One last trip in Italy...

So this is my final open weekend in Rome, so I will be making a final trip within Italy for it.
Traveling Italy has been incredible. If there is one country you can travel to multiple cities and never get bored, it is, from my experience, Italy. I’ve been to so many different small cities and each one has its own unique feel and culture to it. Being that Italy was and has always been very much segregated by region, they still hold their own regional cultural values and traditions in high regard. It’s definitely a pride thing for the Italians.

It seems that many people agree with the above statement. For their spring break, Becky and her friends decided to travel Italy, visiting Rome first, then going north to Florence with a couple side trips up there, and now down to Naples, with side trips to Capri and Pompei. I’ve decided to join them on their journey south.

This is my first time going south, and I have to say I’m quite excited for it. I’ve heard so many cool things about Capri and Pompei, and of course Naples has its own unique qualities.
I’ll be getting on a train tomorrow to head down to Naples, where we will stay. It’s only an hour and ten minute ride from Rome, which is nice to be able to get somewhere so quickly and not have to deal with the airport security and all of the minor hassles that come with flying.

Seeing as it is my final trip, I’ll be sure to take tons of pictures (just reminded myself to charge my camera battery, that would be pretty terrible if I didn’t), and will of course be back online Sunday night or Monday to blog about the entire thing, as I have with all my other trips.
I’ll leave you now with a gallery of pictures I call, “My days with the Pope” which are a compilation of the three different days over the past three weeks that I saw the Pope (2 Angelus’, one Audience) and also my visit to the Vatican Museum, and another visit to St. Peter’s.

A month ago...

I was trying to come up with an interesting topic for my post tonight, but with being in full swing at the Vatican and with classes and traveling, I was only able to really focus on one topic tonight. I've been here exactly a month now. 30 days ago I landed in Rome, my first time in a foreign country, surrounded by a language I had no comprehension of, and not sure what to expect for the next three months.

A month later it is hard to put myself back in that position. The time has been flying by, and yet with my comfort level it feels as though I've been here for a year (I would hope however that my Italian would be better had I actually been here a year already).

So lets look back at the last 30 days...shall we? (You know you don't have a choice, like it or not I'm going to do this):

For the first time I took an international flight, by myself nonetheless. I used my passport for the first time in a Foreign Country. I've begun to learn another foreign language. I am enrolled in an all girls school. I am living in a hotel in the center of historic Rome. I experienced the Italian Christmas season. I am interning at the Vatican. I had exclusive access to private areas of St. Peter's Basilica. I've had my first real gelato, and have tried lots of new foods. I've acquired a taste for espresso and cappuccino. I take daily walks, just because. I wear a suit every day. I've been to my first real soccer game. I've seen more smart cars and mopeds than I ever thought existed. I learned how to haggle in Italian. I've toured most of Rome's famous monuments and attractions. I've written 28 blog posts. I've survived without internet and TV. I've traveled for a weekend to Barcelona. I've stayed in my first hostel and I've made a lot of new friends along the way.

So that's one third of my trip, my experience. So what's to come?

How about a trip to Paris this weekend, multiple visits from family and friends (4 separate visits and counting...), a weekend in Florence, a 5 day trip to northern Italy, a pilgrimage, a day trip to siena, a weekend in southern Italy, a video project for St. Paul Outside-The-Walls, learning more Italian, a Dave Matthews Band concert in Rome, at least one more soccer match, a couple final exams, and to wrap it up, a trip to London, with short trips to Prague, Amsterdam, Vienna, Ireland,(maybe more?), a State Radio concert, and by my estimation, about another 60 of these blog posts, all before heading back home on April 10th.

Are you up for the challenge? You keep reading and commenting and I'll keep posting. Hold on tight, I'm just warming up...

Blast from the past

Today we had some unexpected visitors to the office. Two Villanova graduates, who had participated in the Vatican internship program in the fall of 2006, Gloria and Chris, stopped by because they were in Rome. We had a really nice conversation with them at work and decided we should get together tonight to talk about our experiences.

When Gloria and Chris were here, they were not part of the Saint Mary’s Program. The program was very new at that point and many of the kinks were still being worked out. Regardless, they still found their experiences in Rome to be so influential that they have both come back to Rome multiple times since their study abroad program 4 years ago.

It was awesome to hear their stories and see the love they have for the Vatican program and for Rome. When they came into the office they were welcomed as if they were long lost relatives, with hugs and kisses, everyone happy to see them.

We decided to go to dinner tonight and we invited our Italian teacher who had also been their teacher, Carlotta, to join us. We went to dinner on Roman time, so 9pm, and Carlotta recommended a restaurant to us in Trastevere, a very nice neighborhood full of restaurants and shops. It was by no means a tourist restaurant, and it helped that we had Gloria and Carlotta with us, Gloria who speaks fluent Italian, and Carlotta being a Roman native, who not only understands the language but the culture behind it all.

Our food was fantastic. Home made pastas and pizza at a great price. The tiramisu though was the highlight of the night. Though it did not look anything like your normal tiramisu, it was probably the best I’ve ever had (Chris agreed, he has refused to eat tiramisu since the last time he had been at the restaurant).

It was a special night for all of us, and one that will forever be in my most prized memories of my time here. The experiences that Gloria and Chris shared and their connection with Rome formed while they were studying here makes me certain I will be back to visit many times throughout my life. Their friendship with Carlotta is still strong after all these years. I can only hope I can come back and have dinner with future Villanova Vatian internship students, share my experiences with them, and have the same impact that Gloria and Chris had on me tonight.

Virtual Reality day 1

Today was a very cool day. This week the Villanova Professors are here visiting us and most importantly working on the virtual reality tours for the Vatican. Today we had the opportunity to help do some of the VR for St. Mary Major. 5 different VR tours in fact.

If you haven't seen what the VR tours look like, go look at them on the Vatican site (click basilicas on the bottom left hand corner of the main page).

The virtual reality tours are created through a series of photographs being stitched together to create the 360 degree panorama. This means taking somewhere between 60 to 250 pictures, depending on the place being created, and linking them all together so they look like you are actually there.

This is all done by a computer/robotic rig that when set up properly, takes pictures at consistent intervals so they can be stitched together easily, and so that no corner goes missed when photographing it. Cue drum roll for a short (little shaky) video of the rig:




See that? It rotates around on its own to get the pictures taken (It was taking pictures of the ceiling in that clip, which are awesome).

So while the rig is busy taking pictures (5 minutes for the small rig which takes 63 pictures, 20 minutes or so for the big rig that takes 240 pictures) our job is to make sure no one steps directly in front of the camera, which would block part of the church. The camera rotates, so it makes it tricky seeing as how one minute its facing towards the altar, and the next it's facing towards the back of the church, so we move people around accordingly, using our broken Italian to shuffle them aside.

The Church is normally dark during visiting hours, but for this special occasion they turned all the lights on in the church for us. Every single one. It was incredible to see it lit up, the gold detail in the ceiling and artwork glimmering. I have some pictures of it, and you can compare between my last visit to the church and this time.

Tomorrow is Saint Peters. It will be my first time there and I am extremely excited. You can expect a longer blog post about the Virtual Reality tours tomorrow, I'll label this one as a teaser.

Some wires

A while ago I posted a long blog post about being "unwired". One of the major points of that blog was the lack of a cell phone. Well, I caved, and now have an Italian cell phone number.

(I do warn you that this may be a very techy post, so bear with me if it's not your thing and I'll try and explain it clearly)

For the first two weeks I was attempting to buy the skype phone offered by the mobile carrier 3(tre). What I found though is that the service provider 3 is not very good in Italy. I'm a tech junkie. When I go to get a new piece of technology I do my research. I had been researching cell phones abroad for months before I left. So when I went into the 3 store, I knew what I wanted and that they offered it. The salesperson disagreed with me. I was told even though it is advertised all over their website that I could not only not purchase the skypephone, but I could not get a pay as you go plan from them at all unless I signed a 24 month contract. After a frustrating argument, with the sales person speaking broken english and myself speaking very, very broken Italian, I left empty handed only to walk a block down to the TIM store, where I purchased a SIM card (I already had the phone from a friend, thanks Tim!(not TIM the cell company, Tim the person, confusing I know))

For all the non-techy readers, cell phone contracts work a little differently in Europe than in the States. You do not normally sign your freedom away to a service provider for 2 years. You instead buy a phone(cheaper than in the U.S I may add), and then buy a SIM card from one of the providers here. A SIM card is universal and can go into any phone. It is assigned your number so any phone you put your card in automatically gets connected with your number and service provider. Pretty cool huh? Well it gets better: As I mentioned, contracts don't really exist. Instead you pay-as-you-go. You put 10 euro or however much on your phone. You have an agreement with your service provider that you will pay x amount of money per minute for all calls you make. In my case, this is 10 cents a minute for every call I make. Notice how I said every call you make, because receiving calls is totally free. When you run out, you put more money on your account, either online or buying a prepaid recharge card from any "tobacco store" (tabacchi in Italian, basically a convenience store).

Now lets compare this to the American system of cell contracts. We will ignore exchange rates because for natives of the respective countries that's not important, and I'm going to refer to all currencies as dollars or $. Right now Verizon Wireless' cheapest individual plan is $40 for 450 minutes per month. That includes no text messaging, just 450 minutes of using your cell phone's main function, talking (I know hard to believe that's what they were made for, right?). I'm sure that includes free nights and weekends, but to me that doesn't really factor in, what matters is the ability to call someone at any time.

Take that same $40 and apply it to my rate. That's 400 minutes if you pay 10 cents a minute. Very similar isn't it. In fact, Verizon might even look more appealing at first glance. I think not. Those 400 minutes I have from the $40 I placed on my account, they don't disappear at the end of the month. I'm not restricted per month. Okay, so AT&T has rollover minutes don't they? So if you only use 200 minutes one month you get to keep the extra 200 minutes (we've all seen the commercials, "those minutes are still good!") Yes you get those minutes, but you are still paying $40 again that 2nd month for another 400 minutes. Now why do you need another 400 minutes if you just rolled over 200? See what I'm getting at?

$40 dollars prepaid. It lasts for as long as I need it. If I use 400 minutes a month, poof they're gone when I've used them all. If I only need 200 minutes a month, well then look at that I really only paid $20 a month. Busy month? Lots of gossip? Simply put more money into your account, for the same rate you've been paying all along. Verizon charges 45 cents per every minute you go over your monthly allowance. I might be beating a dead horse but lets do a little math. 600 minutes in a month? If you're using my prepaid service that will cost you $60. Verizon's 450 minute contract? $40 for the first 450 minutes, + $0.45 x 150 = $107.50. In other words, for less than it costs to pay for those 150 extra minutes, you could have 600 minutes on prepaid. Not to mention you don't pay for any calls received! (Sticking with the math theme: Free incoming calls > Free nights and weekends)

Phone break? Not happy with the one you have? Just want to upgrade? Sure, pick which one you want, buy it, and put your SIM card in, none of this waiting 2 years to get a new phone.

Anyone feel ripped off by their U.S. cell contract? I sure do. I'm not going to even get into the whole data/internet on phones argument, this post is already borderline rant, but for those interested one line of stats:

On ANY phone: Verizon: $15 per month for 25mb of data over the entire month, TIM: $10 a month for 50mb of data a day (You see where the rant would come in?)

The phones are better, the plans and pricing is better, and the coverage from what I've seen is the same if not better. All those ready to switch to the European system raise your hand...

It's a beautiful day

Finally a truly beautiful day in Rome. I'm glad to see that the rain held off for 3 days and we had blue skies and warm weather for our tours today. The Pantheon, Jewish Ghetto, and a couple of other places in-between, which made for some cool pictures. So here they are:



Link for Gallery: http://picasaweb.google.com/ramlax13/ToursOfPantheonPiazzasJewishGhetto

out of the loop

On Tuesday a 7.0 earthquake shook Haiti. The aftershocks rattled the country multiple times at around a 5.0 scale, which could very well be considered devastating earth quakes by themselves. The shockwave of the tragedy though, took until today to reach me.

It's not that Italy wasn't aware of what had happened. It's just that reading an Italian newspaper isn't exactly something I'm capable of doing every morning, given the previously mentioned language barrier, and the busy schedule. It was not until this morning that I heard anything about the earthquake, and it makes me realize how out of the loop I am.

Studying abroad is meant to pluck you from your comfort zone and put you into a different worldview. Unfortunately given the circumstances it also disconnects you in some ways from the rest of the world. With no TV and minimal internet accessible to me, I have found myself drifting further and further away from keeping up with the news.

I have a feeling that when I get back in 3 months I will have missed 3 months of pop culture and world news, and will be out of touch with global politics and events.

So instead of writing anymore, I am going to take the next half hour or so to read the front page articles on the New York Times Website, and if you haven't been up on your current events lately, I suggest you do the same with me.

http://www.nytimes.com

Inside the wall, days 1 and 2

I posted my blog last night completely forgetting that I had not even touched upon the fact that I had started my internship at the Vatican.

This first week is what I would call Italian boot-camp. 3 hours of Italian tutoring from 8am to 11am every morning, with our awesome Italian tutor, Carlotta. Going into this I was afraid I wouldn't do well learning another language. My experiences with french classes did not exactly end on a high note, so I had this premonition that learning a language couldn't be fun. I was wrong. Carlotta is engaging and fun. She is able to not only teach us the basics but help us effectively understand the language that we are surrounded by. It's as she called it, "survival Italian", and so far it has been extremely effective. After two days, though I haven't even learned how to speak much Italian, my comprehension and confidence when listening to a native Italian speaker speak Italian to me has significantly gone up. Going into the phone store today to get an Italian phone, I found myself eager to listen in on the representative talking in Italian (though he was speaking in English to me). Carlotta has proven to me that I can understand Italian even though I don't know how to speak it yet, and that is more than half the battle.

The internship part of the experience has been short due to the extended Italian tutoring for the first week, but it has been awesome nonetheless. I've gotten settled into my office and am beginning to learn what I will be doing for the rest of the semester. Being so close to the Vatican and knowing that what I work on will be seen by one of the largest populations of people is motivating me to go above and beyond the jobs assigned to me.

When I start working on specific projects I will be sure to keep you all updated. I hope to have some video up soon of experiences in Rome or of working in the Vatican.

Just Around the Corner

You never know what you're going to find just around the corner here in Rome. That's something I've come to accept this past week or so. It's been just over a week since I got here and I've seen a lot, and sure feel like I know where I'm going when I walk around the city.

A few of us went for a walk tonight to get out and explore yet again. Maybe we all have K.I.A instincts (Know it All) like myself, but we've been stubborn not to use a map to find where we are headed. That or we head out with no real bearing and just pick a road to see where it takes us.

The Spanish Steps had been until tonight eluding us, and seeing as their a gigantic set of steps, we felt they couldn't be that hard to miss. We started off going in a general direction we believed them to be in, past the Pantheon to Via del Corso. All the way up Via Del Corso and then to the right, (so we thought). What we found was instead a large piazza with fountains and statues (Piazza del Popolo), with a hill behind it which had an amazing view it all. From there we went back down a main street that ran adjacent to Via del Corso. And what do you know, the Spanish steps were at the end of that road. Up the steps, just in time to see a 10 minute display of fireworks (all green).

Feeling adventurous, we continued from the top of the steps down the mainstreet, up a large hill and then down a side street to another Piazza (Piazza del Quirinale) heading down the hill as we knew we needed to go down in elevation to get to anywhere familiar. Out of pretty much sheer luck we happened to stumble upon the Trevi fountain.

All in all about 5km, an hour and a half with stopping. It definitely wasn't the most direct route to any of our points of interest, but we found it ourselves, and I guess that's what counts.


Our route mapped out on google maps (try streetview out by dragging the little man above the zoom bar to any one of our stops!):

http://bit.ly/7jmV3R

Living 'unwired'

This should be no surprise to anyone, and given that I'm keeping a daily blog of my experience here, it should be even more obvious that I am an avid user of the internet. My life at College has been one of connectedness: Emails, Text messages, cell phone calls, Skye and AIM, not to mention constantly checking the web. At all times at school I have with me my cell phone and a way to get my email/internet, whether that be my ipod touch or my laptop. I cannot even tell you how many times a day I check my email not to mention when I'm sitting at my computer and it is just up in the background waiting for a new message to come in. I average enough text messages to fill a short novel every month, with plenty of call minutes used in-between. I keep my calendars, tasks, contacts, and just about everything else for day to day life on the 'cloud' that is the internet.

Coming to Europe is like kicking the habit.

Since I've been here I have used the Internet for exactly 24 hours. I know that because I am required to buy Internet in 24 hour increments of usage from the hotel, and my first 24 ran out just before I started writing this post. 24 hours mind you is not much at all for me. Just enough to check my emails, update the blog, talk to some people on skype, and read my favorite website, Gizmodo. This also includes a couple times I forgot to logout of the internet system here and lost a couple precious hours due to my negligence.

Speaking of Gizmodo, they are covering CES this past week, an event for all things electronics and techy, and normally I follow it online pretty closely. I normally check gizmodo about 15 times a day, but I found myself today catching up on 4 days worth of old news and articles in my favorite world of technology.

I have still not purchased a cell phone, and am almost enjoying holding out getting one. It's nice sometimes to not be so constantly connected. For the first three days my mind kept playing tricks on me, making me habitually reach for my front left pocket, thinking that my cell phone was vibrating and that I needed to answer a text or a call. To check the time I now have to look at my wrist instead of reaching into my pocket, and let me tell you, reading an analog clock has felt almost foreign (as it should I guess). No longer am I walking around with headphones constantly around my neck or on my ears, all at the same time checking twitter feeds or facebook from my ipod while I'm walking to and from class.

My life for so long has strongly incorporated technology to a point where I'm constantly 'wired'. Villanova's #1 most wired campus award back in 2006 was a selling point to me. You could say being connected is my caffeine that gets me through the day, so the next three months has me involuntarily (and in some cases voluntarily) scaling back on my intake. So far I haven't seen any withdrawl symptoms, but we'll see what comes of it over the next three months. I'll just have to switch to another sort of caffeine, Cappuccino anyone?

Colosseum and Roman Forum

Today was our first of many St.Mary's sponsored tours in Rome/Italy. Our day began bright and early at 9am (earliest I've been up so far, waking up for my internship will be a rude awakening) and headed to the Roman forum. Conveniently some of the teachers for the St. Mary's program come along as our tour guides, so no need to wait in any lines. We spent about 3 hours in the forum, and I could have easily filled another couple hours had it not been for a much needed lunch break back at the Hotel, then onto the Colosseum. It was a lot of walking, and a good amount of rain mixed in all day, but I managed to get off some pictures. I'll keep this post short and let you enjoy the visual art (Can I call it that?)

http://picasaweb.google.com/ramlax13/RomanForumAndColosseum?authkey=Gv1sRgCO-K7dL265-GrgE&feat=directlink

The Language Barrier and Blending In

What I have found most difficult about being in a foreign country, if not the only thing I have found difficult while here, is the language barrier. Yes, many, if not most, Italians understand english, and a majority of that population can speak it to some extent as well. But this doesn't mean using only english works in Rome...

Take ordering at Pascucci's (the cafe we get to eat lunch at every day though our program) for example. They are used to English speaking customers, and have been serving St. Mary's students for years. Yet none of staff understand or speak english. Ordering the first time was a mystery, I mumbled something in what I considered Italian, they questioned me, and I just agreed, si si, and whatever I had agreed to was what I was getting for lunch that day (fortunately I got something close to what I wanted to order). From then on I began to push myself to use Italian and understand what I was ordering. Their menu has italian and english on it, so picking isn't hard, but communicating after the initial ordering can be tricky. I can now confidently order a ham sandwich (toast al prosciutto) successfully. Other restaurants cater more towards an english speaking crowd, which makes it nice to eat there. Other times though, you would much rather blend in with the locals, which leads me to my next topic.

Blending in...we all think we can blend in, but truth be told we stick out like a sore thumb in a foreign country. Maybe its the camera around my neck, or my red headed roommate, or something else I don't even pick up on, but whenever we pass a restaurant or touristy place with a person standing outside trying to get us to come in, they are quick to speak to us in english, not italian. I have only successfully blended into the Italian society once since I have been here. I was walking the Via del Corso taking pictures the other day, and I stopped in a sports clothing store to look at soccer jerseys. An employee of the store came up to me with a friendly, "ciao" and cleverly I responded with a "ciao" as well. Normally Italians can tell when a person isn't an Italian speaker just by how they speak Italian. Many times I have greeted someone in Italian only for them to respond to me in english, a real let down when trying to learn Italian and blend in. For some reason this time though, I was able, through some sort of master disguise (a long coat, scarf and hat) convince the sales clerk I was Italian. Big mistake. Instantaneously she went into a quick spurt of Italian, leaving me speechless and staring at her blankly. The question was simple, it is what every sales person asks a customer after they greet them, "can I help you find something?" I stood there silent for a long amount of time, only being able to stutter "English?" after being caught in the embarrassing moment. She too seemed embarrassed, and quickly asked in perfect english, "can I help you find something?" I quickly responded I was just looking and found myself gravitating towards the door, both shocked and confused at what had just happened. It is a story though I share with all of my fellow American students though, because few of us have been able to pull off being mistaken for an Italian.

First Two Days

So It's been just over 40 hours or so since I landed in Rome, and I'm just about acclimated to the city and to the time change. Being up for over 30 hours or so took its toll on me by the end of the night, but was well worth staying up. I got to the hotel around 1pm rome time, and we were assigned our rooms. I am in a small double room with the computer science major, Nathan, from villanova. The room is small but considering I don't plan on being here much other than sleeping, very manageable. We had a meeting at 4:30 at the "classroom building" which is on the road literally across the street. From there all four of us Villanova students went to the campo de fiori, a square which was originally known for being a flower market(fiori in italian) but is now full with restaurants and other shops. We chose a small restaurant in the square for dinner, which had some pretty good pasta.

Day two brought about a lot of sleep(15 hours) and some exploring. Woke up in time for lunch at the hotel, where I had, contrary to popular belief of this existing in Italy, Spaghetti and meatballs. the catch is that they were served separate, the pasta on one plate and the meatballs were served with peas in their own broth type sauce on another plate, but regardless I consider it spaghetti and meatballs. Food was excellent, I could get used to this being my meal plan at villanova. Afterward I went exploring for cell phones, but couldn't find the carrier I was looking for so returned empty handed to get ready to go to class, only to find out that my only class for the day had been canceled. Off to the pantheon which is down the same road the classroom building is on, the first real italian tourist attraction I've seen while being here. We got to see mass going on inside, and when it ended we were able to go inside, all lit up. From there to the Trevi fountain, where I threw my coin in, over my left shoulder, which as legend has it will guarantee you will return to Rome someday.

Dinner tonight was at a place called Mickeys, another big college student spot. Prosciutto sandwich, cheap and one of the best sandwiches I've had.

You can check out some pictures I took today, and for the rest of the trip here: http://picasaweb.google.com/ramlax13/Rome#

Or just look at the slideshow to the right!


That's all for now! Tomorrow, a more meaningful/thought provoking post, other than a summary of my day. Buona sera!