The perks of living in Roma

Buongiorno ragazzi, it's Tuesday afternoon here now and I'm back from my Italian class and over with my day, which is great. I had class at 9 and it went til 11, meaning I have all day to read (which I have a lot of, surprisingly), cook (which I will), and blog. 

I guess I'll update about yesterday after I blogged. I had Science and Religion, which I was pretty excited about, and I walked over around 4 with it still being pretty nice, hovering around 70 and clear skies. I got to class and settled down, and our professor walks in, and he is a man of the cloth, complete in his entire fatherly wardrobe of all black and the white collar. He makes light of his profession here and there, and proceeds to ask each and every one of us in class where we go to school, what we're majoring in, and where we're from, with a few other questions sprinkled in there. Each time, he made a witty comment or made a joke and any tensions people had started to kind of ease away, you could feel it.

He went on to describe how we can call him really about anything, father, professor, padre, Mr. Larrey, as long as we were comfortable. Now, being in Roma for over a month now, I can tell you what you probably already know: Rome is highly Roman Catholic, and it really is everywhere here. He is a Roman Catholic Priest and he teaches at the Pontificate university here in Rome during the day and teaches us in the evenings twice a week. He seems like a really nice guy, and the class is totally structured around debate and argumentation, and as long as you have an opinion and can support it, you are going to do well he says. 

I like his rules because I like to argue. 

He admits readily that he is very biased, as any good Priest should be, but retorts that everyone is in one direction or another, his just is much more apparent and obvious. But he says he will consider anything and everything, and expects us to do the same. I really think I am going to learn a lot in this class, and I feel pretty ready for someone to take the gloves off and really get into some good, academic debate over the heated issues regarding the clashes of science and religion.

But after that, the few people in my class who were heading back to the Residence too pooled up and we walked on back together. It was around 6:45 when we got to Ponte Sant'Angelo, which I 

have posted about in here before, and has excellent views of the Vatican. Well, last night it was almost sunset, and the sky had become slightly cloudy since we entered class a few h

ours before, and the colors were the most jaw

dropping backdrop for St. Pietro's Basilica. I mean, man. 
I had my camera, and I took a few pictures, and even though they're not great, they do remind me of the chills I got last night walking home. I mean, man, it was something else. I may post a few pictures just to give you a feel for it; it truly was something. I lingered for a minute, just taking it all in. Living in Rome, it's tough to beat in some ways. If anything canmake something already amazing even more beautiful, it's a sunset, that's for sure.

I really enjoyed that walk back.

I got back and remembered I had to do some grocery shopping, so I went to do that and got a bottle of Prosecco on the way, it was on sale for a euro and a half and I bought the bottle and we all had some prosecco with dinner to celebrate a successful first day of classes and to really getting into the daily life we're living here in Roma.

I read for a bit last night and went to bed early, knowing I had to get up for Italian today. I got up and left for class and I have una nuova professoressa per Italiano, chi e chiama Rita. She's really nice and I am one of two males out of 17 people in the class, with my apartment-mate Chad being the other, and so when dealing with gender articles (like we did today), Chad and I were lumped together for everything because we're boys. It was amusing, for sure.

Also, today we began to learn about the past tense in Italian, and (for ONCE) it's exactly the same as French in its composition and structure, and it's awesome. I was able really coasting today in class and people were wondering why I was picking up on it so quick and I was just happy that for once learning French has really paid off for Italian, and that's a major good thing. French has been routinely killing my Italian, and my Italian has killed a lot of my French, so it's nice for it to really work in my favor sometimes, that's for sure.

But yeah, after that I came back and had some salami, pecorino, parmeggiano, and some crackers for lunch, and just read. Exciting, I know. Tomorrow I go on a site visit for class and have my 6 hour big day again, so I'm sure I'll have interesting things to post about then too. But today I leave you with one my sunset photo, and just remember: this is my walk every day to and from class.

Until next time,

Ciao.