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 :)
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.
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.
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.
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.
This morning I woke up bright and early at 5:30 to catch a 7:45 train to Florence! We arrived in the city around 9:15 and decided to check out the line to see The David.
The line wasn't very long, so we decided to wait - little did we know, the line would move very slowly. We finally entered the museum around 11:30 and saw the famous sculpture. It is just so much larger than anyone can expect! Although no cameras were allowed, I was able to snap this blurry one (as proof that I was there).
We also stumbled upon this David replica. It looks much smaller, given that it's located in an open piazza, but other than that it's essentially the same. I'm showing the side view here, since I wasn't able to get that shot of the actual statue.
Now for a little art history...it's nice to see this statue in a space more like where it was intended to be viewed. Here we have the possibility of seeing how Michaelangelo wanted the light to hit the statue.
Afterwards, we were starving so we set off to find a restaurant that Lisa (our art history prof.) had recommended. I ordered pasta for the first time since being in Italy, and decided to try the classic fettuccine alfredo. It was great!
Rumor had it that the San Lorenzo market was the place to go to shop for leather goods. Lisa had given us a place to go, and after asking, we found it. Immediately, the owner, Adriano, asked us how we had heard of him. We said our professor had recommended his store, and he knew right away we were talking about Lisa. Given that she sends all of her students there, he gave us a great discount - 50E off the bag! As you can see, bag shopping was a great success!
We perused the other goods at the market - here's a shot of the crowded street. Of course, we're still in Italy, so there is also a beautiful old church in the background.
Next, on to see some of the sights! First stop was the Duomo. We went inside, but decided against paying 8E to climb to the top of the dome. After seeing the Duomo, we made our way down to the river to check out the Ponte Vecchio (famous walled bridge).
Surprisingly, the entire bridge was lined with jewelry shops! By that time, it was around 3 in the afternoon and we were hot - it was at least 90 degrees out - and tired. We met up with others from our program and set out to find a bar to watch the Germany vs. Argentina game. After wandering around and failing at finding an open bar, we eventually made it to one that was only open for the game. We arrived at half time, only to watch Germany dominate Argentina 4:0.
Tired, we found a place to grab a bite to eat and then went to the grocery store to stock up on cookies for the train. Ready to go home, we went to the train station early and were able to change our tickets and get on the 8:40 train home, instead of the 9:10. All in all, it was great to see Florence, but I'm really glad it was just a day trip. All of the great sights required an admission fees, and those that were staying the night faced a lot of problems with booking hotels/hostels, etc. Going to Florence will definitely help me appreciate Rome. I now see how nice it is to have restaurants and great gelato spread out all over the city. Florence was also much more touristy than Rome, so I was happy to get back to Rome :)
New Cigarette Cartons Your doctor or your pharmacist can help you stop smoking.
Smoking is a highly addictive, do not start.
Gelato (modified) Ok, so I have a confession to make. I did have gelato in Florence. I tried caramel again - it tasted like ice cream. Not to say that this is bad, it definitely wasn't even close to comparing with my favorite Haagen Daz dolce de leche, but it really wasn't the gelato I was looking for. Unsatisfied, I got a cone from McDonalds at the train station. This did the trick. I got my ice cream fill, and now I'm ready to go back to the good ol' gelato in Roma!
Class this morning started at 10, which is a little later than usual. After a semi-laid back breakfast, we left the apartment for our daily stop at Cafe di Marzio in Trestevere. Many of us living in Trestevere go here each morning for a cappuccino and the occasional chocolate, fruit or cream filled croissant. Those that work at the cafe know our usual selections and we often converse in broken Italian and English about the latest World Cup update.
This morning was also special because we had a guest speaker, Amara Lakhous, talk to us about his book, Clash of Civilization Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio. For the class Migration, Markets and Minorities, taught by Professor Friedman, we have used this book as a way of attempting to understand the social and economic situations immigrants face when first arriving in Italy. Often, our analysis also explores the concept of Italian identity and how this is a product of Italy's history.
Piazza Vittorio is significant because it is a community that attracts the majority of the immigrants living in Italy. This piazza also houses the market that we visited on Wednesday. Amara Lakous lived in Piazza Vittorio for six years, so he as able to give us some additional insight as to challenges that arise in this area because of its incredible diversity.
Lakhous emigrated from Algiers in the early 1990s due to great political unrest, to include terrorist attacks, in Algeria. Today, he writes novels in both Arabic and Italian, and has earned degrees in philosophy and cultural anthropology, including Ph.D. Clash of Civilization Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio was also recently made into a movie.
Although Lakhous seemed to understand much of the English we spoke while phrasing questions, we had an Italian interpret for us so that the questions could be answered clearly and directly. Themes from the novel, such as identity and coming together despite diverse backgrounds, formed much of the basis for our discussion. One interesting question that Lakhous dissected for us was: as an immigrant, is it beneficial to hold onto your past, or forget it completely and move forward with your life? Lakhous' response to this question was particularly perceptive and well supported. He called upon Freudian psychology to discuss the problems people face when holding onto the past. For example, physically they are in Rome, but mentally they are somewhere else. Lakhous used an example which he had encountered on his way to the UW Rome Center from the train station, specifically the scene of an Ethiopian immigrant and her child. The mother was talking to herself in her native language, as if totally wrapped up in past memories. The power of the brain, such that it can keep the mind and body separated was an example of a significant drawback immigrants face when they tightly hold on to their past. Lakhous suggested that perhaps the most effective way of assimilating into a new country was to find a balance between remembering your past and moving forward in a productive way, such as learning the local language. Overall, Lakhous brought very personal and astute observations to our continuing discussion on migration.
After Lakhous' talk we headed back to the apartment for a relaxing lunch composed of our staple Italian foods, namely bread, mozzarella, tomatoes and basil. Most people caught up on blogging or reading and soon we were re-charged and ready for an afternoon of art history.
Our art history class and presentations took place at the Villa Borghese. First, we heard an introduction to the Borghese Family by Roman and Emily, and the Roman told us more about the history of the Villa Borghese as well as the major patron and collector of art, Scipione Borghese. I was particularly interested in the fact that Scipione Borghese was a big fan of Bernini and commissioned him to do many works of art. We learned that Bernini liked to combine his originality and artistic eye with poses and styles reckoning back to antiquity. For example, his piece entitled Aeneas, Anchises, and Ascanius (see photo below, left) is based on Michaelangelo's Risen Christ (see photo below, right), although Aeneas is carrying his father instead of the cross.
Inside the Museo di Villa Borghese, we also saw quite a few paintings by Caravaggio, a Boroque style painter. This portrait, David with the head of Goliath, was Roman's favorite Caravaggio piece inside the museum.
After a lot of walking (it took almost an hour to get to Villa Borghese from our apartment!), my apartment mates and I settled in to cook dinner and relax before meeting up with the group again to celebrate Molly's 20th birthday.
For Molly's birthday, we went out as a group to a great little gelato place called Gelateria del Teatro. They have a lot of original, alternative flavors, such as sage and raspberry.
Here's a picture of Molly enjoying her birthday gelatto!
We chose to celebrate a day early because the majority of the group is going to Florence for the weekend! Hopefully some of the great sights and adventures will make it into the blog!
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.
