We are coming to a close on our second week of our Rome trip, meaning we are halfway done with our study abroad! I can hardly believe we have already been living here for almost 2 weeks. I feel as if I have been here forever, but at the same time it is going by ridiculously fast. I know I sound 100% cliche, but its true. I love being able to buy fresh produce from the markets every day, especially buying bread from the Forno on the Campo de Fiori and delicious smoked meat from Viola by the boys' apartment. I love cooking :) Our apartment of girls has group dinners quite often, tonight I am going to make brown rice with veggies and chicken and soy sauce, I've been craving Asian food! Yuting, Brian, Roman, Kate, and me got sushi yesterday for lunch, rather expensive but surprisingly quite good and fresh.

Last weekend we went to Ostia Antica which was AMAZING (especially all the mosaics in the old bath houses) and then headed off to a nearby beach. I definitely was not at all equipped for the beach, I brought no sandals or a towel or a water bottle. Foolish foolish. I bought a huge bright orange towel from a random guy walking around selling them (there were tons of foreigners, presumably immigrants, selling lots of random things) and me, Mauna, and Emily shared it. The sun was super nice and the water was perfectly refreshing, such a perfect afternoon.

We left around 4:00pm, and on the way back it started thundering and raining! I don't understand weather. We got some crepes though (yumms) and then walked back to our apartment in the rain.

This week we also went to the Piazza Vittorio, I loved being able to photograph all the different exotic fruits and vegetables (spiky cucumbers?) and seafood and meat, and all the foreign vendors were really friendly. I want to go back and buy a lot of salmon and fresh veggies and fruits, it was so much cheaper than the markets around here, which I thought were cheap in the first place!

A couple days ago we also went to the Vatican (after a rather interesting entrance, aka we got in slightly illegally) where we had only a short amount of time unfortunately. But we still got to see a large amount of old beautiful art, plus the Sistine Chapel. It was SO crowded, I couldn't believe how many people were there.

Yesterday we headed to Capitoline Hill to see the museum, it was overwhelming seeing all the ancient statues, mosaics, tombstones, and paintings. Rome is so different than Seattle, there is ancient art everywhere. All the buildings are centuries old, and all are so gorgeous.

Lisa took us to her favorite gelateria, SO good. I got three sorbet flavors-mango, banana, and white peach-and all tasted like liquefied fruit. Tomorrow a bunch of the group is headed out to the same place to get gelato in celebration of Molly's 20th birthday.

I love Rome! I have already gained so much culturally from this short experience so far, I can't express it in words.

:)