rain, rain go away

Well not too much going on in the past few days except for working in studio. And my new Italian shoes don’t seem to fit as well as I had thought: they ripped up my heels, I bled all the way walking to Italian class, and I now have mega-blisters and the shoes are going back in the box for now :(

Also, it’s been rainy and cold for the past few days which is such a strange phenomenon for Rome. It has been sunny and warm every day since we got here (even unbearably hot and humid in the first few weeks) and the Campo outside our apartment is usually alive and bustling through the day. This was the scene last night:

Everyone’s breaking out the jackets and sweaters and people are even going out for cappuccino and hot chocolate now! [on this note – there is such a different coffee culture in Rome/Italy/Europe/not the United States: first of all, a café is not brewed like ours, it is literally a shot of espresso. If you want the coffee you’re used to at home, here it is café americana and I’m sure only American tourists order it. Like I said, I usually get a cappuccino which is a shot of espresso mixed with steamed milk, mmmm. I think Italians just down their shots of espresso in the morning for their caffeine fix [our Italian teacher is a prime example] and I guess it’s a really “foreign” thing to order a cappuccino after noon. Oh well, I say they’re delicious at any time of day.]

Another lesson in Italian dining culture: at our favorite Forno bakery, they bake really long pizzas, you point at the one you want and say questo (“that one”), they hack off a piece with a huge butcher knife and then you pay by the weight. Well today I did a poor job estimating how much pizza the money in my pocket would get me, so when our pizzas rang up for 6.40 and I pleaded “Ho solo 6E,” the woman was nice enough to waive me off. That’s another noticeable cultural difference here, interactions in the stores and restaurants and especially in the market are more laidback and friendly.

Because it’s a somewhat slow entry, I’ll throw in a flashback: the Friday night before we left for our northern trip was the beginning of a weekend festival in Rome and we went to an installation of 10,000 colored orbs in the middle of the Circus Maximus. It was such a surreal sight [these pictures look like they should be in a molecular diagram or something] and ironic to see how this ancient urban space, which is a really dead space now, could have a contemporary use [at least for one night]:

Well we have a really fun day planned out for tomorrow and hopefully all can go according to plan - if the weather cooperates. You’ll have to check back and see, ciao!

P.S. Ok something exciting just happened - someone drove their car into the fountain (water spigot) out in our campo: