Today I had my first “Rome and its Ancient Monuments” class, and we wandered around the older temples of the city and took photos and attempted to take notes while standing in the cold rain. Other than the cold and wet feet, it was a really fun class. It was a little basic for my taste, but when I signed up for classes I didn’t realize quite how easy some of them were going to be. For most kids here, they want the easiest thing they can get their hands on. If I do the reading for every class I am generally one of two people out of about twenty. The most reading I have had for class yet was about thirty pages, and nothing too difficult. I am amazed after all the reading I did last semester that some people complain here about the little that we are asked to do.
Other than exploring old dilapidated temples, yesterday there was a student run fundraiser to help the model UN program that is sending 6 students (our friend Tim included) to Boston to participate in the Harvard three day event. Anne and I were talked into participating with a few of the degree seeking students on campus and we ended up getting toasted by the nerdiest group of adults I have ever met. In the end the scores were 179 to 170, but I thought that we should have done a little better after 3 hours of trivia questions. I am proud to say that in the student multiple choice sections, I answered every single one of the international organizations questions by myself. I am proud to say that sometimes classes do pay off. When the professors won, the man who teaches the International Organizations class here gave me his box of chocolates because when the teacher round came up, he missed one of the questions. Muahahah… mmmm, chocolate.
After the game a student band performed followed by a professors band. The students were ok, and many of the people attending the event trickled out from lack of interest. Anne is taking a class with the professor who was performing, so she wanted to stay and see what he could do. As it turned out, his band was great, and the 15 of us remaining rocked out to the three songs they planned to play, and the two more we forced them to continue with. After the gig, Anne, Candice, Joe and I went to get some food, and then went out to drinks with the professor and a gaggle of other JCU students. All in all it was a good time, a good night, even better because we got free JCU t-shirts.
Right now all of us are attempting to book trips to other countries and around Italy itself. Hopefully we are going to Florence on the 9th, either that or another fun area around Rome. During the semester we are hoping to hit up Amsterdam, Berlin, Madrid, the South of France (for spring break), and a few other major cities that slip my mind. After school lets out I think we are planning a tour of the Balkan area, and Greece is my first priority. If anyone has good ideas or tips on websites to use for flights or hostels, please either email me or post them here.
I need to head out and get some work done so I have some free time during the weekend, but you can be sure that there will be more posts with more interesting information coming soon. Ciao.
No comments:
Post a Comment