Life at the Centro

Things are going really well here. We had our first tour of a site yesterday, and got to see the Villa Aurelia and part of the American Academy atop the Janiculum. Today we did the obelisk project I was so excited for, but it didn't go as well as expected. We were assigned groups of six, which were chosen randomly, as compared to being picked like I was hoping for. My group was pretty good, they let me navigate us through Rome and they kept their spirits pretty high, despite me pushing them fairly fast through the city. We hit a lot of the cool spots, including two of the obelisks no one else could find or even consider looking for. We then blew it on the presentation part (all six groups had to present on the obelisks- history, location etc.) and we returned with too little time to compensate when the wifi stopped working in the Centro. We had to cobble together our project and present in front of everyone, using humor and description instead of pictures (kind of like this post, pictures are coming I promise!) and we wound up not being selected winners. A lot of my friends were on the group that won, and they deserved it, so at the end of the day no point yelling at the refs when your poor performance loses you the game.

We haven't really gotten into rhythm yet, but today seemed pretty standard. Breakfast 8-8:30, lecture from 8:45-10:30, out in the city till 3:30, back to work on things and more lecture until dinner at 7:30. Three course meal (pasta with pesto, chicken and potatoes and custard for dessert) and then cards till 11, now a blog post, some reading and bed. I'm happy, laughing, smiling and overall loving life here. The groups are starting to shape up, and I have a good 10-14 people that I'm spending lots of time with, and they're all really swell. I still like everyone, but I tend to like the people who are willing to play cards even more. We have tomorrow morning off, except I've applied for and been accepted for a museum internship at one of the local museums that meets on Wednesday mornings. From what I know, we will be handling artifacts and preparing them for an exhibition December 7th. It sounds really cool and will definitely help me in my future endeavors. Lots of fun, starting to get busy, but once the rhythm starts things will become easier. We're penciling in the beach on Saturday as a group, and if I can't get photos up before then, Sunday will definitely be a good photo day. Talk to you soon!