Shake Down the (Roman) Thunder

Last night, I had a crazy experience. Well, I guess I could say that everything I've done in the past 5 days (have I really only been here 5 days?) has been a crazy experience. But this particular one involved going to an Irish pub, in the middle of Rome, full of English speakers, to watch the ND v. Michigan game. Talk about a small world...who would have thought that was possible? It was an exciting game. The lead changed back and forth a few different times...I won't mention the very end, since Notre Dame fans don't need to be reminded, and it probably doesn't interest anyone else. (Total side note--the title of this post was obviously inspired by the experience of watching the game over here, but I thought it was clever because it also has the double effect of describing the weather we've had recently; it's stormed each afternoon the past two days). Anyway, it was really fun to watch the game, but it made me the most homesick I've been since getting here. While the Eucharist tends to make the distance across the ocean seem not very significant, this had the opposite effect: thinking about everyone at ND watching the game at the same time we were (except for us, the game started at 9:30 pm and lasted til well after midnight) made me feel very far away. Although, come to think of it, the mood on campus probably wasn't too great after that game anyway:-)

But still, I'm starting to miss the little things. Like today, I had a strange desire to read a few books we have at home, and then remembered I won't have a chance to til May...and I miss home cooked food. We've been eating out for pretty much every meal. That will change next month for sure, when the kitchen is done being renovated and we can start cooking for ourselves. And I think tomorrow I'll go to the grocery store (the “di per di”--which literally translates to “of for of”; we can't quite figure out why it's called that) and scope out the sandwich fixings options. Peanut butter doesn't exist here, though, so I may end up with Nutella sandwiches every day:-) Just kidding. But I'll have to see what's around. (REVISION: peanut butter DOES exist, it's just really expensive. I decided to splurge on it, though. And, while standing there pondering which jar to get, I got hit on by a middle aged Italian man. Note to self: don't linger in the di per di!)

On a brighter note, classes start tomorrow! Here's my schedule:

Studio M, W, F 2:00p.m.-6:00p.m.
Watercolor T 9:00a.m.-12:00p.m.
Roman Architecture and Urbanism T 2:00p.m-5:00p.m.
Architectural History R 9:00a.m.-12:00p.m.
(hopefully)Intermediate Italian W, F morning sometime, this one's not for sure yet

I'm looking forward to getting into a routine. I haven't yet found a daily mass I can go to, but then, I haven't really tried...so I'll be glad when I get that figured out too. I feel like I've been on vacation here so far, and totally doing the tourist thing, but real living starts tomorrow. I'll have work to do and places to be, and I'll be learning all kinds of cool stuff...so it should be good.