All Saints and All Souls
Hello again! I hope you enjoyed reading about my fall travels as much as I had actually having them! But now that I have been back home for over a week everyone here has settled back into classes and such. With less than six weeks left here in Italy, I literally just finished my first paper of the semester! (I’m typing this while waiting for One Tree Hill to finish downloading in Itunes! What can I say we all have our guilty pleasures ;-) It was a 10 pager on the invention and evolution of Italian-American Cuisine. When I signed up for The History and Culture of Foods in Italy class I thought I would be doing a lot more eating and a lot less reading throughout the semester but I really do enjoy the class. I had not written a paper since the end of last semester so I was a bit rusty, but I am glad my first paper is out of the way. I’m even more glad I only have two papers left!
In other news the end of October and beginning of November are an exciting time here for the
students at Umbra. First off is Halloween! Now the Italians themselves do not celebrate Halloween like we do back home. No decorations, no scary music and worse of all, no free candy. However because Perugia is a college town we still got to have some Halloween fun! Many of the bars around town had Halloween themed parties giving everyone a good excuse to dress up! Of course that posed a little bit of a challenge as there are no costume shops or even art supply stores to construct your own. Thankfully Sam’s grandparents had sent her and all the roomies bright orange jack-o-lantern shirts, so the four of us went as a pumpkin patch! Even though it was rainy and cold going out was a lot of fun, and everyone did a really good job getting creative with their costumes.
The first of November is what Italians celebrate rather than the 31st of October. November 1st is the Feast of All Saints. It is a national holiday here in Italy so everything is closed except for a special Fiera dei Morti market. The market is set up around town and has vendors from all over selling all sorts of interesting things. Apparently this is the time when the Italians get a jump start on their Christmas shopping. While I was excited to experience this holiday I was more excited about what November 1st meant for our apartment. This is the day that it becomes legal to use heat in our apartments. Italian law regulates when you can turn the heat on, what times of the day it can be one, and for how many hours a day it can be used. Thankfully it has not gotten to cold here but I am glad to have the heat run, only if it is for 5 hours a day. We are told that as it gets colder we can gradually request increases in the amount of time we have our heat on, but we cannot ever exceed 8 hours a day! Thank goodness I brought some thick socks!
This week rapped up with my second to last field trip of the semester. For my Roman Empire class we had an overnight field trip to the old Roman port town of Ostia and Rome itself. I can say that our day in Ostia was probably one of the neatest things I have seen since I have been here. It is basically a huge archaeological site. All the ruins are separated from the modern day city so you as you walk around all of the sights you feel like you have been transported back in time. After spending the morning there we headed into Rome. If you don’t remember I visited Rome earlier in the semester but did not visit all the ruins so of course I was excited. We started at the Forum. We have been learning about it all semester so it was really neat to actually be there and know what we were looking at. We also visited the Palatine hill, which is the hill Rome was founded on. Over time it became the residences of many of the Emperors and today you can see the ruins of their gigantic homes and gardens. Right about the time it started raining we headed inside to visit the Colosseum. As many of the buildings of Ancient Rome it is pretty impressive. What I found most interesting was that under the main floor there was a network of rooms and passage ways the gladiators used to get from their training area to the Colosseum itself. Also, contrary to popular belief gladiator battles were popular but just like extreme fighting today, was almost always a show. Hardly ever did a gladiator actually die; the only person in all of Rome who could have a gladiator killed for spectacle was the emperor himself. The last stop on our field trip was the Baths of Caracalla. They are some of the largest and most famous of the Roman baths. As we learned on our visit there you can think of them as the amusement parks of the Roman world, except you could go everyday! Of course there were the steam rooms, but baths also had swimming pools, gardens, a gym of sorts, as well as shops and bars. Almost everyone in Roman times was a frequent visitor because they were so inexpensive. Here are some picts of my class' field trip.
Hello again! I hope you enjoyed reading about my fall travels as much as I had actually having them! But now that I have been back home for over a week everyone here has settled back into classes and such. With less than six weeks left here in Italy, I literally just finished my first paper of the semester! (I’m typing this while waiting for One Tree Hill to finish downloading in Itunes! What can I say we all have our guilty pleasures ;-) It was a 10 pager on the invention and evolution of Italian-American Cuisine. When I signed up for The History and Culture of Foods in Italy class I thought I would be doing a lot more eating and a lot less reading throughout the semester but I really do enjoy the class. I had not written a paper since the end of last semester so I was a bit rusty, but I am glad my first paper is out of the way. I’m even more glad I only have two papers left!
In other news the end of October and beginning of November are an exciting time here for the
students at Umbra. First off is Halloween! Now the Italians themselves do not celebrate Halloween like we do back home. No decorations, no scary music and worse of all, no free candy. However because Perugia is a college town we still got to have some Halloween fun! Many of the bars around town had Halloween themed parties giving everyone a good excuse to dress up! Of course that posed a little bit of a challenge as there are no costume shops or even art supply stores to construct your own. Thankfully Sam’s grandparents had sent her and all the roomies bright orange jack-o-lantern shirts, so the four of us went as a pumpkin patch! Even though it was rainy and cold going out was a lot of fun, and everyone did a really good job getting creative with their costumes.The first of November is what Italians celebrate rather than the 31st of October. November 1st is the Feast of All Saints. It is a national holiday here in Italy so everything is closed except for a special Fiera dei Morti market. The market is set up around town and has vendors from all over selling all sorts of interesting things. Apparently this is the time when the Italians get a jump start on their Christmas shopping. While I was excited to experience this holiday I was more excited about what November 1st meant for our apartment. This is the day that it becomes legal to use heat in our apartments. Italian law regulates when you can turn the heat on, what times of the day it can be one, and for how many hours a day it can be used. Thankfully it has not gotten to cold here but I am glad to have the heat run, only if it is for 5 hours a day. We are told that as it gets colder we can gradually request increases in the amount of time we have our heat on, but we cannot ever exceed 8 hours a day! Thank goodness I brought some thick socks!
This week rapped up with my second to last field trip of the semester. For my Roman Empire class we had an overnight field trip to the old Roman port town of Ostia and Rome itself. I can say that our day in Ostia was probably one of the neatest things I have seen since I have been here. It is basically a huge archaeological site. All the ruins are separated from the modern day city so you as you walk around all of the sights you feel like you have been transported back in time. After spending the morning there we headed into Rome. If you don’t remember I visited Rome earlier in the semester but did not visit all the ruins so of course I was excited. We started at the Forum. We have been learning about it all semester so it was really neat to actually be there and know what we were looking at. We also visited the Palatine hill, which is the hill Rome was founded on. Over time it became the residences of many of the Emperors and today you can see the ruins of their gigantic homes and gardens. Right about the time it started raining we headed inside to visit the Colosseum. As many of the buildings of Ancient Rome it is pretty impressive. What I found most interesting was that under the main floor there was a network of rooms and passage ways the gladiators used to get from their training area to the Colosseum itself. Also, contrary to popular belief gladiator battles were popular but just like extreme fighting today, was almost always a show. Hardly ever did a gladiator actually die; the only person in all of Rome who could have a gladiator killed for spectacle was the emperor himself. The last stop on our field trip was the Baths of Caracalla. They are some of the largest and most famous of the Roman baths. As we learned on our visit there you can think of them as the amusement parks of the Roman world, except you could go everyday! Of course there were the steam rooms, but baths also had swimming pools, gardens, a gym of sorts, as well as shops and bars. Almost everyone in Roman times was a frequent visitor because they were so inexpensive. Here are some picts of my class' field trip.
Part of the Square of the Guilds
Ruins by the old theater
Temple of Vesta
Gardens for the house on top of the Palatine Hill
The Colosseum
So seeing Ancient Rome was amazing but while in Rome I also got to satisfy one more guilty pleasure…DINNER AT THE HARD ROCK CAFÉ! Now I know what you’re thinking…you are living in Italy, with some of the best food in the world! Well this may be true, but for starters I cannot afford to eat out every night and therefore am not enjoying the fine dinning Italy has to offer. My diet consists of granola, fruit, eggs and pasta…it gets old after over 2 months. Plus anytime we eat out we eat Italian food. Perugia does not have the plethora of different types of cuisines that we are used to back home…no Chinese, so sushi, no Mexican, no American food. So I know they say when in Rome, but I say when in Rome take advantage of a DELICIOUS cheeseburger, fries, and a margarita at the Hard Rock…it is worth every penny! I just hope when I get home I get to put in dinner requests for a while!
Ciao!
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