So…I’m a little behind in my posts. Sorry. I’ll do my best to catch up this week, but it will be another busy one – probably the busiest yet. Well, back to last week. Tuesday was a good day, from what I remember of it. Our writing class was cancelled because we had conferences again. This time it was for our portfolios – the revision of our ethics paper and our Illumin article. So, this required that I actually do some work before I had my conference. So I think Monday morning I started revision on my ethics paper. I did a lot of surface level changes, but the bulk of it is still waiting for me. Then, Mike and I went to Piazza del Popolo, which has two “twin” churches and a big obelisk. There was also a big hill that had another great view of Rome. So we hit all these places, and then as we were leaving we saw this big sign for a Leonardo da Vinci museum. I was intrigued, so we went to check it out. It turns out that it was a museum that had taken all of da Vinci’s drawings and built them out of wood. Being engineers, this was quite intriguing. So we paid the entrance fee and went in. I thought it was really cool. There were probably 70-80 machines there, ranging from his famous helicopter to a 20 barrel gun that fires in all directions. A lot of the smaller machines could be played with to see how they work. We spent about an hour inside, and then it was time to get going to class.

First, though, we went back to our apartment and grabbed some lunch. Then we caught the bus over to Accent, and still arrived a few minutes early for ISE. Again, ISE was pretty boring, although some of the material is starting to get interesting. We are doing analyses of entire projects and deciding whether they would be good projects for a company to take. I’m getting a better understanding for the way inflation and depreciation work, which I guess will be valuable in the future. We ended up getting out a half hour early as usual, so I actually only had 1 ½ hours of class, which was pretty sweet. After class I can’t remember what I did exactly, but I know a lot of the time was spent on ISE homework, which was a killer assignment this time. Eventually we got it done, and then I worked some more on my revisions. I think it was a later night for me and I didn’t get to bed until close to 1.

Wednesday morning, a group of seven of us went to the Borghese museum. We had heard so many good things about it that our expectations were high, and for the most part they were met. So we took the metro to Spagna and then had about a twenty minute walk to get to the Villa. The way it works is that you have to reserve a time slot – we got 9-11 – and that is the time you can stay in the museum. Only 360 people are allowed inside at a time, which is a good way of keeping the crowds down and allowing close inspection of each piece. I thought it was a good system. Anyways, the museum was having a special exhibit on Corregio, a fairly important Renaissance painter. On the first floor there was one room dedicated to his work and then there were several more of his paintings on the second floor. Besides this one room, the first floor was almost entirely sculpture. My favorites were the three Bernini’s – David, the Rape of Persephone, and Apollo and Daphne. The last was my favorite, depicting Daphne in the process of turning into a tree as Apollo tries to take her from the world of mortals. It is absolutely stunning that this could be made in marble the way that it was. Yet again, I was unable to take pictures, but I would recommend looking this one up if you haven’t seen it. The David was also quite different from traditional depictions, showing David in the moment that he is loosing the stone from his sling. Those were the main highlights of the gallery, as I actually wasn’t very impressed with the paintings upstairs. We ended up spending a little over an hour inside, which gave us some time to wander the gardens before heading back home. Still, by the time we got back, I had another hour before I had to leave for my conference. So, I maximized this time by watching Lost.

I had my conference with my writing teacher at 1:20, but Ben was before me and he didn’t get out until almost 1:40. So mine was cut short a little bit, but that ended up okay. I got my grade on the Illumin article, and A, and she actually said that mine was the best that she read, so that makes me hopeful that it will get published. I guess that isn’t at all up to her, but it’s still a good sign. I still do have some revisions to do though, so unfortunately my work isn’t done.

Then it was in to ISE, and I can’t remember anything special happening. We talked about the homework for awhile – most of the class actually. Then we did some practice problems for the quiz on Thursday, and I guess that was helpful. After class I did a lot of relaxing and actually was pretty unproductive. I guess it was nice to just sit for awhile. But I also got to hang out with people some more, which was nice, since when we get back to school it will be much harder to see each other since we are all so busy. It has been nice living in this dorm-like setting again, but it is definitely much harder to get good work done. At some point, I fell asleep.

Thursday was a fun day. First, it was Liana’s 20th birthday, so she did her best to milk that as much as she could. In writing, this amounted to talking our teacher into letting us out early so we could go get some famous gnocchi from a place near Campo di Fiori. It was a lot of fun and the gnocchi was delicious. Then in ISE we had our quiz. I didn’t think it was too bad, but it was pretty challenging for some people. So we were all a little bit down after that, which meant we needed a good pick-me-up. Luckily, someone had had a brilliant idea on Tuesday and planned a potluck for our whole group. It was to celebrate Liana’s birthday, the 4th of July (since many people would be gone on Friday), and kind of the end of our trip. Each building (of 4) was responsible for a different kind of dish, and each room contributed one of that kind. We had pasta, and we made some specialty pasta with Eric’s famous beer-boiled sausages in a red sauce. In my opinion, ours was easily the best, but they were all really good. It actually took place for the most part in our room since we have the most space, which meant it was quite cramped and hot. But fun all the same. Some other dishes were fettuccine alfredo, salad, tiramisu, and some kind of delicious cake. After the potluck, the celebration of Liana’s birthday began. They chose probably the most touristy, trashy American way to celebrate it by going on a pub crawl. Originally, I was quite against the idea, but at some point I got talked into going. If for nothing else, I thought it would at least be a good show. So at 8:30 we all boarded the metro to the Coliseum and went to the first “bar”, which was actually an outside square. I didn’t plan on drinking at all, so this wasn’t all that exciting. After awhile, we went to the next bar/club. This was actually the best one, and we all danced and just had fun together. The music was good and it was a cool atmosphere. After that, we went to two more clubs, but they were definitely downhill. I did have a lot of fun with people though and I am happy that I chose to go. We left the last place at around 1 and began the long trek back to our apartments – which amazingly enough, we didn’t get lost. Thankfully, everyone made it back safely and no serious harm was done. And by the time we got back it was officially the 4th of July!