Day 2

Hello!

Today has been much better than yesterday, got a little sleep, feeling a lot better, and got to see some cool things.

However we were rudely awaken this morning. Our room is RIGHT next to the breakfast room and EVERYTHING echoes in this place... so we were woken up at like 6am with that... and will probably have that happen every morning. I could probably sleep through it but my roomies were freaking out so I got up too. Oh well... 6 am is kinda sleeping in for me compared to when I have practice. Then this morning we had lecture which was very laid back and interesting which is good. After lecture we went out to "explore". We saw a lot of very cool things, my favorite might have been old Rome. We saw the Roman forum ruins and ruins of what would have been a Roman "mall". It was very cool. We also saw the Pantheon. Unfortunately today is the one of three days every year that it is closed so we didn't get to go in. We'll go another day though so it's ok. We also saw the Trevi Fountain. Yes, I made a wish :) We saw so much more and I already have more pictures than I know what to do with. It's very interesting though so I'm enjoying it. We also had some pretty good pizza and "the best gelato in Italy".

I have learned one thing about Romans... they don't do lines. They push and shove and budge and whoever is best at those three things gets helped first. It's really annoying.... I don't like being crowded and touched by people I don't know. Ick... Oh and the city is dirty. I really think I'm going to like Florence better, and I definitely like Venice better so I'm excited for the second half of the trip. But still, it's Rome and it's amazing.

We now have the afternoon off... most everybody is napping. I might do that too, or read for lecture tomorrow. I'm not sure what we'll do tonight. Maybe explore. Probably go to bed early.

Oh, and I did go out last night. We just walked around the city and got ourselves thoroughly lost for about 4 hours. Finally we split up into the people who actually wanted to get home and the people who said they wanted to get home but really just wanted to wander around. New years was kind of a bust though. A few of us were talking in the hotel and didn't even realize it happened. Apparently the other group though found this cool concert and did the whole new years thing. One of the girls got pick-pocketed though and lost her camera. :( Not good.

That's all for now. I'm still trying to get pictures up on here... I have a lot though so it'll be hard to pick and choose.

I hope everybody is doing well! I finally got a phone card so I'm going to try to use it today/tomorrow.

and HAPPY NEW YEARS!

I love you all,
Ash