The initial plan for our City of Rome class today was to each meet with the professor individually at scheduled times to get and discuss our grades on our midterms and presentations. Afterward, we were going to take a class trip out to EUR, a famous fascist neighborhood in Rome. However, on Wednesday, Prof. Locatelli told us it was supposed to be very rainy during the day today, so instead of going to EUR, we would all just review for the final exam together in the classroom.
So at about 11 am, Katie and I went to go get breakfast. We were scheduled to meet with the professor between 11:20 and 11:40. Lo and behold, it was quite possibly the most gorgeous day we've had here so far. Immediately we wondered if the EUR trip would be back on.
After waiting in the hallway for a little while, I got called in to find out my grades. I was pleased to find out I made an A on the test and on the presentation. She said we would still do the test review, but then probably go to EUR afterward.
Of course, though, this didn't happen. The test review took kind of a long time, and it apparently getting to EUR is a bit of a haul, so we wouldn't have been able to make it back in time for our other class at 4. She did encourage us all to try and get out to EUR at some point this weekend, though, so we'll see what happens.
Today's theology quiz was decent, and then we spent the first half of the class kind of reviewing the whole course. After our 5:30 break, we watched an Italian film called The Bicycle Thieves (well, that's its English title). The essay question on our final next week will ask us to tie the film in with all the concepts we've learned in these few weeks (should be...interesting). The movie was super depressing, by the way.
Katie and I had booked tickets to see these two show-type things tonight, called the Forum of Augustus and the Forum of Caesar. They're supposed to be like recreations of what the fora really looked like back in the day by means of light projection. The Augustus one you just sit and watch, and the Julius Caesar one is more like a walking tour.
WELL, I don't even know how to begin this story. I suppose our initial plan was to grab a quick dinner at Good and then walk down to the Fora. However, it unexpectedly started to rain before we even left our room (I guess this was the rain that was supposed to come earlier in the day). We noticed it was lightly raining when we went to get dinner, but the forecast persisted that it would not continue to rain. After eating, we went outside only to find it was raining quite a bit harder. We went back to the room to see if we could figure out if our shows were cancelled or not, since they're entirely outdoors.
All the website said was that if shows are cancelled due to rain, then you can email and reschedule your shows. However, there was nothing about how to even know if a show was cancelled or not. Eventually, I found their Twitter account, and saw that the day before they had tweeted that that night's shows were cancelled several hours before they would've started. We decided that ours probably weren't cancelled then, and didn't want to lose our money, so we rushed down there by Metro.
It was quite difficult to find the Forum of Augustus, and we were freaking out that we were going to be late, especially since it had stopped raining. Luckily, though, we found it right before everyone went in to sit on the bleachers.
The bleachers had wet, wooden seats, so I put down my rain jacket and sat on it. We had little headsets that kept playing the same two instrumental songs over and over again. After a few minutes of waiting, it started to drizzle. And then it drizzled a little harder. Everyone had their umbrellas out (really should've brought mine), and I put my rain jacket back on. (Side note--broke in my new rain boots, too). The show's staff came by and I think said something like they just wanted the rain to die down before starting. The rain did die down for a minute, but then it picked right back up. Next thing we knew, the show was cancelled.
Our Julius Caesar show/walking tour thing wasn't for another hour, so I asked some of the staff people if they knew if that was cancelled, too. They did not. So we went over to Trajan's column where that show meets. After waiting a few minutes, it was announced that all of the Forum of Caesar shows were to be cancelled as well. Feeling wet and defeated, we headed back to the Metro to go home at 10 pm (but not without taking a wet and defeated selfie with the Colosseum first).
So hopefully we'll be able to see the shows another day in our last week here. If not, we can at least get a refund, so that's good.
Moral of the story: there is no such thing as an accurate weather forecast in Rome.
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