the pursuit of happiness

ok so these past few days have been pretty amazing. I realized that I am so happy right now, really enjoying my time here and living a fairly balanced life. Between grocery shopping/running errands/cooking, maintaining a household in our apartment, working, playing, taking personal time, and sleeping (possiblemente) there are hardly enough hours in the day and the days are going by molto veloce (very fast) - already one month down.

So by some miracle (or lucky scheduling), we did not have class at all today so Andrew, Chelsea, and I took this opportunity to visit the Colosseum and Palatine Hill on a weekday to avoid the masses of weekend tourists. We bought tickets at the Palatine Hill, by-passed the whole line at the Colosseum, toured the interior and also walked around the whole exterior perimeter. The brickwork and stone/concrete forms are amazing, especially considering the whole thing was constructed almost 2000 years ago; it's really funny because it's one of the biggest tourist attractions in Rome and in the world but we barely touch upon it as architecture students because as amazing as it is to imagine how it was used in ancient times, I guess there are just better examples of architecture out there to study. It is still an impressive sight and very photogenic especially with today's perfect blue sky:











Then we walked up and around the Palatine Hill (one of Rome's 7 main hills) where all the emperors built their ancient palaces (most languages get their word 'palace' from the hill's Latin name: Palatium). Once again, we saw evidence of historical layers from the different eras of rulers and their building styles. The southern side looks down onto the Circus Maximus which is currently a barren field of dirt and dried-up grass but again, it's exciting to imagine it during a time when they raced chariots and held foot-races (we did witness one poor soul running around it today) and thousands of people flooding the sidelines to watch. The northern side of the hill provides a great panoramic view down into the Roman Forum, which we have walked through and explored with Jan in one of our 4-hour history classes (read: walking tours). Andiamo! Here is the view:





We still need to go back and photograph both the Colosseum and Forum at night.

After our expeditions this morning, Chelsea made the two of us a delicious dinner of chicken, potatoes, carrots, and zucchini. I've never really been responsible for making my own food and Chelsea and I have formed a dynamic duo where we take turns preparing/cooking dinner and it's worked out really well. It's almost always some combination of meat/chicken, vegetables, and pasta but there's many possibilites and we're trying to expand our repertoire. Finally, best part of the night, Aaron -- we played ultimate frisbee in the middle of the Piazza Farnese running around wearing our T-shirts and athletic shorts, sweating, yelling, dodging the macchine (cars) and pedestrians, and loving every minute of it. Until the carabinieri (police officers) asked us to move away -- NOT because they were worried about the Palazzo Farnese or the other people, but because they did not want us to hit their car with the frisbee. Mama mia. So we called it a night, got some gelato (fiordilatte and limone tonight), and I am finishing up in studio for the night, so ciao for now!