the past month... oops :p

I fear I have long neglected my blog and that everyone is probably waiting on the edge of their seat to find out what I have been doing lol :-p.  So in honor of study day, in which no one actually studies for finals, I will update my blog.  Enjoy!

So... I believe I left off on my last post when I got back to Rome from 10-day.  Well I got back into Rome on the morning of Good Friday, which meant Easter was coming soon.  I also live in (almost) the same city as the pope.  So like any good UD student, I went to Easter Vigil Mass at the Vatican with the Pope.  Also, like any good UD student, I got to the Vatican to get in line around 1 in the afternoon for a 9 pm Mass.  I would say I was within the first 50 people in line when I got there.
I was expecting crowds and shoving, but I wasn't expecting what actually happened.  Around three or four (they start letting people into the Church at 7:30), I started to get completely smushed where I was standing.  I had been sitting down but stood up for a minute, and then all of sudden... whoosh! I was surrounded by people and could hardly move.  After being stuck like that for a while, I managed to shove my way farther forward where a bunch of other UDers had kept a little spot of sanity and all remained sitting.  The crowds kept pushing in, however, and the people sitting on the edge of the group were almost getting trampled.  When we finally stood up about five minutes before the gates opened, everyone was instantly shoved up against the barricades by the crowd.  Then they opened the gates and you literally had no choice but to run through security and into the Church.  Some people I know were even carried along by the crowd with their feet off the ground!
Mass itself was amazing though.  I was in the third row (of course there were quite a few rows of priests in front of that) and so I had a really good view of the Mass and the Pope.  It was really long, but really beautiful, and at the end when everyone smushed against the aisles to see the Pope I got to be within about 8 ft. of him!

That next week was a bit of a get-back-in-the-groove week.  We had an Art and Arch fieldtrip to the Vatican Museums and the Sistine Chapel, and I got to go on the Scavi tour, which takes you into the excavations under St. Peter's Basilica where you can see the bones of St. Peter!

Even though we had class on Saturday this week, I still had alot of fun over the weekend.  After class on Saturday Colleen and I went into Albano, a little town a few miles away, and went shopping.  Then on Sunday Colleen and Nick and I went into Rome.  We went to Mass at the Pantheon, got pizza and gelato, went to Piazza Navona, went to the Spanish Steps, and randomly got in on a free guided tour (in Italian!) of the Italian Parliament building.

The next week we only had class on Monday and Tuesday because on Wednesday our entire class left for Venice!  Venice was really interesting, because it was unlike any other city in the world.  Instead of having a metro or bus system, their public transportation system is boats, which they call vaporetti. While in Venice I got to visit the Doge's Palace and the prison (Doge is what the Venetians use for Duke), San Marco's Cathedral, Murano Island (where the famous Murano glass is made), and the fish markets.  I also took a gondola ride with a few friends one evening.
After enjoying Venice we left on Friday morning to drive from Venice to Florence.  Florence was also really neat, but not nearly as unique as Venice.  The first big thing I saw in Florence was their Duomo (or cathedral) with its massive dome and belltower.  We got to see alot of famous art in Florence in the Uffizi and Accademia museums, including Michelangelo's David.  I also toured the monastery of San Marco, in which Fra Angelico did many of the paintings.  The other major attraction for UD students in Florence is the leather markets, where I got a nice leather purse.  Sunday afternoon we left Florence and drove back to Rome.

Then we had a very busy week of paper writing.  I had to write a six-page Theology paper (I wrote it on the Incarnation) and a four-page Literature paper (which I wrote on The Merchant of Venice).  We also took an Art and Arch fieldtrip to a Caravaggio exhibit which they had in Rome.
The day we went to the Caravaggio exhibit was also the birthday of Rome, and the Romans were having a big celebration over by the Colosseum.  So some friends and I went to check it out. Most of the people there were Romans about our age, so it was really neat to be around real Romans and not tourists.  But what was really cool about the celebration was that everyone linked hands in a giant circle around the Colosseum, and then we did Ring-around-the-Rosy (but in Italian) around it.  There were lots of news crews and some helicopters taking ariel footage.

Then that weekend (April 23-25), a group of friends and I went to the Cinque Terre for the weekend.  Cinque Terre is a little area on the coast of Italy with five very small towns in it.  It has incredibly gorgeous scenery and there isn't really much to do there besides enjoy it.  It was a really nice, relaxing trip to take the last free weekend.  Six of us went: me, Colleen, Allie, Stephanie, Lucy, and Erik.  We stayed in a hostel with a kitchen, so we did quite a bit of cooking, which was fun.  When we got there on Friday (after missing our first train because we didn't realize how bad morning rush hour was!) it was raining, so we just explored Riomaggiore, the first of the five towns and the one we were staying in. Saturday morning, however, we decided to do the hike between all five towns- about seven miles.  Its impossible to drive between them- you either have to hike or take the train.  Luckily, the weather was really good on Saturday.  In the morning and the early afternoon it was slightly overcast and around 65.  Around three or so it got really sunny and hot, but it was good because then by the time we got to the last town, which had a really nice beach, it felt really good to get in the freezing water!  We hung out on the beach for an hour or so, and then ate dinner at a restaurant looking out on the beach.  I had pasta with mussels.  Then we went back to our hostel where we had some Cinque Terre wine and olives.  Then on Sunday morning we took the train back to Rome.

This week has been pretty busy with trying to do last things in Rome before the semester ends.  We had a west civ quiz/test on Tuesday, and after that Colleen, Allison, James and I went into Rome to visit some churches we hadn't seen yet.  We visited St. John Lateran's (which is actually the cathedral of Rome), the Basilica of Sts. Cosmos and Damian, and the Church of the Gesu.  The ceiling of the Gesu is amazing- it looks like it is open to the heavens and that saints are descending on clouds into the Church.  It really looks 3-d.
On Wednesday we didn't have class- instead, they took us into Rome really early in the morning so that we could go to a papal audience.  It was really neat to see the Pope ride his popemobile!  They went through and announced all the groups in different languages to the Pope, and when they called out the UD group, we all screamed really really loud.  It was pretty impressive!  After that we got lunch and gelato, and then headed to the Galleria Borghese for the final Art and Arch field trip.  They had several amazing Bernini sculptures and some Caravaggios there.  After that, Allison and I hit a few more churches- Santa Maria della Vittoria (which has the St. Teresa in Ecstasy by Bernini), Santa Maria degli Angeli, and San Pietro en Vincoeli (which has the chains of St. Peter and a statue of Moses by Michelangelo).

Yesterday, our campus chaplain, who works at the Vatican, gave a few of us a short tour of St. Peter's, which was pretty cool.  After that, Allison, Nick, Peter and I climbed the dome of St. Peter's.  We got some really awesome views of both the inside and the outside of the Basilica.  We also got to hang out on the roof for a while, where they have bathrooms, a giftstore, and a cafe.  Then we went and hung out in the gardens by the Galleria Borghese, before heading to a restaurant for a final group dinner in Rome.  UD decided to provide dinner for us all at a really nice restaurant, and I had a really delicious pizza.  Then a few friends and I went to a bar for a little bit before the UD buses took us back to campus.

Today is a study day for finals, which start tomorrow.  Then we leave campus on Thursday.  AHHHH!!!

The weather here has gotten really beautiful- no jackets necessary anymore!  The vineyard on campus is getting really leafy and everything is really green!  We pretty much leave the windows in our room open almost all the time.  I will be sad to leave Rome and our campus on Thursday, but it will be nice to do some final travelling and then go home!

I'm staying after the semester for two weeks with my roommates Catherine and Colleen.  First we're going to Versailles for a few days to stay with some of my relatives.  Then we are going to London and Oxford, the Lake District of Oxford, Edinburgh, and finally Dublin before we fly home.