Buon Natale!

Merry Christmas! I've had a very relaxing past couple days in Rome. I've done a lot of reading and even had time to watch a couple movies--it's been wonderful!

And yesterday was a very exciting day, because I got to go to the Papal Christmas Eve mass at the Vatican! It was at 10 pm, not midnight, but close enough. It was almost a whole day event, too, because we got there at 5 pm to wait in line. With the weather we had last week, I was a little worried about the potentially very frigid 4 hour wait, but it turned out to be ok. Apparently when my parents left they took the cold St. Louis weather back with them, and it was more like in the 40s or possible even low 50s yesterday--basically it couldn't have been better. It rained a bit off and on, but that didn't matter, because we were warm. Good company and conversation helped the wait to go pretty fast, and before we knew it we were in the basilica! We got very good seats, pretty close to the front. I've never seen St. Peter's so bright on the inside--turns out it DOES have lights, they just usually never turn them on. It was fairly bright while we were waiting before mass, and then when mass started they turned on more lights, and then at the Gloria even more lights came on...it was incredible.

Oh, and in case you heard the story about what happened to the Pope, here's my insider's account: I didn't see it happen, ha. It happened right when he walked in, so he was still in the back of the church, and we were near the front. But we definitely knew something was going on because we heard everyone gasp/scream, and the music stopped, and the guards sprinted down the aisle and everyone was standing on their chairs...and then a little while later everyone cheered, and the music started, and mass went on as usual. We didn't find out til afterwards what had happened. But we watched some youtube videos today, and it was SCARY, even though I knew personally that he was fine and got up and went on with mass like normal. It's just not something I ever expect to witness, I guess.

But other than that, mass was absolutely fantastic. Here's a picture of Katie, Evan, and I afterwards!



Unfortunately, Waffle Houses don't exist in Rome, so I wasn't able to participate in that particular tradition after mass this year. But this morning, my friend Evan's dad cooked pancakes for his whole family, and they generously invited Katie and I to join them. It was delicious! Then we all went to St. Peter's again, for the "Urbi et Orbi" blessing at noon. Papa Benedetto gave a fairly short address in Italian (I bet it was about Christmas...but I didn't exactly catch it all), and then said even shorter things in dozens of other languages. It was very cool.


The Pope is up there in that center window (I promise!) You don't realize how huge St. Peter's is until you see scale figures...


This is the long-awaited Presepe in St. Peter's Square, finally unveiled last night!

The rest of the day felt kind of special, but not exactly like Christmas. I watched most of "A Christmas Story", and walked around the city with Katie for a little while, and then we went out for dinner and got our favorite splurge dessert, tartufo (a fancy sort of ice cream). And I was thinking, the only way I knew it was Christmas this year was from the religious aspect. I didn't have the other Christmasy things and typical family traditions--no game tournament, no ham with cheese sauce dinner, I didn't even wake up and open presents today (except yours, Laura--thanks again!). It was almost a regular day, except we were celebrating Jesus' birth. And that felt the same as always, with the usual reflections that go along with it. (Though I think I reflected more on Mary and Joseph's, especially Joseph's, individual roles in the story than I had in the past). I guess I learned that while the family traditions are nice, they aren't really necessary for it to be Christmas--the Church feast is the same either way. Sort of. With that being said, I definitely did miss being home and will appreciate it very much next year. But I'm glad I have the experience of this year too.

Tomorrow I'm leaving with Katie for our two week tour of Europe! So not only did I celebrate Christmas in Rome, I will get to celebrate it equally as much in about five other cities that we'll be in during the Octave, starting with Wroclaw and Krakow, both in Poland. I'm pretty sure I've listed out before where all I'm going, but just in case...after that we'll be in Brussels and Bruges, and then meet up with a bunch of other archies and a couple other friends I know from ND in Paris for New Years, then Barcelona, Amsterdam, and Berlin. I'll come back to Rome for about 3 days, and then we're off to Egypt for a week! Should be pretty awesome! I will definitely have lots to write about when I get back. Til then, pray that we have safe travels!

Over Already?!?

MAD-Rome was a mad success! It flew by, actually. I can't believe it's already been over a week since my parents got here...anyway, I believe I last posted after day 2 of our adventures. After that, we had two more days of sightseeing in Rome, and then we went to Florence and Livorno!

On Day 3, which I guess was Tuesday, we started off the day by going to my favorite coffee shop (aka "bar") and having Italian coffee. Dad was shockingly underwhelmed. It surprised me, because I thought that Italian coffee was supposed to be top-notch, and Dad, being a big coffee drinker, would surely love it. But oh well. I think he tolerated it for the week and will be glad to get back to the good old American stuff:-)

After our coffee, we went to the Forum and then to the Colosseum. I had never been inside the Colosseum, so it was a cool experience for me too. Here it is!


Il Colosseo


Then we walked to St. John Lateran, stopping on the way to look at S. Stefano Rotonda, but unfortunately we couldn't go in because it was closed at the time. It was lunchtime when we got to St. John's, so we had a picnic on one of the benches in front of the church.


The church is off to the left of this picture.


Peanut butter and Nutella--essential parts of my life in Rome.

When we were done eating, we actually went inside the church. We stayed for a while, and then walked to S. Maria Maggiore, another of the major basilicas. While we were there, we stumbled upon a Vespers (Evening Prayer) service, in Italian of course. It was awesome! We used Italian breviaries and everything.

After that, we continued our church tour and went to S. Susanna, to pick up our Papal Audience tickets for the next day! S. Susanna is the official American church in Rome, so we stayed for an English mass. Also, there was a painting of St. Genesius, patron of actors. It's nice to know that he actually exists--I had never heard or seen anything about him except from Mr. Leibrecht before DB plays. I took a picture for evidence, of course.


Laura, this one's for you:-)

We were pretty tired by this point, so we walked to a pizza and pasta place, ate dinner, got gelato at the 3rd of my 3 favorite gelato places, and called it a night.

On Wednesday we went to the Papal Audience in the morning! Mom said it was the closest she had ever been to a Pope, except possibly when we watched JPII drive by when he came to St. Louis, except she wasn't looking at the right time and missed him, so it didn't really count. That basically took all morning. For lunch we went to Corsi, the restaurant I had dinner at almost every night of last semester. I had my favorite pasta dish, and it was delicious as always. In the afternoon, we went to St. Paul's Outside the Walls, which I had been to before, and Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, which I had not been to before. Santa Croce has some pretty amazing relics--pieces of the True Cross and the Good Thief's Cross, thorns and nails, St. Thomas's finger, and the INRI sign that was above the Cross. That was all we had time for that day--we came back to the hotel and ate sandwiches there, I believe, to finish it off.

On Thursday, we left for Florence! We got there in the late morning, checked into our hotel, ate a relaxed lunch, and walked around a little bit. We went in the Duomo and then to the church of the Annunciation that's just down the street. When we got there, though, we realized that it was closed for the afternoon wouldn't open for another 20 minutes. That turned out to be the perfect amount of time to find a bar and take a coffee break...


Dad had Cafe Americano and Mom got yogurt, haha:-)

We went to the church of the Annunciation because it was founded by the Seven Holy Founders themselves (aka the Sette Santi Fondorati--so we can start referring to the parish back home as SSF instead of SHF if we want). When we got there, we learned that there's also a miraculous image of the Annunciation there--apparently the guy who painted it finished it most of the way, but left a blank spot where Mary's face would go, because he didn't feel worthy to paint it. Then he fell asleep, and when he woke up it was finished. Pretty awesome! Dad made the joke that it would be nice if that would happen with my architecture projects. I quite agree.

The next day we slept in, and then went to S. Maria Novella and S. Lorenzo. In the late afternoon, we hopped on a train to Livorno! It was cold and raining when we got there, so the walk to the hotel wasn't much fun. But when we got there we ate supper and played Boggle, so it turned out to be a good night after all.

The main thing we wanted to see in Livorno was actually just outside Livorno, a shrine dedicated to La Madonna della Grazie, also known as La Madonna del Montenero. She's the patroness of Tuscany, the region that Florence and Livorno are part of. St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, who mom has a huge devotion too, visited there and had a conversion experience there, which is the main reason we were going. We took a bus and then a funicular (which Dad says is like a cable car) up a large hill to get there. There was a great view from the top!


You can't spell "funicular" without "fun"! This is one of those beautiful self-portrait pictures that I still can't get quite right...


The Mediterranean Sea is in the background--Livorno is right on the coast!

The actual shrine itself was pretty cool, and has been visited by alot of important people (like Mother Seton).


Two great mothers:-)

JPII was also here back in the day, as well as a few other popes I think, and, one of my personal faves...St. Josemaria Escriva!


This quote is from The Way ("Cammina") and says something to the effect of "first by yourself it was hard, but now you go to your Mother, and with her, it is easy". That's a paraphrase--those who know Italian better than I, don't laugh at my translation:-)

Mom really wanted to get something from the bookstore, but it closed from noon til 3, and we got to it at about 12:15...so we decided to take the funicular down the hill, get lunch, and then come back. We found a nice sandwich shop and had a two course meal--sandwiches, and then ice cream bars an hour later (we had lots of time to kill).


Italian panini!

We went back to the bookshop for a bit, and then came down the hill for good and went back in to town. We saw one other church, but then it was too cold to do any more walking around, so we got our luggage and headed to the train station. We arrived back in Rome safely on Saturday night!

On Sunday, we went to mass at Il Gesu, the Jesuit church, because we hadn't been in there yet. Afterwards we cooked French toast and omelet and had a typical Sunday brunch. In the afternoon, we went to the Catacombs. It took a while to get there, because the buses were confusing, but we finally made it, and it was definitely worth it!

When we first went down there, I was thinking about the enduring nature of the Church, and how even persecution couldn't stomp it out and in fact just made it stronger, and how that same Church is still alive today...those were exciting thoughts. As the tour went on longer though, I started to just be a little more creeped out--we were walking down extremely narrow halls lined on either side with stacks and stacks of old graves, mostly empty, but a few that were still sealed up...and I guess my imagination just ran away a little bit. So I tried to focus more on what I had originally been thinking. And then on the way home, a neat thought occured to me--that style of living doesn't really appeal to me, the sneaking around dead bodies thing...I mean, those early years would definitely be an exciting time to be a part of the Church, but I don't really like picturing myself being a part of it--and that's ok, because God didn't want me to be a part of the Church at that time. He wants me to be a part of the Church TODAY, right now, at this specific point in history. We aren't facing outright persecution right now, but we're still fighting. And THIS is the time, out of all of history, that He decided to put me in. I guess I'm not done figuring out why yet...but it's kind of cool to think about that.

When we got back to the hotel, we ate, and then played Hearts. Dad won pretty handily. It was a lot of fun! Then we just hung out and talked for awhile, since it was Mom and Dad's last night in Rome and all.

This morning we woke up early and I went with them to the train station, where they caught a train to the airport and hopefully got on the plane and will get home smoothly late tonight (St. Louis time...it'll be in the middle of the night in Rome time)!

If you're still reading this, I'm impressed. I'm also impressed that Mom and Dad were able to live it all--we packed a lot into a week! It was a fantastic week, in my opinion, and I'm sure Mom and Dad would say the same!

I Can't Believe It's Finally Happening!

Operation MAD-Rome is officially underway (and actually 2 days in)! MAD stands for Mom And Dad...see, almost exactly a year ago, when I was in the car with my brother who was about to get married in about 2 hours, we somehow came up with this crazy idea that it would be awesome to give our parents a trip to Rome as a Christmas present this year, so they could see the city, and me, all at once. It wasn't really a serious idea when we first threw it out there, but then we thought about it more, and talked about it with the rest of our siblings, and then, somehow...they're here! We've been hardcore sightseeing for the past few days, pretty much non-stop since I met them at the train station, actually.

Yesterday we started by checking into the hotel, and then visiting my studio and di per di, the grocery store across the street. Those 3 places are where I divide most of my time, actually:-) And no joke about di per di--sometimes I'm there multiple times a day. Anyway, after lunch (which was the purpose of our di per di visit), we went to the Pantheon, S. Maria Sopra Minerva (where St. Catherine of Siena is buried), Piazza Navona, and the Spanish steps. We went in the churches at Piazza Navona and on top of the Spanish steps, too, which somehow I had failed to do so far. And speaking of failing...whenever we pass a church, which happens quite frequently here, Mom asks me what it is. Usually I have to say "uhh...I'm not sure...", haha. Anyway, after all of that, we went to dinner and then to mass. It was raining after mass, but that didn't stop us from making the trek out to our first of many gelato stops, my favorite place, Giolitti's. Also, I used my recently purchased umbrella for the first time ever. (Where did I get it? Where else but di per di, of course...) Turns out umbrellas a quite a nice little invention--it's too bad it took me 20 years to figure that out.

Today was Vatican Day! We started by going on the Scavi Tour, down into the catacombs to see a bunch of old mausoleums and finally, St. Peter's bones. It was pretty incredible. Also, there's a chapel right by where the bones are, and it's in the shape of a Latin cross, like tons of other churches...but in most of those churches, the altar is in the short end, with the crossing pretty close to it. Here, the altar is in the long end, with the crossing at the back of the chapel. It's an allusion to the fact that St. Peter was crucified upside down--his chapel is sort of upside down too. I got a huge kick out that, being an architecture nerd and all. When the Scavi tour is over, you pop out right by JPII's tomb. That worked out well, since that was one of the places that I think Mom wanted to see most, out of all of Rome. So we stayed there for a little while, and then we up to St. Peter's Church itself. Obviously we spent quite a while looking around there. We went to adoration for a little bit, and I prayed especially for the rest of our family back home, aka our generous benefactors:-)

We spent all afternoon in the Vatican museums, which culminate in the Sistine Chapel. It's amazing--better than all the pictures. There's SO much there; you could spend hours just in that room. The paintings in themselves are enough to make it awesome, but then Mom also reminded me that that's where new Popes are elected...and that just makes it even more incredible. The Holy Spirit works hardcore in that room. And we all got to stand in it! We got gelato again for our walk back, from another of my favorite places, Old Bridge. Then we got dinner and had another relaxing night.

Tomorrow is going to be another pretty full day--the agenda includes the Forum, the Colosseum, S. Maria Maggiore, AND St. John Lateran. And maybe we'll even have time for gelato again, who knows? :-)

London and Other Recent Adventures

As I was recently reminded by a good friend and apparently fairly frequent blog-checker, I have not posted in a while. This is true, but not unexpected, since I accurately predicted this would happen in my last post. But anyway, my final project is turned in, my review is tomorrow, and I have free time again!

So what have I been up to that kept me so busy in the last two weeks? Well...I went to London for the weekend of Thanksgiving. Our flight left at 6:30 am on Thursday, but we had to start the traveling process at about 3:45, when we left to take a bus to another bus stop with the bus to the airport...I think I've mentioned before that it always seems like traveling takes alot of steps. On the bus to the airport, we met another American student who went to prom with my friend Katie's good friend from ND. Small world, I guess.

When we got to London, we took a bus from the airport to the center of the city (via Baker Street. If you know why that's so cool, then you're cool). We walked around for awhile and saw some important things, like Buckingham Palace, Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Trafalgar Square (with St. Martins-in-the-Fields, THE precedent for most of the Protestant churches in the U.S. I was surprised to find that it was there; I guess I always pictured it being in a field somewhere or something). In the evening we headed over to the flats where the ND students studying in London live, and ate Thanksgiving dinner with some of them. It was delicious. We had a typical American feast--turkey, mashed potatoes, vegetables, gravy, cranberry sauce, pastry things...and three kinds of pie for dessert. It was was good. It was weird spending a holiday away from home...and I know Christmas will be even weirder.

Friday was another sightseeing day. Among other things, we went to a Christmas festival in Hyde Park, and saw St. Paul's Cathedral. We went to an Evening Prayer Service there, and it really confused me--they had readings from the Book of Revelation that included things I had never heard in that book before and sounded kind of sketch, but then at one point they also said the Apostles Creed, all of it, including the part about believing in the Holy Catholic Church. So I suppose I don't really understand the Anglican Church's relationship to the Catholic Church. And I guess even if I did, I'd have to relearn it soon anyway when it changes...we also went to a Starbucks, where I was able to get one of those huge, soft chocolate chip cookies. Soft cookies are probably one of the foods I miss most here. We also walked to the Globe, but got there right after it closed, so we couldn't go in. We did get to see the outside, though. It was smaller than I imagined it to be, but still cool. After that we went to Modern Art museum right next door, but ended up not really looking at any exhibits and instead spending all our time in the gift shop. They had alot of good art and architecture books there. When we walked back outside we realized that the bridge across the river right there is the one that was destroyed at the beginning of the 6th Harry Potter movie! So we walked across it of course. We had fish and chips for dinner (except I didn't have the fish, I got something else).

Saturday was probably my favorite day in London. We started it off right by going to see Platform 9 3/4 in King's Cross Station! Seriously. We also went to the London Tower, which is the old castle fortress thing. It seemed very pleasant--pretty walls, green grass, right by the river...it was kind of hard to convince myself that so many bloody things had happened there in the past. For instance, I saw the tower where St. Thomas More and Ann Boleyn and others were held before they were executed...

Saturday afternoon, we saw Wicked! We got fairly cheap student tickets. It was very cool. It was dark when it was over, because it gets dark in London at approxamately 4:30 pm. No joke. And it not like that's when the sun sets--that's when it's DARK. It was also raining. We wandered around for a little while and finally got dinner at an Irish pub. Then we went to the ND flats for a bit. Things got interesting at midnight. We had another 6 am flight with 3:30 bus situation, so we didn't want to pay for a hostel that night. But, we weren't allowed in the flats after midnight. So we were essentially homeless, wandering the streets of London in the dark and cold. We took a bus to the train station our bus was leaving from in the hopes there'd be an inside place we could wait, but no luck. So we wandered some more. We found a McDonalds that was open til 2. That's possibly the most thankful I've ever been to go to a Mickey D's. At 2, we walked back to the train station. We stood outside for awhile, and bought a pasty to share, and then went to the actual bus stop. We found a place we could at least sit down in, and waited. In retrospect, it was quite a humorous situation, but it the time it was fairly miserable. But even though I was miserable, I knew that it WOULD make a good story eventually, so that actually made it a little better. 3:30 finally came, and we started the journey home. We got back to Rome at about 10. I showered, went to studio, and didn't leave much for the next week or so...

So that was London, and that last sentence pretty much sums up my last week, too. I was in studio. We did take a few breaks, I guess. On Friday we went to a pub for a little while. When we walked in I was surprised that it was so crowded, and then I remembered, oh yeah--it's Friday night! I kind of lose track of the days right before a project is due. Also, yesterday I took a longer mass break than usual. My friend Evan and I went to S. Maria Maggiore. That's where the proclamation of the Immaculate Conception actually happened, if I heard right in the Italian homily. So cool! We also took another break in the afternoon to go see a ceremony at the Spanish steps where the Pope presented a special wreath to the statue of Mary there. Unfortunately, we got there just a bit late and missed the main part of the ceremony...but we did see him drive away in the Pope-mobile:-) There were tons of people there. Apparently the Immaculate Conception in Italy is a holiday equivilant in importance to Thanksgiving in America, and Rome is the place to be for it. Christmas decorations are going up all over the city,too, like lights, and trees...and it's starting to seem more like Christmas! We listened to alot of Christmas music in studio, too. I love it!

Last night I finished my final project. I sat in on reviews all day today, and will do the same tomorrow (including my own). I have a small history assignment to do, and a history final on Friday, and then I'm done for the semester! Crazy. I also realized recently that this is the first semester in quite a long time that I haven't written a single paper. Kind of weird...good thing I have things like this blog to keep me from completely forgetting how to express myself in written form.

A Few Things

I'm about to disappear for a couple weeks. By that I mean that our final studio project is due in just under two weeks, and I won't really have any free time til then (and not much sleeping time either). Oh, and I'm also going to London for 3 days in there for Thanksgiving...we bought our tickets when we thought the project was due tomorrow, and so we'd be able to relax and enjoy the trip. The deadline got extended to December 7th, which is good, but means the trip timing is not as good. But it'll be fun anyway.

Before I drop off the face of the earth though, I want to write quickly about a few things I've been meaning to. First, last week I visited the Basilica of St. Paul's Outside the Walls for the first time. It was the feast of the dedications of St. Peter's and St. Paul's. I had to take a bus to get there--it really is "outside the walls":-). It was awesome. St. Paul's tomb is there, along with one of the chains that bound him in jail. Being at the tomb reminded me of something that happened over the summer--the Pope announced that DNA evidence has confirmed that the remains in the tomb belong to a male about the age St. Paul is believed to have been when he died, and from that time period. So it's pretty much for sure that it's him. Anyway, I found out about this during Totus Tuus, and my teammate Craig was SO excited about it. When the boys picked us up that morning, it was all he could talk about. And I remember him saying "I LOVE being Catholic!". So it was way cool to actually be there. I also had some really good prayer time--I reflected on what the relationship of Peter and Paul was like. I imagine that they were pretty good buddies, maybe joked around with each other, both very energetic and dynamic. But then I wondered about the quieter times when they were alone together--did St. Paul ever ask St. Peter to tell him about the time he spent with Jesus? And I thought about how amazingly smart St. Paul must have been, to be able to write all those letters. And they were just letters, things he sent in the mail (whatever sort of mail they had back then. Pigeons? Probably not. Donkeys? Maybe just people?) Anyway, it was sort of a challenge to me to not shy away from deep or intellectual conversations throughout a normal day.

On a lighter note, I experienced another important part of Italian culture a few days ago. I went to a movie theater! I saw New Moon, one of the Twilight movies. It was in English:-) But, actually, part of it at the end is set in Italy, in a town we drove by between Florence and Siena. They spoke a few Italian phrases, and I understood those! It was fun. And not much different than an American theater. Maybe a place where they just showed Italian movies would be different, I don't know.

Well, I have to go to class now. Pray for me these next couple of weeks!

Living Stones

The large majority of my blog posts lately have been about all the traveling I've done. That's probably because most of the time, that's the exciting stuff. It wouldn't be quite as exciting to read about what I did today here in Rome, for instance. It'd go something like--woke up, went for a run, showered, went to mass, came to studio, took a break for lunch, studio, dinner, studio...but sometimes the ordinariness and routine is nice. And I certainly don't mean that Rome is boring. The pattern of days makes a fabric that interesting experiences can be woven in and out of (is that metaphor too much of a stretch?:-) ), and each day does bring something unique. I guess none of that is exclusive to life in Rome...that's what life is all the time, anywhere.

But anyway, I wanted to recount a few of the noteworthy experiences I've had this week...first of all, Monday was the feast of the dedication of the Basilica of St. John Lateran. I never paid much attention to this feast in the past. Last year was probably the first year I had even heard of it (because I had my breviary). But this year, it caught my attention more because St. John Lateran happens to be here in Rome.


Here's the facade! This picture is cool because the shadows are fantastic; almost a perfect "45-45". That's the convention for constructing shadows in architectural renderings--it means the sun is at a 45 degree angle to the church along the ground, aka if the church were sitting on a giant clock with 6 at the door shown here and the 12 in the back, then the sun would be between the 7 and 8. Then, flip that up vertically--it's also at a 45 degree between the earth and the top of the sky. If that sounds confusing, that's because IT IS. Shadows are one of the hardest things to figure out how to do perfectly right.

Anyway, besides having sweet shadows, this was THE first Christian church, built right after Constantine legalized Christianity. So according to my breve, it's the "mother church of Christendom". Liturgy of the Hours for the day is taken from the common of a dedication of a church. It's really cool, with a lot of references to Christ as the cornerstone, us being living stones, the different places where God dwells...things like that. And what was even cooler was I prayed Morning Prayer IN St. John Lateran, after I had gone to mass there too. It was pretty awesome. This feast makes a clear connection between faith and architecture. I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this at least a few other times in my blog, but it's an idea that keeps coming up this year--churches (the physical buildings) are important--but only because they're places where more important things happen. The Church (the people) can gather there, and Jesus dwells there. And I also spent awhile reflecting on the idea of "living stones". I thought about all the different ways that stone is used in architecture, from huge, heavy foundations, to intricate, finely carved details. Scripture doesn't really specify what kind we're supposed to be. So I was thinking that our job is just to be the material--to have substance, to have a strong faith...and then let Him form us into whatever shape He wills. And then, of course, to be content with whatever that is...St. Josemaria Escriva, one of my faves, actually says just that--that we should be content to just be foundations.

Then, on Tuesday, my Urbanism class was really cool. We're on a unit of studying churches, and we visited St. Peters. We talked about the route to get there, the piazza, and a little bit about the actual church itself (but mostly about the exterior; we didn't go in). I learned a lot of sweet stuff that I hadn't noticed just by visiting it on my own. Bernini, the architect who designed the piazza, did a fantastic job of working with existing conditions and creating something harmonious out of disparate parts. ("Harmonious" and "disparate" are a few of my professor's favorite words). It's so clever, and so beautiful, and so elegant. Even without all the faith connections, it'd probably be one of my favorite spaces. But since it has both connections, being super important faith-wise, AND super cool architecturally...well...what more can I ask for? :-)

Tomorrow promises to be a good day too--the topic for History is "early Christianity", so we're visiting S. Maria Maggiore and a few other churches near there. I'm looking forward to it!

Florence and Siena

Last week, I went on ANOTHER class field trip, this time to Florence and Siena (I know, life is rough...). We left Thursday morning, and spent Thursday and Friday in Florence. On Saturday morning we left for Siena and stayed there til Sunday afternoon, and then came back to Rome.

Florence (aka Firenze, in Italian) was beautiful. The first thing we did when we got there was walk to a church up on a big hill called S. Miniato al Monte. The somewhat steep trek up was definitely worth it when we got to the top and had a beautiful view of the city.


Here's the church


And here's the view!

After that, we had free time for lunch and then our usual walking tour around the city, aka class. We went to a church called S. Croce, where a lot of famous Florentines are buried, the most notable being Michelangelo and Galileo. In the evening, we had free time again. I walked around with my friend Katie for awhile, window shopping. (Well, she bought a few things...I window shopped). The big thing to buy in Florence is leather--boots, belts, bags, jackets, and for us arkies, sketchbooks. Unfortunately, everything's kind of expensive--but Mom and Dad, when we come back at Christmas? :-) Haha. Anyway, it was fun just looking at stuff. We also went down to the Ponte Vecchio, (Old Bridge), which, as the name suggests, was the first bridge built across the river. Now it's pretty touristy, with shops lining both sides, but there's still a nice view in the middle.


Unfortunately, the lighting's not too great...

The next day, we spent the morning visiting San Lorenzo church, which includes a lot of things we learned about last year: the church itself, the "new sacristy" by Michelangelo with the tombs of the Medici brothers, and the Laurentian library. All very cool. In the afternoon, I chose to go on an optional visit to the Boboli Gardens, a formal (planned) garden behind one of the palazzos. I sort of blew off my watercolor sketching assignment to do so, but I ended up having time to do it later and I'm really glad I did, because the garden was awesome. One of the professors told us a little bit about it, and then we just had time to wander.


This is near the entrance--most of the garden is up the hill and behind those trees.


The view was great from up there, and I really like this picture--thanks Evan for your good photography skills!


Sweet fountain thing running down the hill--I threw a stick in at the top to see if it would go all the way, but unfortunately it got stuck in one of those heads.

After the gardens, a few of us climbed the dome of the Duomo! It was so cool. It's a pretty impressive dome architecturally, and you can kind of see the structure as you're going up--actually, you're inside it, so that made it even cooler. The sun had just set when we got up there, so my pictures didn't turn out great...but you can kind of get the idea.


Looking down the dome


The city!

Friday night we had time to relax and just chill in the city again, and then we left right after breakfast on Saturday for Siena! There are two main architectural attractions in Siena--Piazza del Campo, and the Duomo. They were both alright, but I liked Florence better as a city. But here they are:


Looking into the piazza--apparently I struggle with holding my camera straight when I take pictures, sorry


The Duomo is the domed building behind me (Also, when I looked at this picture I thought, "Wow! My hair is getting REALLY long!" And it is).

Siena also had some pretty awesome religious items--the incorrupt head of St. Catherine of Siena, and a Eucharistic miracle: 233 consecrated hosts that have been incorrupt since the late 1700s. They were stolen, then found and brought back to the church in a huge procession. Now they're kept in a tabernacle and only brought out on special occassions, so I didn't actually see them, but I did get to pray in front of them. It was pretty powerful.

We left Siena early Sunday afternoon and after a beautiful bus ride, got back to Rome in time for dinner. It was another great trip!

La Corsa Dei Santi

"La Corsa Dei Santi" is the name of a 10.5K race held annually in Rome on the Feast of All Saint's Day (which was last Sunday). With a weird distance like that, it must be Italian:-) It starts and ends at St. Peter's, and the route includes running by St. John Lateran AND S. Maria Maggiore, two of the other biggest churches in Rome. Now, if you had asked me what this race was last week, I couldn't have told you--I had never heard of it. On Saturday afternoon, though, I was flipping through a free magazine about Rome that had been left for us in studio, and noticed that in the back there was a list of sporting events, including races. This one was on the list. I told my friend Evan about it, and we decided to try to do it (obviously. How could we pass up an opportunity like that?) We looked up online how to register, and ended up walking to an office a little ways away, only to find out that we needed medical forms saying we were healthy in order to run. Neither of us had them, however, which led to frantic scrambling to try and get our parents to scan and email copies of things we had at home (thanks again Mom and Dad and Matt!). Both of us managed to get them, and we showed up early the next morning and registered without a problem. We went to a special mass in St. Peter's beforehand for the participants, too, which was pretty cool. The weather was beautiful--a little chilly at first, but it warmed up just enough to be comfortable. And, like a typical American race, we got a free T-shirt and breakfast afterwards!

I brought my camera so I could take pictures before and after, and then realized I didn't have a good place to put it DURING the race, so I ended up carrying it with me. It wasn't that bad; it's pretty compact, and 2 years of taking my ID card with me every time I ran at ND has gotten me used to holding things while I run. It also meant I could take some pictures during the race of the things we ran by. They're not great quality, because I was running as I took them...but I'll put them up anyway. (To my running friends--I included this whole long explanation of how I have pictures of the route to justify the fact that I brought my camera on a run--I HAD to, please don't disqualify me from the "real runners" club forever!)


Here's Evan and I before the race.


The starting line!


Coming up to the Arch of Constantine


The back of the Colosseum


The side of St. John Lateran--just after the halfway point


S. Maria Maggiore


The side of the Roman Forum


Trajan's Forum--I managed to get a shot with one of the trees exactly covering Trajan's column, so you can just barely see it back there...


The dome of S. Andrea Della Valle, the church we live right by and where I usually go to daily mass


Coming up to the bridge across to the Vatican--you can tell I'm getting more tired and having more trouble holding the camera straight:-)


The home stretch--sprinting towards St. Peters...I got to do it literally, but shouldn't we do it figuratively every day?


Tired and happy after the race

Ambitious readers at home: look up a map of Rome, and using these pictures, can you figure out the route for the race?

This was one of my favorite experiences in Rome so far. I love doing sponaneous things like this. It was a little weird to run a race spontaneously, though--I hadn't done any specific training for it, and so didn't feel quite the same sense of accomplishment when I finished as, say, I did after the half marathons I've run. But for the circumstances, my time was still pretty good (for me at least): 59:35. And it's good to know that there ARE runners in Rome, lots of them, in fact. So hopefully we'll be able to find more races like this in the future!

Tomorrow we're leaving for another short class trip, just 4 days this time, and just to Florence and Siena. So look for more posts next week about our travels!

Lourdes!

To remind you of where I left off in recounting my travels in France, I had just boarded an overnight train from Paris to Lourdes. It was surprisingly comfortable, especially after the other people in my little 4 seat pod left and I could sort of sprawl out over a couple seats. I arrived in Lourdes at about 7 in the morning, and after a brief map reading failure I made it to the hotel where my friend Sandra was staying. It worked out best for her to come Thursday night, so she had already been in Lourdes for a whole day by the time I got there, and sort of knew her way around the town. The first thing she asked me, though, was "what time do you want to go to mass today?" And I knew it was going to be a good day:-)

The main attraction in Lourdes, of course, is the grotto. Right next to the grotto are a series of three churches stacked on top of each other. (Actually, it's more like the grotto is built into the side of them). The one in the middle is the smallest and I think the one that was built in response to the request of Mary to St. Bernadette. The one of top of it came next, and the one beneath it is the most recent. We started at the grotto, and walked up right as mass was starting. It was in French, but luckily Sandra could translate the homily for me. After mass, we visited each of those three churches, and then went into town. We saw the house where St. Bernadette was born and lived her early life, the one room building where her family was living at the time of the apparitions, and her parish church, including the baptismal font where she was baptized. It was pretty cool to think about how St. Bernadette had actually lived there. I kind of felt the same sort of excitement that I do when I do things like meet my friend's parents or see pictures of their houses--it's cool because it's important to someone that I care about, if that makes any sense.

After that, we got lunch and went back to the big piazza in front of the churches to eat. I suppose now would be a good time for a picture so you actually know what I'm talking about...


Ok, you can't really see the piazza here. This is more of a larger scale view (so you can see the beautiful mountains in the background!) But imagine us eating lunch closer to the church, and then the grotto is on the right side of the church. I didn't take many pictures in Lourdes because my camera battery was getting very low, and I brought my charger but failed to remember that French outlets are different than Italian outlets...

Anyway, after lunch we walked a path with stations of the cross to the left and up a hill from the church. Each station was a statue scene, and they were really well done. We had a little booklet with reflections that were less well done, but mostly because the English translations weren't so great. Some of the ideas were pretty cool, though. I got to go to reconciliation after that, which was cool because I had actually been thinking a few days before that I really needed to go; it had been a while. So what better place than Lourdes, where Mary asked St. Bernadette to pray, pray, pray, for the conversion of souls? There's a short Eucharistic procession everyday at 5 pm, where everyone just gathers across the river from the grotto and the priest says a few prayers, and then everyone processes around the to front of the church and there are a few more prayers. We went to that, and then went back to the grotto to pray properly there for the first time (besideds mass), and then to a restaurant for dinner. After dinner, we went to another procession, this time a Marian one, and it was incredible. It was dark by this time, so everyone had a candle and we walked and prayed the rosary. Between each decade, we sang Aves and held up our candles...it was very beautiful.

When the procession was over, Sandra and I headed back to our hotel and went to sleep. On Sunday, we went to an international mass in an underground basilica. It was kind of cool, but i didn't really care for the architecture--it looked like we were in a basement, because we were, I guess. The best part of the church was that there were huge pictures hung all around of saints. It was a pretty good variety, too, including some popes, classics like St. Terese, and also some more recent saints, like a few of my favorites, St. Josemaria Escriva and St. Maximilian Kolbe. After mass, we went back to the grotto and lit some candles and prayed, then got lunch and it was time for Sandra to get on her train back to Angers. I had the afternoon to keep wandering around. I found a series of reflections on water they had by the grotto (actually, Sandra had told me about it but we didn't have a chance to go on Saturday). It was really cool. I guess I had sort of forgotten the importance that water has in the story of the apparitions at Lourdes (I have a tendency to sometimes forget important facts like that, it's kind of unfortunate--like I won't remember what happens at the climax of a book I've read a few times, but then I get to discover it all over again, so it's not all bad...). Anyway, those reflections and a few of the homilies I heard over the weekend led me to really reflect on how Jesus is the source of life. At Lourdes, Mary revealed the source of a spring to St. Bernadette, and she continues to reveal Jesus, the True Source, to us.

When I got to the train station later that evening, I had a kind of funny revelation (and kind of embarrassing)...when I looked at the clock, I realized that it was an hour off from what my watch said, and then remember that Daylight Savings Time had ended overnight. Sandra and I both completely forgot about it. Luckily, it was "fall back" so I just had to wait an extra hour...I didn't miss my train or anything. The ride was smooth again, as was my transfer on the metro from the train station to the airport in Paris, and then my flight and train back from the airport in Rome (again with the mulitple legs thing). I finally got back just in time for class on Monday!

And now, a series of pictures I've been looking forward to putting up for awhile--Lourdes-inspired grottos that I've been to!


Notre Dame--I promise I've been here, even though I'm not in the picture.


Benedictine--it was just dedicated this year!


Lourdes--the real one:-) I'm wearing the same T-shirt as when I was at the BC one, but I didn't plan that; I just noticed it now, in fact.

Well, that completes my fall break adventures. It was a great week, and I'm looking forward to traveling more!

Paris!

This is an overdue post, but I have a good reason for not getting around to it yet...I was actually (gasp!) doing schoolwork pretty much straight from the time I got back from France on Monday morning through Thursday night. We had two projects due that night, one for studio and one for urbanism. It's nice to have them both turned in and have a relatively work-free weekend ahead of me (or at least a chance to catch up on some non studio work--I have a marker drawing for watercolor and a few churches to visit and analyze for urbanism, but both of those should be pretty enjoyable, actually).

Anyway, my trip is more interesting to read about than my homework schedule...so, I left last Wednesday morning for Paris. It was actually more like the middle of the night, though, because I had to get to the train station in time to take the 4:30 bus to the airport for my 7:30 flight. For some reason traveling cheaply usually seems to involves lots of legs in the journey. All of that went smoothly and I landed in Paris and took yet another bus from that airport to the city. The drive was about an hour long, and if I didn't know better I'd have thought we were driving through the midwest--we even passed cornfields. The bus dropped us off right by a metro station, and I successfully navigated my way to THE Notre Dame cathedral, where I had arranged to meet my friend Julie. I also successfully bought a metro ticket from a machine that was in French, without knowing a word of French. I was proud of myself until I found out later that I COULD have just changed the language setting to English. Then I just felt silly for not realizing that. Ah well. I got to Notre Dame about an hour before Julie and I were meeting, but mass was starting right as I walked in, so I was unexpectedly able to hit up daily mass! (That's happened to me fairly frequently, actually, and I suspect that He Himself may have a hand in arranging that:-) ).


Cheer, cheer for old Notre Dame! :-)

When Julie came, she took me to her favorite panini place (based on quality and on price) for lunch. Unfortunately, though, Wednesday turns out to be the day that she has class for about 12 hours (I'm only exaggerating slightly), so we couldn't hang out in the afternoon. She suggested that I go to the Louvre, though, which seemed like a good idea, especially because it was raining. I got in for free thanks to being a student residing in Europe, and spent all afternoon wandering around in the midst of amazing artwork. The Louvre is HUGE. Even with all the time I spent there, I still didn't see everything. But I did see some pretty cool stuff--including the Mona Lisa, of course...but to be honest it didn't seem that much different or better than Da Vinci's other pieces. I also saw a lot of things that I had learned about last year in Architectural History and seen lots of pictures of, so it was cool to see them in person. And I didn't remember that most of those things were in the Louvre, so every time I came across something that I recognized it was a cool little "Oh! I know what that is!" moment. Here's one of those such things:


Note the size of the doorway compared to the size of this guy.

By the time I left, it was getting dark. The glass pyramid thing at the entrance looked really awesome all lit up, so I have a fairly hilarious series of pictures of me attempting to take one of myself with the museum in the background. Here's one of the better ones:


By "better" I mean "better of me". It doesn't quite capture the stuff behind me, though, so here's a good one of that.


One of these days I'll master that self-photography thing...and have pictures like this AND with me in them.

After my mini photo shoot, I met up with Julie and our other friend Meghan who's also studying in Paris, and we went back to their dorm--I guess that's the best word for it. A bunch of university students live there, anyway, but in singles, and they each have their own bathroom, and there's a kitchen on every floor. So a pretty fancy dorm.

On Thursday, we were all able to spend the whole day seeing the sights of Paris together, because Meghan doesn't have class on Thursdays and Julie has one from 8-10am. Nice for them, and lucky for me too. We started at Sacre Coeur, an impressive looking church built high up on a hill. It's fairly recent, built around the beginning of the 20th century, I think. (In America, that would be a really old church...but here it's practically new). It's built in a classical style, and I liked it alot. It also has perpetual adoration in the main part of the church, which is pretty cool. Here's the view as you approach it:



From there we wandered around the neighborhood near the church, and got paninis again for lunch. We spent the afternoon walking around, too. Here's a picture of a random sign we saw:


It says "I was in Paris". Pretty accurate.

For dinner, we went to a restaurant with authentic French food. I had French onion soup with French bread, and steak and French fries (apparantly that's a common combination). It was pretty good, but I think I like Italian food better, to be honest. I also tried one of Julie's escargot, but didn't really like it. It was too much work to get it out of the shell in the first place, and too squishy. But I'm glad I tried it.

That week also happened to be fall break for the ND students studying in London, and another one of our friends from there was getting in to Paris Thursday night with a few other Londoners, so we went and met them by the Eiffel Tower after dinner. It's really pretty at night--all lit up, and it sparkles for 5 minutes on the hour every hour.


Walsh reunion in Paris! From left: me, Julie, Tina, and Meghan

The next day, Friday, Julie and Meghan both didn't have class, so they did the tourist thing with me again. We saw two main things: the Shrine of the Miraculous Medal where Mary appeared to St. Catherine Laboure, and we actually went up the Eiffel Tower. Both were awesome. Here's the shrine:


St. Catherine's incorrupt body is preserved to the left of the altar.

And here's a shot from the top of the Eiffel Tower!


This is the Seine river. I had to look up how to spell that, because like most French words, how it's written and how it's pronounced don't necessarily have a direct correlation.

After that, we got a quick dinner and went back to the Louvre, because Tina and her London friends hadn't been there yet. Before I knew it it was time to head to the train station for my overnight trip to Lourdes! Julie, Meghan, and Jim (another ND student in Paris) very kindly escorted me to the station to make sure I got there alright, and after killing time browsing the teeny English section in a few bookstores, I boarded the train!

I think I'm going to pull another "to be contined" on this one...so stay tuned for my weekend in Lourdes!

Field Trip (Part 3, aka Venice!)

So, I left off last time with our vaporetto ride to the hotel, which actually wasn't a hotel--it was a converted convent. I'm pretty sure a religious order or consecrated group of lay people of some sort still has some connection to it, but I'm not entirely sure what that is. But apparently they rent out rooms fairly cheaply to travelers, just like a hotel. The cool part is that the decoration scheme is left over from the convent days--there are statues of Mary everywhere, and crucifixes in every room. Anyway, the first thing on our minds when we got there was getting dinner. We ended up at a little pizza place that somebody's guidebook recommended that had amazing prices and giant pizzas, so Katie and Evan and I split a diavolo (pepperoni) for 10 euro (total, not each). Drinks were only a euro, and on the way back we spotted a gelato place with cones for a euro, so we had a very cheap full meal. And then we pretty much went to bed, because we were exhausted.

The next day, Friday, we had our usual tour in the morning and time to work on assignments in the afternoon. My tour group went to several churches in the morning, but none of the big name ones (aka none that I had heard of before). I also rode a gondola during a tour! It was only 50 cents! And it was only across the Grand Canal, but still...this is me on the gondola (I promise! Even though you can't see the gondola part...)

The boats above my head and to the left are what the one we're on looked like

For dinner on Friday, the professors suggested that we all go somewhere together and "have time to socialize", so we went to a restaurant right by where we were staying. I had lasagna, and it was quite delicious. None of the professors sat at our table, so it wasn't THAT different from a regular meal, but it was still neat being there with everyone else around, and definitely a good idea. We get to see a different side of the professors on field trips, and it makes them seem more like real people and not just like teachers.

Saturday's tour was just three churches: Il Redentore, San Giorgio Maggiore (both by Palladio, who also did La Rotonda), and Santo Spirito, a crazy looking church that I had to draw for my "watercolor" class. I really like Il Redentore and San Giorgio Maggiore, both the exteriors and the interiors. (Actually, I like San Giorgio's exterior more, but Il Redentore's interior) Anyway, both are right along the Grand Canal, and are actually meant to be viewed from across the canal. Here's me with San Giorgio behind me!

and a random man walking by...oops

the second try was more successful

When the tour on Saturday was finished, we were basically done with class for the week. We just had to finish up our assignments in the afternoon, and then enjoy the city Saturday night and Sunday morning! And I actually got to do really cool things during both those times. Saturday night I went to a classical music concert that Aida, one of the coordinators of the architecture program, had told us about. It was a string group (a couple violins, maybe a viola, a cello, a bass, and a harpsichord), and they played a few different pieces, but the main one was Vivaldi's Four Seasons (aka Quattri Staggioni). It was incredible! I really love how stringed instruments sound in general, I think. And the Four Seasons is a fun piece of music. (The other people I was with, Evan and Tiffani, are both more knowledgeable about classical music than I am, and so would probably be able to use a better word than "fun" to describe it...)

On Sunday morning, I got to go to a high mass in the Basilica di San Marco. That was also pretty incredible. It was in a side chapel, not the main church, but the space was still huge. The walls and ceiling were covered in mosaics....just like the cathedral in St. Louis:-) Also, Venice has been more influenced by Eastern cultures than other parts of Italy, and the Byzantine-ish-ness definitely comes through (in the architecture, anyway. Not really the liturgy).

Here's a fun fact about Venice: it's sinking. I can't remember exactly why; I know we talked about it in my Italian class last year...but it's demonstrated in a very real way by the fact that the Piazza San Marco floods on a fairly regular basis. It was flooded on Sunday morning, in fact. They set up little elevated walkways everywhere so you can get around without getting wet, luckily. It reminds you that things aren't permanent, as some day Venice will most likely be underwater. But it also creates some sweet picture opportunities...

note the cool reflection in the water!

After mass, we wandered around for a little while and then headed to the train station. The ride back went smoothly, and we arrived back in Rome on Sunday evening! All in all, it was a fantastic trip.

Now we're on a week of break, so I'm actually typing this from my friend Julie's room in Paris. I got here yesterday and will leave tomorrow night for Lourdes! Paris has been awesome so far too. I'll have to expand more on it later, but for now I'll give a brief list of what I've seen so far--Notre Dame, the Louvre, Sacre Coure, the Pompidou Center, the Moulin Rouge, the Opera House, the Arc de Triumph...we're going to the Eiffel Tower and the Miraculous Medal shrine for sure tomorrow. Now we're off to eat authentic French food for dinner!