Sunday morning we woke up at about eight and headed down to another delicious breakfast. At 9:00 we boarded the bus to head to Pompeii, which was about an hour drive. We again split into two groups for the tour, and our guide was a funny old man who knew a ton about the culture and lives of the residents of Pompeii. The tour was about two hours long, which in my opinion was about an hour too much, but we learned a lot. The ruins were cool, but honestly they weren’t very impressive compared to some of the ones we have seen in Rome. I was expecting a bunch of people frozen in time by the lava or ash from the eruption, but there were actually only about five of these. They were obviously impressive, but I had expected a lot more. Perhaps part of the reason I wasn’t enjoying it too much was that I could feel a cold coming on. My throat was sore and I was beginning to get a headache. By now, it has developed into a full blown cold and I feel pretty miserable. But back to Sunday.

After the tour we got lunch and I had some basic spaghetti, which was good enough. I also got to finish off two people’s pizzas, so I was pretty full after dinner. We wandered around some of the shops for about an hour and then got back on the bus for the 3 hour drive back to Rome. Unfortunately, I was unable to fall asleep, and I spent most of the time chatting with friends. When we got back it was about 6:30, and I spent the rest of the night working on homework and watching some games from the Euro Cup. I fell asleep around 11, and slept pretty well, minus the stuffy nose and sore throat.

This morning I couldn’t sleep in past eight, so I got up and worked on my Engineering Economics homework. I headed to class a little early so I could catch the bus in order to avoid the long walk. In class, we discussed our final projects some more, and we presented our topics to the class. On the way to class I had been inspired by the Tiber River and our group adopted the topic of improving the Los Angeles River based on the Tiber River. It developed into a pretty good idea and we are actually excited to start this project.

In Engineering Economics (ISE 460), we discussed the next chapter, which was unfortunately a boring repeat of Thursday. I worked some more on writing my crossword puzzle and have almost completed it. I am quite proud, but unfortunately I didn’t learn anything in class today. We walked back to our apartments and I collapsed in my bed and napped for about an hour and a half. This was a result of my terrible cold, which is making life quite miserable at the moment. I woke up and finished up my ISE homework and then had some dinner. I made a sandwich of salami and mozzarella. For the rest of the night I will be preparing for my writing presentation and watching Italy in the Euro Cup. It looks like I’ll be pretty busy for the next couple days, so I’m not sure when I can next post. Hopefully it won’t be too long…Ciao!