I Should Be Sleeping

I should be sleeping ‘stead of keeping these late hours I’ve been keeping. Thank you, Emerson Drive, for accurately describing my life through subpar rhyming lyrics.

I should probably warn you: this entire post may be a digression of some unknown ambiguous topic (to both you and me). It’s pretty late and the day was uneventful, so I feel that this post may be uneventful as well.

Today was a very relaxed and kicked back sort of a day. For once, I finally slept in. Even if I do miraculously hit the sack at a decent hour, the constant running around eventually wears you down.

We’ve recently discovered that this weekend will be our last weekend in Roma. (If we paid any attention to the syllabus, we would have known sooner—but that’s just too easy.) With just a couple of days left to embrace the Italian culture, we decided our weekend would be best spent in Venice and Florence. While this all sounds great in theory, the practice of planning of fun weekend is difficult.

We looked up some tram tickets on the Internet yesterday (fun fact: Internet is always capitalized in print), but none of the times really fit our schedule. We’d either spend a couple of hours at each location or be dirt poor when we returned to the states. For this reason, we decided it would be best if we bought our tickets at the station, where someone could find schedules and prices that fit our needs.

We headed over to Termini and attempted to use an electronic machine to find tickets. If you think eight students from U of I would be fully capable of working a simple ticket machine, you would be wrong. Our failed attempt led us to an in-station travel agency where an English speaking man helped us plan our route. The prices and times were much better than anything we found online, but we thought we’d let our decision simmer over a quick lunch, making sure to consider the other options we had (ie: flying).

Our simmering took place at a Mickey D’s near the tram station. I know you are all wondering why I would want to consume a nasty McChicken and fries while I’m living in the greatest food coma country in the world. We Americans yearn for convenience in food, and this was the most convenient restaurant we could find. There’s no time for two-hour lunches in our schedule.

Anyway, we made it back to the tram station to purchase our tickets. As there were eight of us, they gave us a better deal than we were previously told. Soon enough, the tickets were in our hands. I concede that they’ve yet to be specifically in my hands, but that’s probably for the best. I did a little happy dance, super stoked for the weekend ahead.

We had a short lesson today on branding and worked a little bit on our group projects. After school, Jane and I explored the city (mostly on accident, as we got lost on our way to a dress store). We also ran to the grocery store in preparation for the fiesta planned for the evening.

Our apartment decided that we needed a break from going out to eat (insert carbohydrate here), so we cooked up a Mexican meal consisting of homemade tortilla chips, chicken fajitas, guacamole and bean dip. Cinda, our trip coordinator (one of the sweetest people you’ll ever meet) and her husband joined us for dinner. It was just a super-fantastic and desperately needed evening.

It felt so movie-esque with all of us running around the kitchen to prepare a feast. I was originally put in charge of cutting up the chicken and removing the fat. If you’ve ever eaten something I’ve created, you know that I should probably stay as far away from the food as possible. My fat trimming skills are not up to par (my grandpa sets that bar very high), so I eventually switched over to cutting up the tortillas, which was a safer bet for all of us.

After dinner, our Venice/Florence group booked hotels for the weekend. Everything’s set and ready to go, and I couldn’t be happier about it. I’m still smiling.

I haven’t really done much else today, other than eat Nutella. I bought a jar at the grocery store yesterday and it’s delicious. The recipe for Italian Nutella is slightly different and better tasting than the recipe used in the states. I’m hiding the jar in my room so as not to tempt my detoxing roomies, but the jar’s already halfway gone. And no, I didn’t eat all of it. The roomies discovered that these “con crema de riso al latte” cookies that sit on our kitchen counter serve as the perfect surface on which to spread the hazelnutty goodness.

Tomorrow (which is really today), is our papal mass. As we’re leaving in three hours, I should probably go to bed now. My roomie currently has my memory card, so as soon as I get it back, I’ll post some pics from today. Scratch that—the only picture I took today was of Eric purchasing a piece of luggage from a shady street vendor to take to Venice. I’ll try to make up for my lack of pictures in my next post. Oh, and happy June!