New Picture Sites!
Yes, I have more pictures!!

These are not quite in order of being taken, since I dont have Paris or Karaoke or anything that Ipromised previously, but I have used a different website to post pictures because its easier and takes less time.

However, they don't have captions yet so you will just have to suffer through not knowing what some of the pictures are of.

Vatican Gardens Walk: MOnday October 3. The priest on campus gave us the opportunity to walk through the gardens that make up half of Vatican City. 5 of us went and although it was rainy the gardens were still beautiful. As Joe said, it was an experiance not many peole get to have or even get the option to do - go behind the scenes of the Vatican.

PICTURES!!!
Vatican Gardens Pictures


Venice and Florence Weekend: Sept 30-Oct 2nd. Well, this was an interesting weekend. We went camping in both cities, as it is pretty expensive to stay in both cities. Joe was part of a study trip that I couldn't get on because it filled up too fast, but I tagged along for the first day and learned some interesting facts about the city from Dr. Edwards who earned her Ph.D in Venetian studies. A beautiful city but quite the tourist trap. Yes, it is a watery city, and no it did not smell as bad as everyone said it would. PIGEONS!!!!! they were all over the place and it disgusted me! It was chilly at night sleeping in a tent, but I love camping so it was good to be outside.

Florence was a wasted stop. We took the train, stopped in Bologna, Italy for a few hours, and then arrived in Florence around 10:30 at night. We were camping on a hilltop a 20 min or so bus ride away from the city, but as you can see in the pictures we did have a very nice view. Joe and I were planning on staying two nights in Florence. However, we woke up the following day on Sunday and went to the train station and changed our train ticket back to Rome to leave at 1pm. So we were basically in Florence for a little over 10 hours! I got a picture of the fake Davids butt from the bus as we were driving past. I have not posted that picuture yet...SOMETHING TO LOOK FORWARD TO!!!!!

PICTURES!!!!
VENICE AND FLORENCE PICTURES


MUST GO! SOCCER!!!! AKA CALCIO!!!

IM LAZY........ NO! I JUST DONT HAVE TIME!
WOW!

so I realize I haven't updated in like years and years and I apologize greatly for this, but this has been then craziest and fastest moving last two weeks or however long it has been since I posted last!

Things to look forward to:

Pictures from a fantastic dinner at Hard Rock Cafe, pictures from karaoke night here at school, pictures from paris with renee and katie, pictures from venice and florence, and of course, an actual working link to ventotene pictures.

I am HORRIBLE at this blog thing! I don't see how anyone has time.

Midterms are this week and I leave for my 10 day break in Greece on Friday night. I am going on a Vatican gardens tour tomorrow with a few people, which should be interesting as that is a part of the vatican that hardly anyone gets to see.

Calcio has started up. I didn't play the first week because my ankle was still sprained from ventotene, and we sadly lost. Last week though I played and had a great time, not to mention our team WON!!! so exciting, and it was actually a very exciting game. We are the White team and have named ourselves VANILLA ICE, with our team cheer being ICE ICE BABY of course.

the weather is definitely starting to cool down here, almost more dramtically than chicago weather changes. although it is still nice during the day, just gets quite chilly in the morning and at night.

Well, that should be all for now. I know you are anxiously awaiting pictures...as words are just not as exciting but it just takes so long!!!

Liters of Beer!!!
Yes indeed....a local bar kindly sells liters of beer at a resonable price (7.50 Euro). Too bad I don't like beer....

A random picture of Katie and I in the hallway before we went out adventure to find this local bar called 'BP'...which is short for something but I don't know what.

The liter was slightly intimidating and I think the glass was larger than my head haha. The do have very good pizza there and you can also play checkers or chess directly on the tables so it really is a great place to hang out and chill. I also think that Loyola has keep that business alive all these years because it seems we are the only people who go there!

Papal Audience
Wednesday September 14th: Papal Audience

Our school was given a large amount of tickets so that we could all go to the Papal Audience in St. Peter's Square. Classes were canceled, but since I have a class later in the afternoon I still got to attend class which meant I did NOT have make up class on Friday!
(please note these pictures are borrowed from Katie b/c I only filmed and did not take pictures)

Here's the Pope approaching in his pope mobile.


And there's the wave.
He drove right past us as we were sitting in a back corner right by the path he drove by.

The actual audience was not that long and was spoken in Italian, German, Spanish, French, English, and Polish. Loyola Rome Center was supposed to be mentioned as members of the audience but apparently they forgot that we were there! We were even given white or yellow napkins to wave when we were announced...oh well, more napkins for me!
The Pope spoke about Psalm 123 (according to Joe, I didn't really know that). There were definitely ALOT of people there and from all around the world.

I will add that the umbrella usage was a little extreme and slightly rude. To avoid the sun many people in front of us put up umbrellas which significantly blocked the view of the stage and the big screens. There were a few people in our section who were not happy with this.

Ventotene!
Now Playing: Third Eye Blind
One word = AMAZING

I'm almost too excited to write coherently about this!
We left at 6am, took a bus, and then a ferry from mainland of Italy near Naples and arrived at Ventotene exhausted, but in awe of how beautiful the island was. The pictures that I have hardly do it justice.


This could be a long post so I will just do numbers to shorten things down a bit.
1. Renee, Katie, Joe and I stayed in a 'bungalow' wayyyyy inland on the island in the middle of bamboo fields and rocky dirt roads. There was an outside shower which was so cool! that I took advantage of, although for the less adventurous there was an inside shower as well.
2. I got to see a large, saltwater body of water for the first time! The beach had black 'sand' and was extremely hot to walk on and there were three small 'islands' out in the water...but I will get to these later.
3. The family that organized our going to this island had two kids like 14 and 8 maybe who have already lived a cooler life than I have and they were our tour guides around the island. They are from montana but now live in the alps and spend summers on ventotene! How cool is that?!
4. The food was AMAZING. We ate arranged dinners at two different resturants the two nights we were there. The first night I went to the fish resturant and had a fantastic, experimentally filled meal of pasta with fresh mussles and clams, fried white fish, calimari, shrimp(which I learned how to remove the heads and peel off the shells) with white wine! WOW!!! The second night I went to the meat resturant and had a good meal of pasta and meatballs, but was not comparable to the fish dinner.
5. We went swimming the first day and because of the weather that night before the sea was angry my friends!! joe and i were in the water about 3 minutes and he gets stung by a jellyfish!!! apparently this was happening to other people in our group as well and so we went to a cafe on the beach and they gave joe some vinegar to put on the sting. poor joe! he was out of commission for the rest of the day. ME however had a great time and came out with a great number of battle wounds to show my adventurness. I braved the angry sea and the jellyfish and went swimming out to the furthest island. The view was incredible and i wish i could have brought my camera with, but the water would not have been too good for my camera. I stood on the edge of the island that had to be at least 40feet above the water and felt the spray of the waves crashing into the rocks. SOOOOOO cool (my vocab of positive desc. words is very limited at the moment, i apologize). On the swim back to the island closer to the shore the waves were tossing and turning me about and I was tossed COMPLETELY over the edge of the island I was trying to reach. i had no control! but it was a great ride for sure. I did get a few cuts and scraps on my shins from being rushed over the rock but all in good fun! and of course I got some bruises, as i bruise so easily anyways, from being bumped in the rocks. NEXT I went cliff jumping for the first time in my life and I must say that it was a little intimidating but then very addicting once that was over.

Here's a clip of joe diving off one of the cliffs, sorry its sideways! dont have editing software here!
Joe Diving


6. Danceclubs!! The island had two different dance clubs - one completely outdoors dancing by the boat dock and the other called 'the cave' as it was literally in a cave type thing. I love dancing!!! and there were limited creepy italian men here, since loyola kids took up much of the space!
7. The injury: walking back from dinner the second night on Saturday I twisted/strained my ankle REALLY bad on these silly cobblestone streets! It was quite swollen and I could hardly walk on it for 10 min or so. Luckily, there was a SMALL icetray in our bungalow so I very ghettoly wrapped my ankle in plastic bags with ice and tied it again with another plastic bag....i cant belive that i found ice!!! - a rarity in these parts! However, I tuffed out the injury and danced on it all night - although it still has not completely healed and calcio (soccer) starts soon!!!
8. Scuba diving! Yes my friends, I went scuba diving for the first time in my life. (pictures of this are still coming - have to borrow them from joe). Again, another experiance which can not be duplicated. The feeling of actually breathing underwater was SOOOOO incredible! We only went down about 15 meters and sadly, did not have to wear cool wetsuits (because we were only under for max. 10 minutes or so). The water was unbeliveable clear and calm and full of algea covered rocks, fishes, and I even saw a jellyfish - and that even looked cool, despite its evil nature haha! The best part about it was that it only cost 25 euro! I got to snorkle around too while others were doing their scuba thing. That perhaps was the highlight of the weekend.
9. The prison island.... Whew! we had to climb up over 250 stairs I think to get to the top of the island where an old prison with an amazing history was. The prison had been used over the years by the Vatican, Rome, and some other groups (I have the info on tape, maybe I will watch and fill this in) but we got to walk around and basically see this crumbling old prison. It was pretty neat to see, but almost not worth the climb as we were all DYING afterwards. We took boats out to the island, but because there were so many of us, some of us ended up on a quasi-boat which was more like a red hovercraft almost, hardly as stable as an actual boat. So we had a VERY interesting ride out there, speeding along on the waves, but once we left the prison island we took a tour on boat around the island and the opposite side of Ventotene from the beach was SOOO wavey and we were FLYING over them. I had nothing to hold on to - I seriosuly thought I was going to just flop of the side of the boat. Katie almost gotten taken overboard by a wave that crashed into the boat on the side she was sitting on. It felt like we were 15 feet above the surface of the water at some points high up on waves.
10. The jazz festival! The weekend we were there was their tribute to jazz festival so after dinner on Saturday there was a great jazz band that played a small set.

Here's a little clip of them playing:
Jazz Band

Well, I will finish on an even ten, although there might be other things I am forgetting. Lunch time is appproaching and the thought of food is distracting me.
Ciao!

Backlogging is finished!!!
Now Playing: nada! I have no tunes!
Yes, its true. I am all caught up until today and since nothing particularly exciting happened today this will be short.

They served ravioli at lunch today! more meat! it was a bit salty, but the change was welcome.

i did alot of writing, as you can see in the previous posts.

but most importantly!!!
tomorrow at 6am I am leaving for an island in the meditteranean sea near capri!! we will be swimming, staying in a condo on the island, snorkeling, and taking a cruise on a yacht!!!!!!! i am terribly exciting and will have a bunch, hopefully, to write about when i get back.

also, i promise that the next writings will be shorter, but also more interesting so that you dont feel like you are reading a third persons summary of some long time ago event. if i write about things as they happen they will be more interesting to read about later....good for you, and for me!

ciao!

Mass of the Holy Spirit and Dinner
Now Playing: Three Days Grace - Wake Up
I'm almost done writing about the past!!!

Yes, I went to mass last night, Sept. 7, 2005. For some this might be a shocker. About 140 or so people attended mass that was held at St. Ignatius church near Piazza Novona. The church was elaborate and extravagent as many of the churches in Rome tend to be. I borrowed some pictures from Joe so you could see inside.

The dome is probably the coolest part of the church as it was painted on a flat roof to make it appear as a dome. The perception on that part is amazing and as you continue to walk towards the altar the highest point in the 'dome' moves towards you (away from the altar) because of the way it was painted.

ELTON JOHN LIVE - Sept 3, 2005
The post with possibly the coolest pictures so far!!


Yes, this is a post dedicated solely to Elton John and the night that revolved around him. Funny, I am not even an Elton John fan...not that I don't enjoy his music, as it is very good music, but I do not listen to it enough to call myself a fan, per say.
HOWEVER...fan or not you had to be crazy to pass up the opportunity to see THE DIVA live in concert playing infront of the COLOSSEUM! and crazy i was NOT on this night of music and crowds and expensive food.

we first went out to dinner at a resturant near piazza novona and with the meat cravings that i have been having i search for the cheapest meat on the menu (10 euro)...an appetite portion of salmon and then to accompany that i got a side salad. HOWEVER...apparetly I missed the RAW description of the salmon on the menu (FYI: Tartar of salmon implies raw) so i was served a tunafish can sized portion of raw salmon and a salad. *please note that i also orded an antipasta(appetizer) and a salad, usually served as the LAST course for a meal...kind of throwing off the process a little bit. so my first experiance of the night began with enjoying (and yes, after i got used to the texture) raw salmon and a very good salad. go sushi!
....it did not satisfy my craving for meat too much though : (

and then we headed to the COLOSSEUM! the pictures that can be found in my Assisi post of Rome off the bridge were actually taken on our walk over the Tiber River on our way there.

PICTURES CLICK LINK!

Here are the pictures...please enjoy them and if you wish to see EJ live on video I have at least a clip from every song that he played that night..just let me know hahh.

Elton John Concert

The captions explain the pictures well enough.
Here is the setlist that he played as best as I know it: (if you see this and this part is not filled in, its because I have not logged footage yet, be patient. that takes time)

The concert was of course amazing. One of the most amazing parts about it was....FREE water!!!!! they had people standing along the sides of the crowd handing out bottles of FREE water - both natural and mineral water(YUCK). That is unheard of!!! especially when every where else you go in Rome you have to pay for water unless you are lucky enough to stumble upon one of the few 'waterfountains' here.
We were not exactly front row and there was a very annoying sound booth type thing set up right infront of the stage which blocked our view sometimes, depending on where the crowd shifted us too haha. It was very nice having my camera though because I could hold it above peoples heads and zoom in on te stage and the big screens up in front and see everything perfectly. I think I helped out the few people standing around me also who got to watch the conert off the viewfinder on my camera as well haha. We lost some of our group (either by choice or by crowds) in trying to get closer to the stage though so for most of the concert it ws Joe, Renee, Katie and myself standing together. There were probably a good amount of loyola people in the crowd anyways, but I did film the crowd behind us and there were LOTS of people behind us as well.

The colosseum was lit up with various colors and sometimes swirling lights which looked really neat on the old, textured rocks that are the colosseum.
I found it interesting that there were a few times when the holding up and waving of lighters would have been appropriate, as they do in alot of other concerts during slower songs, but that did not happen here in Rome, so maybe that is just an american thing? I'm not really sure, but i was looking forward to filming a mass crowd of held up waving lights...oh well, another time!

after the concert we just kind of followed the crowd to the exit which led us past The Forum and we met up with Cat, Jackie and Jeana who were meeting some italian friends they met and we just all happened to be going to the same place: Gay Village!
Apparently it is a festival that is set up every year and lasts for a week and there are various outdoor danceclubs, bars, informational booths, entertainment shows, etc. The last night for it was on sunday, the next day, so we wanted to go check it out before it ended. We found, with the help of the italians haha, a bus that took us a few blocks from it and as we were waiting in line we learned that it was 12 euro to get in the door! and that was a little above our price range, especially when there are other places that we know of that do not charge cover, so we decided to skip Gay Village, and with nothing else really planned out, and it being a long night of standing and dancing to EJ (his european name maybe? it was on all the merchandise) we called it a night.

a new found appreciation of the diva is now established after this concert and its too bad that i do not have any of his songs except tiny dancer (which he did not play and i was soo looking forward to hearing!)

A noche in Rome - Shakin our booties
Now Playing: Tracy Chapman - Son of a Preacher
I believe the date of this excursion was August 27th, the night that we got back from Assisi, but as I am still backlogging this blog, don't hold wrong dates against me (not that most of you will know, or really care anyways)....

Let's see first we will do introductions, as that is the standard way of doing things: (I will apologize here for any misspelled names from now and before and after)
Myself, Joe, Cat, Jackie, Jeana, Corinna, Myra,Lisa, Lee, and lets just say 5 more people whose names are not coming to my fingertips were all involved.
The reason the night was successful: Jackie, as she is the only one who speaks italian and asked the bus driver to direct us to a nightclub that tourists dont go to.
Setting: Coyote (not resemblance to Coyote Ugly for those wondering)

The club was really great and played all American music...i guess thats the only cool music haha. There was a sweaty, crowded inside dance area and then two outside and slightly less crowded areas. There was no cover charge (awesome!) but to celebrate the start of the night the whole group did a shot of jager and chased with some redbull that was a 5 euro start, and therefore end of the drinking evening for me haha. we soon learned that italian men do stand up to their stereotypical reputation and since girls were NOT the majority at the club...the italian men were, hmm lets say... bold in their dancing with us new american girls. cat and i set up a buddy system with a 'HELP ME' signal - a very obvious patting on the head haha that was a signal to get yourself over here and dance with me so this creep stops! signal. that worked out pretty well and we danced all night until about 430 or 5 in the morning. i must mention that not all guys were easily fended off and some required what is now known as 'the forceful ciao' usually accompanied by a strong push in the opposite direction and it did get rather annoying since most of them couldn't dance (not that I can( but i was attempting to get my (bad) groove on, and their bad groove would throw off my groove which was not cool at all. i nicknamed one particularly annoying italian guy T-REX as we would push him away, he'd go away, and then hed come back a little later and you'd spot him in the crowd...searching for his next prey and if you stood perfectly still and didnt move at all...he would approach, attempt to dance with a slight swing of the hip and then when no movement responded, he would hunt elsewhere.
he looked like a cross b/w these two guys (note the cool ear length slicked hair)



yes, he was a creep but its a good story to remember.

i will also like to thank joe for helping out, despite his nonliking to dance attitude. he would step in like the gentleman and dance a little as interception. you did great joe hahah

It's all about the Rome baby
Now Playing: Bird York - In the Deep
Yes! I am stationary and have stopped traveling somewhere every 3 days! Its really quite a good feeling, as much as I did enjoy traveling...yet I am missing the relaxation and the surprise of it already.

I will first give some background about the John Felice (pronounced Feliche as I found out) Rome Center to make your reading expierance more enjoyable:
1. I will be here for school starting August 29th and ending the day of my last final, December 6th. Then I will be in Spain with my dad for two more weeks after that, coming back to Chicago December 23rd...probably the first time I will be seeing snow : )
2. The people: Associate Dean = Todd Waller - great guy.....SLA's (Student life assistants)are Cat, Mike, Liz, Carla, and Sean...they kind of are like
RAs but cooler and Elyse = the librarian/my boss
3. Yes, thats right...my boss, because I am now employeed at the library working 4 hours/week earning 5 euro/ hour...BALLA STYLE!!!
4. There are somewhere around 160 students, maybe a little more here on campus, but not all from LoyolaChicago..some are from Marquette, Eastern, SLU, and other Loyola schools in the country. We all live in a gated community of sorts in a large connected building which means we eat, sleep, going to class, and hang out all in the same building...really, its not too bad though haha.
5. I am in room 205 and live with a girl named Dianna, a senior at Loyola....we get along quite nicely but are not best friends. Our room is pretty small...smaller than freshman rooms I think, but isn't too bad. We have a nice bunk situation where the beds are not directly above each other and we each have our own closet. There are NO screens in the windows in this whole building but it is AWESOME being surrounded by fresh air all day, not cold recirculated air that you crazy a/c loving people enjoy all summer. Its hot during the day and cools off nicely at night, but is pretty humid most of the time. THERE ARE PALM TREES HERE!!!!!!!!
6. I'm taking an Italian film class taught by a brilliant italian man...dr. dibiagi which is by far the highlight of my classes here. i am also taking dr. biagi's literature class but half of the books are ones i have already read...but he compares them to movies! so i get a full dose of movies once again this semester..how fitting right?
7. The Mensa Menu:
First Course:
EVERYDAY pasta al pomodoro - your basic pasta with plain tomato sauce
occasionally they switch it up and add another kind of pasta, sometimes with peppers, occasionally a cream sauce, sometimes a basil sauce.
Second Course:
You are only allowed one of the various meat products, all of which come in SMALL portions. They offer at different times: turkey, beef, chicken, pork, and rarely but sometimes steak...also eggs are sometimes an option. if you do not want the meat you usually have the choice of some cheese product - cheeze calzone minis, grilled cheese (no bread, just cheese), etc. you choose ONE of these then you have choice of some veggie - very often eggplant, they are big fans of eggplant here, or carrots or broccoli and some potato product.
DESSERT: fruit (peaches, pears, plums, watermelon, apples) OR yogurt....the OR is very important because they are starting to crack down on those rebels, such as myself who take botha fruit and a yogurt.

So, even if you dont care about what the menu is, then I will tell you that my daily, and i mean daily as it hardly ever changes, meal- both lunch and dinner consists of a course of pasta al pomodoro, 2 rolls of bread, 3 pads of butter, some meat product, fruit, and yogurt, 3-4 glasses of water with the occasional glass of hot tea.....eaten in that order, with the exception of the drinks, which are drank throughout the meal.

I HAVE NEVER EATEN SO MUCH PASTA IN MY LIFE NOR HAVE I CRAVED MEAT SO BADLY IN MY LIFE!

dont get me wrong tho....the meals are extremely repetative and im sure will get old after awhile but the food is good despite what some people might say and i look forward to eating these monstrous meals every day and am infact in line before the doors even open to the mensa.