Weekend before Midterms

Yikes, midterms are this week. The yikes isn't indicative of my feelings toward the exams, but rather of the sentiment that "Ohmygoodness, this means I am halfway through the program!"
And that terrifies me a little bit. I still have so much left to do! But this weekend was relaxed. Ish. Getting ready for midterms anyway. Yesterday we visited Castel San Angelo, which was nice. Had a magnificent view of the city, better than the Gianacolo Hill, because the Castel is situated in the city, so it's closer to everything. Pretty spiffy. I also got my first gellato. The first of many, I'm sure...

Tonight, we decided to treat ourselves to our first dinner out in Rome. We went to Piazza Navona and wandered, perusing menus until we found something that sounded like delicious for low prices. I can't remember the name of this place - probably because we weren't looking for a name.
We shared a plate of gnocchi al pomodoro

and filette di pollo con cariciofi (spelling may or may not be off) it was chicken with artichoke hearts. I -love- artichoke hearts. And chicken. And gnocchi.


So we enjoyed our meal, and as we were finishing our wine, the Hare Krishnas came!

They sang and danced and didn't really do much, except tried to pass out little pamphlets and these free chocolates to some people. It's as if some higher power knows that I have a project to do on music, and they keep sending this things to me. In Barcelona it was the social rally, tonight the Hare Krishnas. I find the Hare Krishnas a little bit fascinating. But maybe that's just me.

Carolyn left me when we reached Tevere, she went to school to study, I came back to the apartment. But the Vatican looked kind of fabulous over the Tevere, so I paused a moment

Pretty!

So, here I am now at my apartment. I should be reading my Paul Theroux book, but I'm taking a bit of a study break. And I thought I'd share where I live!


This is our living room. The doorway on the left goes into the room that I share with Carolyn. The doorway on the right splits into Adrienne and Anna's room and the bathroom (two separate rooms, no worries).

And behind where I was when I was taking this picture is our kitchen:

I think the dish drying mechanism is fascinating. In the lower cupboard on the right is the mini fridge, we keep our food above. We keep dishes elsewhere. And! A full stove and oven. <3 This is where I make all those fabulous meals...


Our bathroom, complete with European style shower and bidet! Also, the reservoir for the toilet being overhead makes me nervous sometimes. But it all works out. This is also where I do my laundry. In the sink and the shower. Because I don't have the patience to wait for one of the three washers in a complex for over 250 people to be free. Plus, it isn't even open 24 hours, so they're always in use! Yikes! So I just do it here. They get clean enough for me, anyway, and this way I don't have to pay at least 2 euro every time I want to do wash.


This is the bedroom I share with Carolyn. It might look small here. That's because it is. We have an "closet" with no drawers in our room. So our clothes are all in there, but not in a particularly orderly fashion. But it's not that important to me. The room is literally a foot wider than the beds. But I really just sleep there, so it's no big thing.


This is the view from the balcony that -is- attached to our bedroom. There are four buildings in the complex. Some John Cabot students live here, and some real people live here, too, but the rear two buildings are exclusively Temple, I do believe. This is always where I hang my laundry to dry, there's a clothes horse on every balcony. How handy!

Well, I should get back to that midterm prep stuff.... ugh.

Oh! Also, for those that weren't in the know, I have my two photo books to work on. One is a European perspective on music and dance (which seems to be coming along famously) but the other one is to be a Rome effort, and I was stumped for ideas (at least ones my professor deemed "deep enough"). But, now I am doing a documentary photo book on the Roman Cat Sanctuary. Hooray for me! I e-mailed them, and got a favorable reply, so I e-mailed with the dates I would like to visit. I e-mailed them 6 dates, hopefully they'll let me come for all of them. The more I can see the cats and such, the better! But that's something exciting of note.

Anyway, until spring break, my friends! And then I'm sure I'll be making multiple posts for each city. Paris, Brussels, Brugges (day trip! I'm psyched!) and Amsterdam. It's gonna be intense.

<3

My name is Wendy. I go to the zoo too much, regardless of the country I'm in.

I went to the Roma Bioparco, aka the Zoo. And it was a let down. For sure. I was immensely spoiled by the Philadelphia Zoo, the style of it's enclosures, the magnitude of animals, all of it. But, here's a little display.

For the record, I don't really know what these animals are. It's kind of funny the way they treated the animals a bit, how some things seemed exotic to people that didn't at all to me. Like the brown cow....

Anyway, here are some animals to satiate the photo need. Busy week this and next because midterms are next week. But then it's spring break!














Woo! Zoo!

Fichta Tunis!

Wow. Really, wow is all that I can say. Tunis was beautiful and magnificent and wonderful and a whole heap of other positive adjectives.

We landed at the Tunis - Carthage Airport Friday, midday-ish. And it was beautiful landing there. The airport reminded me of Hawai'i's airport. With the palm trees and the fresh crisp air, all that was missing was someone "lei-ing" us. I think I convinced myself I was in love with Tunis before we even got there, but it was so wonderful to land in Africa. Got my passport stamped and everything. But that's not what these trips are about.

Turns out that Tunisia has a "democracy," better known as a dictatorship. The president Ben Ali has been in his position since 1987. And his picture was everywhere.

Not only big billboards, but the Tunisian flag and his image were those little flag strings... like birthday banner thingies... Silly dictator. However, people seem to be "happy." We got to the five star hotel (Hotel Africa) after about a 15 minute drive through Tunis. We had a glorious large comfortable five star bed for sleeping on, which was woooooonderful. But! First, we did some walking around. We walked through the Medina, which is the shopping center, with all of the shopkeepers that come outside and try to convince you to come into their shops and buy their wares, and everything is "one dinar!!" We walked up through the Medina, past the Grand Mosque Ezzituna, to the Qasbah. Which caused me to have "Rock the Qasbah" stuck in my head for the better part of the trip.

I thought some "god lights" might be a fun thing. This is the Qasbah. In front of some important building that I can't remember the name of... but it's important. In this area, the Tunisian flag is ceremoniously raised and lowered.

Which we got to see, with the back-up of a drumline/marching band. I felt awful thinking to myself that the trumpets were awfully out of tune, because it was probably a bit disrespectful, but they were... These things are facts. But it was still pretty nifty. This guys came out in full regalia, with their caps and hats, dressed in the Tunisian flag colors. From there we walked back through the Medina to a perfume makers shop.

This guy makes the essences for all sorts of perfumes like Dior, J'adore, Hugo Boss, Lacoste, including a whole bunch of Tunisian scents. We got an explanation about how it's done. You put water in the bottom of this thing, and then put the flower or whatever the scent comes from in the top, and something something... perfume essence! It takes about a ton of orange blossoms to make a very small vial of essence. Very interesting. I didn't buy any... since I don't wear perfumes. But there was one called Tunis By Night, which he also referred to as Sex Machine, and told us we could only wear it on Saturdays. What a funny guy. That night we then went to a tea shop, were we had dates with marzipan filling, mint tea with pine nuts, and those of us that were "upstairs" (only 5 of us, everyone else sat below) got these eggs that Mounir, our tour guide, bought for us. They are baked in an oven under the sand. They were very delicious. And, we enjoyed some apple tobacco hookah, which was a fun experience. We tried to get Maria Ponce de Leon (a Temple professor who is learning Arabic and plans to move to Tunisia some day) to partake, but she had just had surgery done on her mouth, and the doctor told her not to smoke... We then went back to the hotel, and enjoyed the all you can eat buffet. Which I did. Extensively. It was all French food, though, rather than Tunisian, but it was delicious, and there was beef, and I ate a ton, and enjoyed it.

The next morning we woke up at the crack of dawn.

To listen to a speech by a Tunisian political something or other. Probably the best guest speaker I've ever heard. He talked about the EuroMed Barcelona Accords of 1995, which involves the Mediterranean nations, and how they can improve their economic situations. Basically, the Northern nations want the North African nations to have better relations for their own populations self interest mostly concerning oil. And things he said made a lot of sense. He mentioned that the Accords did not give the proper tools for the North African nations to grow economically, and a lot of people though the Northern Med nations should provide aid, but it's not their job to do these things. That the governments need to watch out for their own populations self interest before they try to help other nations. It was pretty cool to listen to. He was very well informed, and we were lucky, because usually dictatorships won't let people talk about such things in order to avoid dissent... So we were very privileged.

Then we went to the Bardo Museum, which was very interesting. It's collection of Roman Mosaics is considered the best in the world. And I was mostly impressed with the ceilings, though. They were made of either plaster or carved wood, and were very, very extravagant.



The first two are the made of plaster that is shaped and carved. The last one is made of carved wood with gold filigree. Sooooooo beautiful.

We went to Carthage next. Carthage was very interesting.


It probably seems like I didn't pay attention to a lot of things, but I did, really. The "problem" was it was such an academic trip and we did so much, and so many things were interesting, that I couldn't possibly remember them all. I should do more research on Carthage. I think during the Punic War it was destroyed, and salt was sown into the ground to ensure that nothing would ever grow there. I think Marcus Porcious said "Carthage must be destroyed" during the Third Punic War. And the Romans did just that.

We went to the Roman baths after that, which was very pretty, right on the water

There were signs everywhere that said don't climb on the ruins. Students were. It bothered me a bit... And if you could see to the left, the way left, there would be Ben Ali's House. Now, here's the thing, you can't photograph Ben Ali's house. And there are guards everywhere, hiding in bushes and trees and out in the open with guns and such, ready to take away your camera if you even point it in that direction. Dictatorship, anyone?

We went to the American Cemetery in Tunis

Where about 2800 American soldiers are buried from World War II. Those buried there lost their lives serving in military activities ranging from North Africa to the Persian Gulf. Really moving, sort of like Arlington.

Then we went to Sidi Bou Said to watch the sun set

And have some more tea and more apple tobacco Hookah. We went into some shops and looked around, but this one shop owner told me I had beautiful eyes and whispered inappropriate things as I walked around, so I decided I was done, and waited outside at another tea shop for the rest of the class.

On Sunday we woke, had breakfast, and did some less interesting things, such as visited a post office and train station. And then we came home, and I was very exhausted. But it was such a wonderful, beautiful trip. And there is so much more to say, and I don't even know where to start or fit it in. There are stories for sure, but there is always time for stories.

And ohmigoodness, spring break is in two weeks! Paris-Brussels-Amsterdam. Then Sara comes the 8thish to visit, and we go to Budapest the following weekend. Then, two weeks after that I'm going to Vienna!! (I just booked my plane ticket today... I found a "cheap" flight for it... so I couldn't even help myself).

I think I might be out of words. But it was beautiful and wonderful, and if you ever have the chance, go to Africa.