Day 6

Sometimes, there’s nothing better than a lazy Sunday morning.

I was delighted to wake up at 10 am today; I feel like I really earned it. It was nice not to have to get up and immediately get dressed and ready for whatever had been planned for me. But of course, I didn’t let the whole day go to waste—why would I even be here if all I wanted to do was sit around??

We set out a little before noon for the Ara Pacis museum. It houses, of course, the Ara Pacis, which is basically an altar Augustus built to himself. Way back whenever, it had sunk into the ground and been forgotten, but after many centuries it was rediscovered and excavated. Weirdly enough, Benito Mussolini was responsible for having the Ara Pacis reassembled and put on display. You would think a fascist wouldn’t do such a thing, but it turns out he believed himself to be a descendant of Augustus.

This one's not part of the Ara Pacis...just some cool mosaic in the museum.

On the lower floor of the museum, there’s currently a really neat exhibit about food in the Roman Empire. We got to see burnt peas, lentils, and nuts from Pompeii, all kinds of old glasses and plates and things, and much more. It was surprisingly big and very informational.

After the museum, we had lunch at a cute little place in a cute little part of town. Actually, all of Rome is pretty cute on Saturday and Sunday afternoons. There are plenty of people out, but not too many cars, so it’s really quite quiet.

We saw several other sights today, including Tiber Island (which feels ridiculously small when you’re on it), the ruins/cat sanctuary again (got to pet a cat!), the Colosseum, and the Circus Maximus.

Me and Julius Caesar (probably the first of many similar pictures)

Following a long, hot, exhausting walk all the way back to campus, I finally got to do some Skyping. I talked to Will and Mackie first, and then my mom (both calls were short. I guess they hate me). Something is very wrong with the Wi-Fi around here, so hopefully once that’s fixed (aka it better be ASAP), we can do some group Skyping and whatnot. We attempted that, and almost had it working, but I was only on my phone so video wouldn’t work. I’m actually currently kind of happy that my phone is on a different Wi-Fi than everyone else because I’m still able to communicate with the world.

At 8 pm, we attended student mass. It was really cute! Normally it’s in a church right around the corner from our building, but for whatever reason it was in one of the classrooms this time. I really like the priest, and I love that we get free pizza afterward. There were some awkward moments during mass, due to the fact that there was no music, no kneeling, or really any organization at all. But again, I really enjoyed it anyway. It was also fun to get to socialize some more with some of the other people in my program. Turns out some of them might also be coming on the Amalfi Coast trip with us!

And with that, my summer is officially over. But it really doesn’t feel like it!