So much to blog about but so little time...

This blog is mainly to fill you all in on the past events of the last few days and to help me remember them :). It has been a very long but very good week- exhausted beyond exhaustion! I actually just got back from Assisi- its about 10:30 on Saturday night, but I know that if I put this off anymore it will be forgotten. So, I blogged about the Etruscans the other day... I mention that because Wednesday and Thursday were devoted to more of early Roman history. We headed to what was once the Forum Boarium- a gathering place that was home to a few ancient temples and a modern church. I don't really feel like rehashing what I know about this site- it's not too interesting anyway, and that's kind of saying something considering that I love nearly every site I see. This sight is so ambiguous that after excavations were stopped after Mussolini began them, they were never finished. It's been about 60 years and noone has worked on it, but apparently some professor from the University of Michigan is taking on the task in the next ten years- who knows, maybe I will be able to dig there :). I should mention that we can attribute a lot of modern excavation to Mussolini. Despite the whole fascism thing, he did kind of improve things in Rome, at least ancient things anyway. This site is difficult to navigate; there are just too many layers of indistinguishable things that it really doesn't make too much sense. So after this we headed to the Palatine hill- one of the earliest settlements of Rome. There is archaeological evidence of huts that date back to about the 8th century here- just about the time of the mythical founding of Rome 753 BCE- interesting! We looked at aspects of the Forum that could be attributed to the most ancient Romans. For example we examined the post holes of the ancient huts and discussed their importance to Romans. Though post holes aren't particularly interesting, the veneration of them is. So these post holes were believed to belong to the hut of Faustulus, the shepherd who found Romulus and Remus on the Tiber. I will give a little bit of background now- so Romulus and Remus were two brothers that were abandoned by their mother. She was a vestal virgin who was raped by the god Mars. Because she broke her oath of celibacy she was buried alive- though this is a "myth", the Romans really did bury alive the real vestal virgins that broke their vows- terrifying! Their are different versions of the myth, but one is that a slave was ordered to kill the babies by the king, but couldn't because of their profound beauty so put them into a basket near the Tiber. It flooded, as it often did and the children were carried away(sound familiar?). Faustulus then found them and had his wife, Lupa take care of them. The other myth is that a she-wolf found them and suckled them.... variations of the same myth (lupa means wolf). So they grow up and Romulus kills Remus and becomes the first real king of Rome. Anyways, so the Romans loved this myth and venerated everything associated with Romulus, the founder of Rome. This hut was taken care of for centuries- literally until after the time of Augustus. The Romans greatly valued their myths and traditions. Augustus even had his house built next to this ancient hut location. We looked at a few other things on the Palatine Hill and in the Forum area but will go back for the later stuff when we cover it. After class I went in search of a rainjacket with some of the girls... nothing too exciting. Thursday, we headed to the Villa Giulia- sidenote, that's my name in Italian :). It belonged to the Pope Julius II and it was remarkable. It has an expansive museum that has some really great pottery and sarcophogi. It is very cool to be able to identify things in a museum because you've studied them. One example- I saw the Chigi Vase. I had studied this quite thorougly and loved being able to analyze it in person. Exciting! After we got back and had lunch, Rachel and I went to the Colosseum- our tickets from the Forum from the previous day included this. For 12 euro I was not going to not go to the Colosseum (tickets used to be free, but now they are super expensive, but you have 2 days to see it all). It was a lot of fun! Though I had been once before, it was nice being able to leisurely look at everything. It is still so impressive to me. On Friday I had class at the Vatican. We are looking at High Renaisance artwork in my Art History class, so it was perfect being able to see everything. We compared Raphael's works and were able to see his development in style all the way through his "Transfiguration". It blew me away- it is so much more developed and evocative than his earlier work... you have to come to Rome to see it, really! He lectured for about 4 hours in the Vatican and then we went to the Sistine Chapel. Amidst all of the shooshing that occurs in the chapel, I was still awed by the magnificance of it. I had seen this once before, but it didn't matter. Amazing! Knowing the significance of each scene makes it so much better! We had the option of leaving after this as class was over but, Rachel, Courtney, and I stayed behind despite being starving. We wanted to explore some more. So we did. We left about 4 and ate lunch on the piazza finally (we had checked our bags with our lunches and would not have been allowed re-entry to get them). After we got back we were able to relax for about 20 minutes and then had a wine seminar until dinner. I then started to prepare for my daytrip to Assisi and was finally able to get into bed about 11:30. I got up at 6:15 this morning and am really tired now... I was able to get a lot of homework done on the train though- success! I will blog tomorrow about the trip. Until then, ciao! (Pictures of the Villa Giulia, the Colosseum, and St.Peter's Square are shown).

-XOXO