A relaxing two weeks in Rome still thrills

Ok so I'm back to relive these first few weeks of November. They really have been great, so be ready for some ridiculous stories that only Rome can provide. Most of the stories are from random days from the past two weeks mostly because Nov. 3-7th week I had my first two midterms and Nov. 10-13th a time consuming one-week project that I was working on, and those happenings are not nearly as interesting.

Figure Drawing

So Wednesday morning, Nov. 5, we had a very unique, yet very useful figure drawing class in place of our typical Drawing class. Professor Piccolo, an artist renown for his artwork done in Italy, set up this particular class so that we would have a model to draw the human figure. Immediately, walking into the class we all knew this was going to be interesting, but, having done figure drawing once before Sophomore year, we were ready to try figure drawing again. So with my large pad of sketch paper, some charcoal sticks, and my goal to get better at figure drawing during this class period, I sat down and started drawing the model, Laura. Professor Piccolo pushed the class with only 30 second poses for the first 15 minutes, and then we slowed added time as we built up to a 5 minute drawing (shown below).
The drawing class proved to be a success, as it was clear by the end of class that I had in fact improved my figure drawing immensely. We've continued to master our figure drawing abilities in the Drawing class by drawing the beautiful sculptures, fountains, and various statues around the city. So this class was certainly only the beginning.

American Week

This past week has been marked with way more American activities than usual. In fact, in this past week alone I have played football twice, went to the Warner Bros. theater to see the new Bond movie, Quantum of Solace, eaten at McDonald's (yes, I caved), and even taken the bus to eat at the Hard Rock Cafe.

Sports Saturday #1 and the Seminary

THE NORTH AMERICAN COLLEGE IS AMAZING! Sorry, but that exclamation needed to be said because the North American College, the home and school for the Seminarians studying for the priesthood, has every sportsman's dream - a brand new turf football/softball/soccer/kickball field, a lit basketball court, 2 tennis courts, a in-line hockey rink, and handball courts. I pretty much fell in love. On Saturday, November 8th, about 10 arkies and I made our way over to the North American College to play soccer and football with the seminarians. We played half-field 6 on 6 soccer with one of the seminarians named Jimmy. Then at 2:30pm a whole team of the seminarians came out to practice flag football for their Old Man-New Man game that is coming up in a month, and what better way to practice flag football than to play 11 sports starved arkies? So we started up our first ever game of flag football against the seminarians, and it did not start out well. In our defense, NONE of us realized that the seminarians played full contact, full field, full team, blitzing, running backs, linebacker, all-out football. And it took a little while to get used to. Our team fell behind 3 touchdowns to zero right from the start, and after awhile we just decided to mix up teams to make it more fair. Now that I know how to play their style of football, I PROMISE that next time we will hold our own.

Quantum of Solace and ND football

Not much to say except for this was the first Saturday night that I decided to just take it easy, and go see a movie at the American movie theater, Warner Bros. Theater. The movie was only okay, but it definitely felt like a very American evening, excluding the gelato I had after the movie. Then coming back from the movie at 2:30am we decided to watch the ND vs. Boston College football game that was on so late because the game was broadcast in primetime in Boston. So I watched the first half of the TERRIBLE football game (Jimmy Clausen had 4 interceptions), and went to bed after a somewhat dissapointing evening.

Wednesday Theology Class

The next exciting event was my Wednesday Theology Class where we went to St. John the Lateran, Church of the Holy Cross in Jerusalem, the Holy of Holies, and the Baptistry of St. John the Lateran. The white marble facade of St. John the Lateran was particularly amazing. It is actually the main church of the Rome diocese, contrary to the more likely St. Peters, and was home to 162 popes.


Then the church of the Holy of Holies and the Church of the Holy Cross of Jerusalem are very important pilgrimage churches that were built near the city walls of Rome around the time of the Edict of Milan, which legalized Christianity. It seems that Constantine wanted to build this churches to introduce the Christian faith to Rome, but he made sure to put the churches on the outskirts of the city so that the pagan citizens wouldn't be overwhelmed by the introduction of the new legalized religion.

The Holy of Holies was honestly a very unassuming, somewhat ugly building, but it actually had two of the most important relics of the Catholic Church. One, considered the most important relic of the Catholic Church, is the steps to the Court of Pilate in Jerusalem known as the Scala Santa, or Holy Staircase. The staircase is one of the only relics in the known world that was definitely touched by Jesus because the staircase was the staircase that Jesus must have walked on during his trial with Pontius Pilate. In order to show respect for the importance of the staircase, pilgrims and visitors choose not to walk on the stairs but to kneel/crawl up them. Then at the top of the stairs is the second great relic in the church, an image of the Archeiropoieta. The Archeiropoieta is an image of Christ that has been divinely created, and in the Holy of Holies the Archeiropoieta to see is an image of Christ that was begun by St. Luke and finished by Angels who completed the true image of Christ.

Thursday Urbanism Class- Colosseum

So for Urbanism class on Thursday, we went with Ettore into the Colosseum. When not getting harassed outside the Colosseum by every possible street vendor and person asking if we wanted to do a "crazy drunken pub crawl", the outside was just as amazing as ever in the morning light and then we got to go inside. After Ettore argued with the security at the entrance to get our tour group a discount, we walked throughout the Colosseum discussing it's importance during the history of the Roman Empire and its great example of Roman building techniques.


Pienza Presentation

Thursday, November 13 we presented our first week's work on the Pienza Project to the Vice Mayor and City Planner and Architect. It was a very hectic week getting all the designs, masterplans, perspectives, etc all together, but the presentation went very smoothly. (I even got McDonald's for the first time since I've been in Rome because the night before the presentation I was too busy running around organizing the teams of students that I needed a quick meal) Then on presentation day, I helped present the overall project along with two of my classmates, and after our presentation the Vice Mayor and City Planner were very pleased and excited about the masterplan of the city. The Vice Mayor had a great quote, "This is what Pienza should look like" basically saying that the masterplan we designed for the city is exactly what he thought it should be. And that was only after one week of work! So we still have another month to fine tune and develop the urban design for Pienza, but I am truly excited to get to work with such a fascinating and architectural wonder of a city. Here is a link to the wikipedia page about Pienza: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pienza.

In case I didn't give an quick synopsis of the project, the city of Pienza was interested in having our architecture program redesign the suburban sprawl of the city outside the city center. the urban development of Pienza is the name of the project, and our entire class is working to design the suburbs of the city into a more urban setting, including Italian city blocks, piazzas, monumental buildings, vistas of the tuscan countryside, and much more. I'll be sure to update our progress on this amazing project.

Eventually the project will be finished as our final project, and our professors will compile the final boards that we design for the city, along with the work of the University of Bologna students who are going to do the engineering design work, into a board book that we document our overall design for Pienza. Another great quote of the Vice Mayor was, "I will be the first to buy that book." What an exciting project!

Hard Rock Cafe

So as a special treat after the first review of the Pienza project, the Hard Rock Cafe offered the entire class a special discounted 4 course meal! It really was an American week with Football, a movie, McD's, and Hard Rock Cafe. The meal was great, and it was fun to go out with all 47 arkies.

BIG FRIDAY

So my roommate's twin brother Andrew, who is studying abroad in Paris, came to visit during the weekend of November 13th-16th. He actually came to Hard Rock Cafe with us on Thursday night, but the most fun day we had was on Friday.

After waking up late on Friday, my roommate Daniel and I met up with my roommate William and his twin brother Andrew. They had gone to the Colosseum and Roman Forums during the morning, and when we met up with them at lunchtime we ran right into a student rally that was shutting down the entire city center.

If you click on photo to enlarge it, you can clearly see the truck that is parked in THE MIDDLE OF THE MAIN ROAD OF ROME. Of the thousands of students blocking roads throughout Rome that day, a few of the students were holding up a huge banner that read "If you block our future, then we'll block the city". They were protesting the laws that the Prime Minister Berlusconi is trying to pass about privatizing education. His policies are completely ridiculous and would essentially cost thousands of teachers their jobs and thousands of students and families a lot of money.

So then to do some of the more touristy things with Andrew, we went with him to St. Peters to go inside the gigantic church and we even went to the top of the dome. It was truly amazing! Every time I go into St. Peters I am almost overwhelmed with the amazing sights and architecture that make the building so special. We got to see Michelangelo's sculpture Pieta depicting Mary holding Jesus after the crucifixion.


Then getting up into the dome of St. Peters was possibly the best experience I've had in Rome so far. The dome towers over the entire city of Rome and to see the city from such an amazing vantage point on such an amazing building was almost overwhelming.



Sports Saturday and ND game

Then on Saturday, November 15th we got to go over to the North American College again and get some much needed physical activity in. We played full field 11 vs. 11 soccer with a few of the seminarians (of course Jimmy was back) and then went to play tennis. It was really great to get out run around with all the arkies. (pictured is us playing on the soccer field with the basketball court in the background, sadly I am not in the picture)


Then, after playing sports all afternoon, the seminarians were nice enough to let us stay and watch the Notre Dame vs. Navy football game because they get the air forces network feed. So we got to order pizza for dinner, watch the Notre Dame football game in their lounge, and Notre Dame won 27-21!

So these past two weeks have been all spent in Rome, but all jam-packed with activities and sights to see. Hope to be back soon!

Ciao!