Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is not an Italian holiday, but yesterday was quite wonderful. We did have class, but it was an easy day. I didn't even bring my notebook, since we didn't have lectures on site, just some staring. We went to the Ara Pacis first, since it was closed the first time, and stared at it in awe for a while. It was pretty awesome. In the basement part of the building I dropped my camera and two museum people came running. I guess they thought I busted a statue or something.

I may add photos later. But the Ara Pacis is definitely amazing. I spent a lot of time studying it for my class last year, but there's nothing quite like being next to it, picking out the lizards and frogs carved into the relief on the bottom half of the outer wall.

After that, we went to another museum. This was the EUR Museum of Romanness.. or something like that. It was full of only copies of things, so I was skeptical at first, but it turned out to be really awesome. Tons of models and plaster casts. Every inch of Trajan's column (which we climbed!) in relief down a long hallway. Lots of models of the city, certain buildings, areas in different places. All very cool. Schematics for how things worked. Roman armies. Roman games. Sweet. I looove scale models.

The day was bright and not even that cold, which makes things easier as well. I had a lovely time. Dinner was absolutely awesome. The cooking ladies went all-out for a holiday that isn't even theirs; we had two huge birds, after the first course of ravioli of course.. pumpkin soup, green beans, mashed potatoes, nuts and stuffing, sweet potatoes, corn... It was wonderful! Dessert was also fabulous, as you can imagine. There were about eighteen and I tried them all. The cheesecake was like.. whipped cheesecake. The pumpkin pie made my Prof. Wally's wife was freakin' awesome and I'm getting the recipe.

This morning, like any good conscientious American, it was shopping day. I went on the art history field trip again, and got to see some more realyl cool churches, as well as the Doria Pamphili Galleria (or some of it, anyway).. got some more stuff to decorate my room (I'm shifting from anime to classical art.. it's a totally fair trade).

From there, Captain Cook and I went off to shop. We looked in some clothes stores (which were, thankfully, not packed with any more Italians than usual) and they were all pricey, but then we got lost when we used a different exit from the mall onto a different street. We walked along it for a while, then came to a sign with arrows pointing to different attractions. We hadn't bought anything yet, and I read off the attractions, one of which was "Museo paste alimentari" or something, and I laughingly suggested we go find the pasta museum. We set off in that direction and stumbled upon some great little stores. Once I found an item that was my sucker price, some kind of dam broke and I bought Christmas presents for a whole bunch of people. After throwing down tens of euro, Emily and I cheerfully picked our way back to the Corso and got a bus home. This whole excursion took about three hours (the field trip was like 9 to 1:30, and then we were out until about 5) but was well worth it. It was even warmer today than yesterday, with no need even for a jacket, only a sweater!

It's been absolutely lovely!