in Istanbul and Rome were outfitted almost identically, with bulletproof vests, guns, and riot shields. This observation about dress highlights an intentional display of imposing power that out-does the balance in number that is created between protestors and police.

Taken together, these pictures give the foreigner a sense of tension between the citizen’s desired identities and police-enforced citizen compliance to the government’s laws and politics; both groups are making a statement. The protestors are attracting attention to an issue that they feel should be better represented while the police, a proxy for the government, work to establish a boundary with respect to how far the demonstration can proceed, or raise awareness. Little by little, as the boundary is moved forwards or back, individual perception and national sentiment changes, consequently leading to a unique concept of identity.

Istanbul: Day 5

Finally, a picture of a typical Turkish breakfast! Show to the right are 2 simit filled with cheese as well as Turkish tea (pronounced as we say chai). The tea comes very hot and is best with one sugar cube. This breakfast costs less than 3 Turkish Lira, which is $2. I'm loving the exchange rate in Turkey!







Our entire morning was spent exploring a museum that had an exhibit of ancient - 19th century art, to include pieces made during the Roman and Ottoman Empires. For example, I did a project on glass and its shared trade between the Middle East and Italy, and I got to see a 2nd century glass bowl.

In the afternoon we went on a bus tour of the Asian part of Turkey. A professor at Bogazici University who recently got is Ph.D. from UW told us all about urbanization. In short, people, both rich and poor, illegally invade forest lands and settle there. They then wait until legislation changes such that their taking of the land is not illegal. Now, the government is building houses for the people living in shanty town so that they can renovate their homes and sell them to upper middle class citizens. One of the pictures I posted yesterday protests this in another part of Istanbul. It was only in the areas we saw on the Asian side that I actually saw animals. For example, I saw goat and sheep herders grazing their animals on the uknpopulated hillsides with their broken down settlement located at the top of the hill. Seeing this made me realize how hard it is for the people to move without losing their livelihood and identity. Moreover, the government housing isn't conducive to the way these people live. For example, most of the extended family lives together - this isn't taken in to consideration while building the government housing. Additionally, these houses aren't like government houses as we think of them. Instead, they are places that will likely raise in rent in the near future, and consequently force the tenets, which are part of a very poor economic class, to relocate once again.

Ok, on to something much lighter now! We visited the main campus of Bogazici (Bwa-zichi) University. Previously this campus was a high school (boarding school) and my prof. went there! The campus is really beautiful - it overlooks the water and the old city walls. Also, there are cats and kittens everywhere! Istanbul has a large population of wild cats and dogs, but most of the cats are friendly. The little black kitten was one that always hung out at the cafe I went to in the morning.

We then went down to the water to hang out and have dinner. Below is a day and night picture of the same mosque.

Istanul: Day 4

Today we saw a few mosques built my the famous architect, Mimar Sinan, in the 16th century during the height of the Ottoman Empire.

Rustempasa. This mosque was somewhat small, consequently giving it a cozy feel. The tiles decorating it were absolutely beautiful.

Sokollu Mehmet Pasha Mosque. This one was my favorite. It was quite spacious and the decorations are very light and tasteful. I didn't get overwhelmed when first walking into this mosque, as I had with mosques decorated with thousands of tiles.

For lunch we were given free time to explore the area and the neighboring spice market. For desert we tried some of the best baklava in the city - it was filled with pistachios, and very sweet and good.








Tea for sale at the spice market.













Dried fruit stuffed with nuts. I've never seen this before, so I thought it'd be fun to share - they look good. I didn't try them though...











Our afternoon was fill with another tour of a church-turned-mosque, which is now a museum.This is an 11th-century church was noted for its remarkable mosaics illustrating scenes from the life of Christ and the Virgin Mary.

The picture shown here is my favorite - it is just so precise! The majority of the other mosaics in the museum are in better shape (more complete). A special artist was brought in to create the faces of these biblical figures. Even from this picture one can see how detailed the face is.


In the afternoon we walked through one of the poorer parts of the city on the European side of Turkey. The sense of community was very strong in this area. Women and girls gathered on the streets to chat and retired/unemployed men sat in the tea shops laughing and playing cards. Children, too, entertained themselves with "marble soccer" and rain that had collected in a dip in the road.


These signs in the window are to protest the government's plan to restore these building, consequently forcing their tenets out of their homes.

Our afternoon ended with a gorgeous and relaxing 1.5 hour cruise on the Bosphorous (the strait separating European and Asian Turkey).

Here are some of my favorite pictures from the cruise.









A mosque located right down on the water. This is a good example of how these are everywhere, and seem to fit in just like any other building, despite being very recognizable by the minarets.

Istanbul: Day 3

Today we saw all of the major sites in Istanbul! We went the the Blue Mosque, some palace, Hagia Sophia and the Basilica Cistern. Here are the highlights...


Hagia Sophie - or ayasofya in Turkish - is a Christian church turned into a mosque. When this church was turned into a mosque, no images of Christ (or other religious figures) could be depicted; this is a principle of Islam. To cover up these images, muslims painted over the christian mosaics. During the restoration such paintings were removed. Ironically, painting over the mosaics effectively preserved them.

Christian mosaics.

Islamic paintings (there are mosaics underneath).

Both christian and Islamic symbols.

The Basilica Cistern. This was used in the James bond movie From Russia with Love.












Italy is known for its coffee and wine, and Turkey is known for its Turkish Delight. This is a soft, chewy candy, often with nuts in the middle, that is covered in powdered sugar. At first, I really didn't like them, but now I'm beginning to become a fan of the pistachio kind. They come in all flavors (rose, mint, nuts, etc.).





Cigarette Cartons
Cigarette cartons from Turkey! Also, these pictures will give you a taste as to how foreign Turkish is! Seriously, I look around and often cannot understand any of the street signs. I tried using google translate on these, but the warnings did not make sense in English.

Istanbul: Day 2

This morning I got up bright and early to check out the Turkish coffee scene before we had to meet as a group at 8:30. FOr breakfast, people eat Turkish bagels called simit (see picture). Today I got a bun-shaped one that had cheese inside.

Unfortunately, I didn't sleep all that well. There are a lot of stray dogs around the city that were barking that woke me up, and of course the 4ish am Muslim call to prayer. Today was a holiday in Turkey, so this call wasn't heard again until 8:30-ish pm.


Here are some of the highlights of my first full day in Istanbul! Ok now the coffee update...waaay worse than Italy. I guess that can be expected, but still Turkish coffee has definitely made a name for itself! It's brewed slowly so that it's quite thick. It's usually consumed with either one or two cubes of sugar - I had one. So we did go to the first cafe place we went too, and I don't think they were serving quality coffee, but I still seriously doubt the coffee will grow on me. I am a fan of the tea, though.
Tea at an old madrassa. Between sites we took a tea break at an old madrassa, which is now a hookah lounge/cafe. The atmosphere inside was extremely relaxed!










1/3 of a giant obelisk from Egypt! If I remember correctly it's from the 15th century BC.

















Lunch at the Culinary Institute of Istanbul. This meal, although good, was very modern. I will likely not eat most of these dishes again. For appetizers we had multiple types of bread (thin cracker things, cornbread and plain old bread). The next course was yogurt and wheat soup. This was sort of strange, but decent. Next came the parsley salad with beets, tomatoes, pickled carrots and a vinaigrette. Yep, that's right parsley salad. The first bite was the strangest, but it grew on me. The best dish came next - chicken over noodles with a sundried tomato paste. Pretty self explanatory. For dessert we had a dish was was similar to lemon jello, but it was not solid like jello. Instead, it was rather soupy with a little gelatin at the top. I could barely finish this as most of the dishes had been very lemony/acidic. I did have a great glass of white wine and tea, also.

Shopping at the Grand Bazaar. This place is huge - there are 4,000 shops! The shops are grouped by the items they sell. The main categories are leather goods, jewelry, ceramics, and scarves/clothes/linens. This was much more fun than shopping in Rome because the exchange rate for the Turkish Lira is much better than the euro (1.5 TL: 1 USD).





This evening is the only evening we have free in Istanbul. After such a long day of traveling yesterday, not a great sleep, drinking tea and coffee and wine, of course I got a headache. By the time we got back to the university it was 6pm and I had to lay down.

The weather here is so much nicer than Rome! It may be a little more muggy, but it's only in the mid to upper eighties and there is always a strong breeze coming off the water. I did manage to get sunburned today, despite putting on sunscreen.

Tempted by productivity, Sarah and I walked a short distance to grab a quick bit to eat. We came to a decent looking restaurant and decided to give it a go. The waiter didn't speak English so we mainly pointed at pictures to convey what we wanted. Thinking we asked for water, we were brought milky-yogurt. Luckily, this worked out well because we also got a spicy salsa-type dish with our meal. Oh, and we can't drink tap water here so either way we would have to pay for a drink. Dinner was very good! I have no idea what type of meat it was, but it was good.

ISTANBUL! Day 1

Wooohooo! Today, we flew into Asian Turkey and then crossed the Bosphorus into European Turkey. The picture to the right is just on the Asian edge of the Bosphorus. It's been a very successful traveling day! And, I can add Asia to my list of continents visited.






After driving for about 45 minutes we made it to Bogazici University where I will be staying in the dorms for the next 5 days! I'm staying in a room with 3 other girls (Melissa, Kristin and Sarah - same group as Rome) and then in our suite there is another room of 4 girls. We have a bathroom with 2 showers, toilets, etc., and a kitchenette.

So the bad news about our travel adventure was that many people got things stolen out of their checked bags - luckily mine was not gone through. As a group we lost 2 external hard drives (containing many pictures not located anywhere else), jewelry and a PSP.

Our time n Turkey last night was consumed by an AMAZING dinner. Ready for it? Here is goes...
P.S. I eat beef now! I've had it, and probably other meats that I don't even know what they are, two nights in a row now!

Appetizers of babaganoush, tomato salad, cheese, eggplant + yogurt sauce, eggplant stuffed with rice, all on a hot, puffy bread (not shown).

Course 1: Flat bread + meat + very good grilled onion, tomato and peppers! I'd say this is the Turkish version of a fajita.

Course 1, part 2: The best hamburger I've ever had! It must have been beef with vegetable and wrapped in a flat bread/tortilla thing. This was followed with

Course 2: Woops, didn't get a picture of this! The consisted of individually served pieces of meat. There was chicken, and one or two types of beef. The chicken was amazingly tender and they were both super flavorful!

Dessert, part 2: So part one consisted of watermelon, cherries and Turkish apricots - all very good. This, is pistachio baklava with ice cream. I wasn't a huge fan of this, but definitely gave it a try.

Sorry Rome, this food is way better!

Last day in Rome!

Today is my last day in Rome!! I cannot believe how fast the time has gone!

On our way home from class this morning, we stopped at Sarah's favorite bakery (she goes there almost every day) to say bye to her friend. He always giver her tastes, discounts, etc. So Kristin and I go there with her and he cuts us each slices of pizza - thick, salty, yummy crust with some sort of lettuce, tomatoes mozzarella and olive oil. It was delicious. And he wouldn't let her pay for it. I really wanted to try a spinach and cheese one that they had just brought out, so I go and ask for it and hand him a 5 euro bill. He tried to refuse, but I kept on asking him to take my money. So, he went over to the cash register and gave me 4 coins. Thinking he had charged me 2.50 euro or something, I look and he had given me back my 5 euro in coins. People are really really nice around here.

Next, we had to make our entire apartment spotless and pack. I'm crossing my fingers that my suitcase isn't over the 15kg limit! I guess I'll find out tomorrow...


A beautiful street shrine of Mary. There are these all over the city! Sometimes as many as 3 or 4 in a single piazza.










Tonight we have a final, group dinner at a really nice place in the heart of Rome! It looks expensive, so I'm really excited to go and not have to worry about money (the program is paying, with our money, of course). Check out their website if you're curious...
http://www.pierluigi.it/e_index.asp

Gelato (from the past week)
Pear Granite - First, a little background. Granite is much icier than gelato. Until today, I'd only seen it as lemon-flavored - sort of like a lemon/lemonade snow cone. Anyway, I today I topped this great pear granite on top of my favorite frozen yogurt. It was delicious and reminded me of applesauce (the good stuff my mom makes) with yogurt.

After already having frozen yogurt at lunch, Lisa took us out for gelato after art history...

Grapefruit - This gelato flavor was ok. I'm not a huge fan of grapefruit, but it was fruity and refreshing, which was exactly what I was looking for this afternoon.

Strawberry/raspberry - Ok funny story. I hadn't tried respberry yet and I wanted to, so I said "raspberry" in english. The man working behind the counter didn't hear/understand me, so I said "fragola" which happens to be strawberry. DAMN! I've had strawberry many times and really wanted to get raspberry :(

Catching up on posts...

Ok, so once again sorry for the lame blog post! I swear things will get more exciting when I get to Istanbul on Friday! And, we will have wifi in the dorms that we are staying in, so I won't have any excuses for a lack of posts.


The highlight of my week thus far was going to St. Peter's on Monday. Because there are no paintings (all statues and mosaics) inside the church, I was able to take lots of pictures. It was by far the most beautiful church we have seen so far (duh). I hope you enjoy the pictures - especially you Catholics!






A pretty stream of light shining in.













The tip top of the baldachino captured while looking up into the dome. Only the pope can preach from beneath here as this situates him directly above the bones of St. Peter and under the dome connecting him to god.














Gelato Substitute
Cafe Zero (espresso) - not nearly as good as the mocha flavor, probably because of the lack chocolate. And, I tried a bite of Kristin's cappuccino flavored one that was also better than mine - it has a creamy layer of something like vanilla ice cream over the coffee layer :)

Last Weekend in Roma!

Friday night, my apartment mates and I went down to the banks of the Tiber River (less than 10 minutes from my apartment) where there are a ton of tents lining both sides of the river selling goods, serving drinks/food, and running carnival games. These tents are open every night - the night life around here is crazy! After walking through only about one quarter of the vendors, we picked a bar and ordered a drink. We had a great time tasting each other's drinks and chatting before heading home for the night.


On Saturday night the boys organized a potluck. We brought 2 tart/pie-type things at our favorite bakery. To be honest, I'm really not a fan of Italian desserts (except for gelato/chocolate). The things we got were orange and blackberry. The crust was pretty bland - it needed way more sugar and butter. Anyways, there was a ton of food. We had a fruit + yogurt salad, caprese, brochette, seafood stir fry, gnocchi, pasta, fried rice and really really good lime chicken. Basically, I ate way too much.

Sunday night we found a cute little bar near our apartment and watched the World Cup final! Go Spain! It was a long (only one goal in over time), but good game. Both teams obviously deserved to be there. During the game I kept on getting distracted by the different languages being spoken. There were a few people from the Netherlands, some who spoke English, and of course the Italians. I did feel a little bad for the Dutch that were sitting next to me...apparently they've lost in the finals a few times now.

All in all, I had to do a lot of schoolwork this weekend (2 papers/presentations so work on), but I still had time to be social and eat lots of good food!

So because I haven't blogged in so long...I'll just post some pictures from the past week.

Beautiful Trevi Fountain.













Me at Trevi Fountain!

















Gelato
Ananas (pineapple) - pretty legit, although I wasn't in quite enough of a fruity mood. It definitely tasted like pineapple and I paired it with peach, which was a good fruit mix.

Cafe Zero - the next best thing to gelato! It's a frozen coffee dessert that is served frozen or less frozen, sort of like a frapaccino. Anyway, it tasted good, but wasn't super strongly flavored.

Refugee Stories

Hello readers! Here's is a draft of a reflection (for class) on my volunteering experience - hopefully you can get a little taste of what I learned about and was exposed to at the Refugee Center.

Taking advantage of the opportunity to volunteer at Joel Nafuma Refugee Center has been an incredibly eye-opening, as well as an intense, fulfilling experience. By re-telling some of the highlights of this experience, I hope to not only reflect on, but also advance my cultural understanding and awareness. Many of these reflections come from my second visit, for I feel that during this visit I was less overwhelmed with initial reactions and could therefore spend more one-on-one time with the refugees and better understand their situation.

My second, and last, day at the Refugee Center, I smiled at three boys fitting puzzle pieces together, and sat down at a game table located in the center of the main room, with its space filled with many languages coming together over movies, ping pong and foosball. Glancing down at the table I saw that the pieces were being forced into the cut out shapes, but the Power Ranger picture that made up this sphere shaped puzzle wasn’t being paid attention to. The oldest boy gave me a few pieces to start working with and I began to fit the pieces together such that the picture began to form. The youngest boy kept on sending pieces relevant to my section of the puzzle in my direction. Soon we were collectively working on different parts of the puzzle. At first, we mostly worked in silence. I wondered where they were from, how old they were and how they all became friends, but wasn’t quite sure how to go about asking personal questions to these boys, especially with the language barrier. About a half an hour later, the atmosphere around the table had lightened up – we laughed when the half formed sphere fell apart, or shared excited glances when we found the piece we were looking for. Unable to contain my curiosity, I asked: “how old are you guys?” They looked at each other, and then back at me. I pointed at myself and said, “Catherine, twenty-one.” Their faces lit up. In the end, we shared our age with each other by using our hands. For example, I showed ten, ten and then one for twenty-one. After learning their ages, we took turns saying our names. At first, I asked them to write their names. They replied by saying “Farsi.” Although I didn’t get the information I was looking for, I had learned something new about them – they were from Iran. Nodding, I indicated that they could write their names in Farsi above where I had written their ages. Each boy pronounced his name for me and helped me sound out and write their name in English. Having learned a lot more about one another, we continued working on our puzzle and finished just before the center closed for the day.

Towards the end of our time at the center, our presence was well known and people began to approach us, rather than vice versa. Soon, Esmaeil (Ishmael), a twenty-five year old from Afghanistan, walked up to me and greeted me with “ciao!” Stupidly, having just been sitting in on a conversation between Kristin and a man from Cote d’Ivoire, I asked him if he spoke French. He replied, much to my excitement, “No, italiano e inglese.” I had taken particular interest in the people fleeing from Afghanistan and I couldn’t believe my luck that someone that spoke English very well, from Afghanistan had approached me! Esmaeil shared with me that after his school was shut down an Afghani woman had invited him into her household and taught him English.

Esmaeil left his hometown of Gazni, Afghanistan for Iran – the first leg of his long journey to Italy. Esmaeil told me that it took him about 2 months to travel from Gazni, located in Eastern Afghanistan, to Iran by foot and car. At the Iranian border, he paid about 1000E to cross without documents. The next part of his journey took him from Iran to Turkey, for the price of 1300E; this took about 3 weeks. Although I did not find out his exact transportation across Iran, given the time period, I suspect that he traveled mostly by car. Esmaeil explained that he was only able to enter Turkey because the smugglers had contacts at the Turkish border that let him enter the country illegally. Once again, 2500E was paid to cross the border from Turkey into Greece. Esmaeil then spent 8 months living in Greece, perhaps finding odd jobs to raise money for the remainder of the trip to Italy, or maybe simply waiting until smugglers were ready to leave Greece for Italy. Next, Esmaeil and others boarded a ship filled with other people, most likely other asylum seekers from Iraq, Bangladesh and Pakistan, to cross the Mediterranean Sea and dock in Italy. Esmaeil described to me how the ship was loaded with people and left at 11pm at night, and then arrived around the same time the next night in Italy. The crossing from Greece, likely the port of Piraeus, to Bari, Italy took a day and cost 1500E. Esmaeil said that after he got off the ship, he found his way to the train station where he caught the first train to Rome.

Esmaeil’s goal is to get documents so that his family can come to Italy. I learned a lot about his character and future goals when asked if he was afraid during his journey; to this question, he replied, “no.” Esmaeil’s response was that he was happy because anything was better than Afghanistan. He stressed that he did not embark on this journey for himself, but rather for his family. It occurred to me that his selflessness had allowed him to move beyond fear, for he wasn’t afraid for himself or his life, but instead was incredibly focused on obtaining a better life for his family.

For the last few minutes of our conversation, Esmaeil and I discussed why he left Afghanistan. He told me of Afghanistan’s decades years of war, going back to fighting the Russians, Iran, and the Taliban (Pashtuns). He made a comment about the USA fighting the Taliban and the Afghani people joining in to fight with anything they had, including rocks. Mostly, he expressed that he didn’t agree with the Taliban, especially because they want to introduce Pashto to the Persian speaking Afghani people. Although Esmaeil felt that US intervention in Afghanistan was better for the Persians, he left because he didn’t want to witness any more fighting. He told me a story about a father being killed, so the police went into his house to investigate. Although I’m unsure about the story, as I understand it, the police went in to talk to the family, but the Taliban had planted a bomb in the house and ended up killing the police and the entire family. Esmaeil explained that fighting the Taliban is very difficult because there is no central authority. He said that because the police don’t know whom to target, it is near impossible to make any headway.

After we were done talking, he came up to me once again and asked that I write one more thing down. He said that he was happy that the US was fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan. This was a very personal moment for him and me. Two people, coming together over nations at war, in a foreign country.

A Packed Day

We had to wake up and get to class extra early today (8:30 am) so that we could go to one of only 2 mosques in Italy. It was a good thing we left so early because the stop on the train that we were supposed to get off at was under construction. We ended up riding the train back and forth, until we finally found an alternative stop. Once at the mosque, we learned about Islam and were able to ask the guide questions. Women had to wear pants or skirts below their knees and cover their head and shoulders. All in all I'm very glad to be learning more about religion and culture, but it's very hard to accept women's lesser status in Islam.

The beautiful mosaic tile decoration lining the walls of the mosque. Interestingly, for one of my final group projects we are talking about Middle Eastern glass blowing/tile-making and their influence on Italian art.









Next stop was volunteering at the Refugee Center. I spent the majority of my time at the working on a sphere shaped puzzle of the Power Rangers with three Iranian boys, and then I also talked to someone from Somalia and Afghanistan. Interestingly, the night before I had spent 2+ hours researching the common migration route from Afghanistan to Italy, and found essentially nothing. It just so happened that someone from who was smuggled from Afghanistan to Italy approached my at the Refugee Center and told me all about his journey, in excellent English! Read my next blog post to hear more about his story!

The buses were packed (the stop where we get on is the first one after the train station), so we decided to walk home from the Refugee Center...

The super cool and hard-core police barricade I almost accidentally ran into on my way home.











After deciding to walk home, and having to make a detour due to the demonstration, we got back to the UW Rome Center at 2:45, just 15 minutes before class. We all grabbed lunch at the 3E pizza place and set out on our art history site visits.
This is a picture of Santa Maria Maggiore in Trestevere - the church right by my apartment! It is a 12th century church that has shows of many amazing mosaics and a gold gilded ceiling.









This evening, my apartment mates and I went to a local bar to watch the Germany vs. Spain game. The game was tied until the middle of the second half, and it was a good game! There were 10 or so German teenagers at the bar that were wrapped in German flags. There was one guy who was hilarious because he would be going off in German and then when they would almost score, he'd start swearing in English. Pretty funny.

Gelato
Catalan Creme - definitely better than crema, but also not at the top of my list.

Vanilla - good! Essentially the same as vanilla bean ice cream. Since it's so similar to ice cream I probably won't be getting it again in Italy.

Cigarette Carton
Protect children: do not make them breathe your smoke.

Chillaxing

This morning, I was determined to sleep in, and I did so until 8:45. Once I was up, I spent a couple hours catching up on Friday's and yesterday's blogs, and then went out for my morning cappuccino, which took easily less than 10 minutes. Next on the agenda was finishing a long, and hard to read book for class.

Early afternoon, my housemates and I went out for a little exploring and grocery shopping. We trekked up a big hill near our apartment and were able to see the city spanning out for miles below us. See the pictures below!

Poor picture clarity/quality, but this spot has a great view of the city - you'll have to take my word on it!! We were able to locate and recognize many of the main monuments we've been to. I could even find Trajan's Column (my monument for art history)!







A picture of us obscuring the view.












Look Mom - they actually do dry clothes on lines strung from one window to the next!











We decided to go out for dinner tonight and chose a restaurant close to our apartment. I had good, but really salty, fettuccine with artichokes. We split 2 desserts between us, tiramisu and some Spanish cake. Both were disappointing :( At least the food and wine were good!

Notes and Notable Difference
Locking up bikes and motorcycles - Instead of chaining a bike to a rack or pole, Italians simply lock a huge chain (one that can't be cut through) through their wheel's spokes and around a part of the bike. This prevents the bike from being rolled, if stolen.







Cigarette Cartons
Smoking seriously harms you and others around you.












Smoking clogs the arteries and causes heart attacks and strokes.