Going much better

Well as you might have gathered, I wasn't particularly happy as of the last post, but it's been going better since then. I'm feeline a lot better, and I even went running this morning which was great because I've been getting a little antsy about not swimming and working out. Our field trip yesterday was pretty cool, although it rained about half the time and the other half it just threatened. So there was no sun, but Hadrian's villa was pretty interesting- it had some great landscapes and it's always amazing to see what people 2000 years ago could do. It really makes you feel like we haven't progressed as much as we should have in that amount of time!
I actually liked the second place better thought- that was Villa d'Este, which despite being built by a cardinal had pretty much only pagan iconography in the entire thing- statues of Venus, Rome, and a whole bunch of paintings inside. The real attraction is the gardens, which have so much water in them that they actually diverted a whole river to supply the fountains. There was one where the water could play organ music, and whole walkways with fountains on each side. One walkway had about 280 fountains on the left side as you walked through! We were supposed to sketch there but since it was raining we only got a little of that done. Really, the only downside was that I didn't get to finish my sketch and that Nina fell on some really steep steps and sprained her ankle pretty badly- she's on crutches today. But otherwise it went very well, and I'm just doing laundry and studio work and some assignments for history and graphics today- interesting, I know, but it's really rainy outside. Rome may have had some great engineering feats in building aquaducts to bring water into the city, but the drainage to take the water out of the city lacks a little bit!