warmer rome

Well the sun has been shining since we got back from Sicily, and it's been around 60 degrees with just beautiful sun and clouds. We've had to go out and paint for our graphics class and the sun feels so nice while you're sitting there trying to paint, but it's so bright that it just makes everything so white it's a challenge to paint. The other thing the change in weather means is tourists. I know I was one, and still kinda am, but it's really funny now that I'm used to the Romans to pick out the tourists. The other day there was a guy who was trying to be italian by wearing nice pants, since the italians tend to dress up, but he paired it with a "Honolulu marathon" shirt with flowers on it that no Italian would ever be caught wearing. Plus, it was short sleeves, and despite being 60 degrees it's waaaaay too early for an italian to even think about short sleeves (I mean, they're still wearing jackets). Tourists also love to watch people painting- you have 2-3 hours of random people trying to discreetly stand behind you and crane their necks to see what you're doing. I generally don't mind, but it gets really humorous when you only have 2 lines on your page and they are just watching intently. My favorites are the people who come up, crane and stare, then retreat a couple of steps and try to discreetly take a picture of you, your picture, and what you are painting.
Off the subject of tourists- I've decided that I'm going to try and switch my flight out of rome to one on April 29th that goes to Chicago. Hopefully then I can visit everyone at ND for a couple of days and catch a flight out of South Bend back to BWI. That seems to be the best option for seeing everybody and getting back cheaply- my current flight has me arriving in New York JFK around 5 pm, so by the time we clear customs and get our luggage all the flights to BWI would be in a rush and around $300, so I'm not particularly keen on doing that if I can help it. Anyway, studio is about to start, so I'd better look productive...

go me!

I went for a really long run the other day because I caught Kate (another arkie) on her way out, so we ran together and I told her she should go to the pamphili park and I'd take her there- but it's a good bit away and there's a killer hill on the way too, so it was the longest run I've had in a really long time. I'm still amazed at the romans- we were both wearing shorts and tshirts and we were not cold at all, but every roman we saw running was still wearing pants and windbreaker jackets. It must have been around 60 degrees! And sunny! Strange people...

off the island

And by island, I mean Sicilia (that would be how the Italians say Sicily). We went there on a 10 day field trip, which was like a real spring break, since the other spring break I had was a lot of going, not too many breaks, and not a whole lot of spring! Sicily was amazing- they had great sunny weather; it was t-shirt worthy pretty much all day for us, but of course the italians were still wearing winter coats (seriously, we saw fur jackets when it was probably 65 degrees F outside!) The only downside of the trip was one of our classmates ended up in the hospital- Eric. He was one of the kids in my studio section last year and the one who got us all into ultimate frisbee, which he's pretty hard core about and really good at because he's ridiculously athletic. Actually a little too athletic, because in Naples he decided to go "street walking" and do stunts on the streets, and thought it would be cool to do a backflip off a traffic barrier, although he had never done one before... he ended up smashing the back of his head into the cobblestones, and they had to have an ambulance take him away. He went to the hospital in Naples and they induced a coma for a couple of days, but he was doing well so they pulled him out of it and he left the ICU, although he has to stay in the hospital for another 5 weeks! He managed to send us text messages a couple of days ago that said he was doing well and getting better, which I thought was a really good sign.
Not that a whole lot of good can come out of something like that, but we were all rather pleased that the director of the Rome program stayed with Eric and not us... he's one of those people whose every quirk gets on your nerves- and he has a lot of quirks! So we were really happy he wasn't with us for the rest of the trip and it was so much more relaxed and vacationish- we didn't have wake up calls and and some free time we could go on beaches and stuff, which was amazing!!! Cefalu was my favorite city- it had a huge mountain in the middle of the city and then the city was along the beach below. We got to climb the mountain and get an amazing view from the top and then we bought some fabulous fruit and pistachios and ate them on the beach. Palermo was another pretty sweet city, also on the coast, also beaches and palm trees, you get the picture! My least favorite was Catania, which was the last city we visited and also the largest in Sicily. We visited on a Sunday, so a lot of things were closed, and it was just kinda dingy and industrial, especially compared to some of the other towns I've described.
Anyway, I'm back now, onto a new project, which is really a new phase of the same project, and enjoying a new brown-red tinge to my skin... bring on the sun, summer!

Irish pictures

I got some Ireland pictures, so I'll post some sheep up here to be oohed and aahed at... we made baaing noises in the car whenever we saw them.. you can guess how much that was!












As well as the humorous signs warning of imminent death approximately 750 feet below... (Cliffs of Moher are an A+ by the way- very cool)






and a news flash for everyone out there- Ireland is GREEN! Even in the winter!! (that was very exciting news after Switzerland and northern France!)





A picture break from driving through County Kerry... that would be me, Cailin, and Grant striking the pose.



Cailin and I being nice to each other... this is also when we were driving around Kerry- I could have posted another picture showing the windy road that followed the bay along the mountain, but this one is way cuter.


I think those are all the pictures blogger is going to let me upload for the night, so it's off to drafting for me (and waiting for St. Patrick's day to celebrate Ireland again hehe)

In brief

Spring break so far has been amazing! I've done most of the traveling on my own and met up with various people so far. It was great to see Elise and spend some time with her and meet all her friends (and the food in France was amazing, which was a definite plus!) and I'm currently in Dublin catching up with Sarah Wheaton, who is an incredible sweetheart from my dorm. I got in here yesterday and they let me use the ND-Dublin computers and rooms and stuff and even share crepes with them for Fat Tuesday, which was really nice. Before I have to head out, I'll give you the 10 second rundown of my impressions of the places I've gone so far:
Lourdes had a cool grotto, but it is so closely surrounded by the basilica and all kinds of stuff that it just kinda melts away into a tourist destination, which was really disppointing. I thought the biggest laugh there were the plastic statues of Mary that were hollow and could be filled with holy water by unscrewing a crown! It looked so tacky haha! Angers had good food, but I did encounter a lot of snobbery and some outright rudeness from the guys, which according to the people I met there is a continual annoyance. Switzerland was COLD... the first two days were ok, but on the last day when we were there it snowed and that just added something to the town that really made it beautiful. If only we could have stayed outside for a longer length of time! I'm in Dublin currently and it's amazing. The people are so friendly and so proud of being Irish that they really make you want to be Irish too. It's way more green than I thought it would be, especially in the city! I can't wait to see the countryside. I haven't seen any rain here yet, although I arrived in sun, then it sleeted, then it hailed, and today started out sunny, snowed for 10 minutes, and returned to being sunny before clouding over- so I think I've seen every for of precipitation here except rain!!!