When Trash Transcends

Hi everbody. So its been a while since I gave you some comprehendible information about how im doing and what its like here. Lets start with Rome.

Rome was absolutely amazing. It had a very open feel after coming from Florence which you can get to know in a week pretty much. Rome was totally urban, and reminded me very much of Chicago. The people there look you in the eye and everyone is so fashionable! There was so much good shopping and so many caffe's and pizzerias and I had some low class Roman pizza and spaghetti (of poorer quality than we eat in the US) but I was still so freakin excited because it was ROMAN!!! ROME ROME ROME! I loooved it! Its really interesting because there were a lot of diverse reactions. Some people were relieved to return to Florence whereas I was very reluctant. If it hadn't been for the nasty hostel I stayed in when we stayed the extra night I would have tried to prolong my stay as long as possible...maybe even transfer universities? Ok not...

There was so much history there. The Romans probably don't think anything of it when they walk around town and OH HEY! BOOM! There's the Pantheon. There's the Colloseum. There's the Vatican. We went inside all these places and more and it was so stunning. The Vatican was really cool but surprisingly not my favorite part. And I guess I've been over exposed to the God and Adam imagery (pictures with their fingers almost touching) so that when I actually saw it my reaction was just like, "Oh, okay. So that's where it is". My heart pounded more when I came across a tiny room dedicated to a couple Morandi pieces... so simple and puurty. We saw tons of cool art galleries and because I'm in a painting class they took us in some contemporary art museums as well where I saw things ranging from collosal marble scultpures of a darth vader looking man named "justice" to whispy van gogh like paintings of warm melting colors depicting an old German myth. (I illegally snapped a photo of these...don't tell). By the way I PROMISE I will put up some pictures soon, and probably on facebook because its easy to upload there.

The next night some friends and I went out to dinner downt the street from the grody hostel (which was called yellow and didnt have half the cheer as the color... dont get me started on the smell). We went to a pizzeria where our waiter's name was, yes, you guessed it, Guiseppe!! We had pasta and gelato and we toasted with heinekin, haha. We had such a fun dinner and probably bothered the other Italians in the restaurant because we were laughing so loud. Then the girls went out pub crawling and my friend Ethan and I, being crazy artists, took our journals, sound recorders, and cameras out into the Roman night to explore and capture everything.

We walked for HOOOOURRS and covered the entire city. We saw so many things, fountains with statues above them, lit light blue and green from the lamps under the water. We passed guards with machine guns on the streets, and saw the changing of the guard the next day which was crazy. That night we walked to the Trevi fountain and got gelato, walked past the presidential palace, and down the steps to the Tibur river. It was stunningly beautiful down there but not in the way you would expect. It was raining and the trees lining the cobbled walkway were absolutely littered with strips of trash and plastic bags. In the strange light coming from the lit up buildings, bouncing of the rushing water, the trees looked instead like they had tinsel hanging from the branches, and all the puddles reflected the city lights. It was so magical. I couldn't stop taking photos, and suddenly everything became beautiful to me: The moss growing out of the wall in tufts with dramatic shadows falling beside them, the green glass bottle left on a stone slab glinting with raindrops and light, the river itself rushing and curving like air over the surface of a racing car. Because Ethan was recording all the sounds (raindrops in puddles, on umbrellas, the rushing river, the tran over the bridge...) and because we kept stopping to observe and take photos, and because I paused every few feet to write about what I was seeing and experiencing, the moment was so intensely present for me. Every sensation was so pointed and so sharp and I felt like everything around me was bursting with energy, crying to be noticed, and more beautiful than a DaVinci Portrait....even the garbage on the trees and the wet, grafittied undersides of the bridges, and the single tiny patch of grass between the cobbles as we walked. ah..i have to go but ill end this post with a few more things asap. love you all.
em