Last Tuesday I left the Centro at 8 am, came back at 5:30, left at 6, and then returned at 12:15. We had an all day field trip to Lavinium, Lake Nemi, and Tusculum. All of the sites were pretty cool. Lavinium is supposedly the location where Aeneas landed in Italy. It rained while we were there, so I got to wear my awesome poncho. Lake Nemi is in a volcanic crater, and the emperors used to have cruise ships up there for parties. The ships sunk in the lake, and were not able to be excavated until (our friend) Benito Mussolini drained the entire lake. The ships themselves were lost in a fire during the German retreat through Italy during the war, but there is still a really cool museum at the site. Tusculum was definitely the coolest site of the day, as it is on a mountain and was the location of many weekend/summer villas for the rich and famous of Ancient Rome. we saw the foundations of Cicero's villa, and then had time to hike around to check things out. Here are some photos from Tusculum:
the ancient citadel at tusculum (which we climbed)
an idea of the view on the way up
panoramic view from the top of the citadelAnyway... then I came back to the Centro to clean up quickly for a Wellesley student/alum gathering in Rome! I mentioned this in my earlier post, I believe. It was very nice to see Hannah (another Wellesley student who is in a different program in Rome), and to meet some alums ('94, early '80s, and mid '40s). Professor Schecter was also very nice, and (as professors usually are) very interested in our areas of study and experiences so far.
The rest of my week seemed to fly by. We had our first field trip to the Forum, which was amazing. Part of our assignment for the aternoon was to spend at least 30 minutes wandering around the ruins trying to identify things from our readings using our book. I didn't take too many pictures, but I snuck a few. Here is one of my on some stairs overlooking the Forum:
I've had a pretty low key weekend, doing homework and exploring Rome. On Friday evening the Centro hosted a 2 hour wine symposium, where we learned all about how to select and drink wine while in Rome. Today I went to a well known flea market in Trastevere. It was enormous and somewhat overwhelming. I made a couple of purchases, but I will definitely be going back.
This weekend I also booked my plans for Fall Break. I am going to spend part of the week in Paris with one of my friends (who speaks some French, thankfully), and then we're going to meet up with our other friend for the end of the week in Venice. I'm excited! I feel like break will be here before I know it.
Anyway, I need to do some serious work this afternoon, so I should probably put my computer away. The week ahead looks pretty busy, but hopefully I'll find time for an update in the near future.
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