Europa: La avventura vera comincia (Europe: the real adventure begins)

...In your eyes, love, it glows---and then my iPod ran out of battery.

I was only seven minutes into my second of what I hope will be many runs along the Tevere today. It has been on and off beautiful weather the past few days. I also went running last Sunday when the sun decided that Sunday would be the first perfect day in Rome. It was an amazing feeling. I walked through Trastevere for 20 minutes and when I hit the river, I just ran, passing people laying out in the sun, some holding hands or cuddling (they are very affectionate people, those Italians), passing bridge after bridge, watching the river water overflowing onto the walkways, a murky brown from the previous night's rainfall, and feeling a feeling of pure contentment as I let the sun warm me in my Assumption blue Open House T-shirt. It was perfect.

The night before, Cat's birthday, was all-in-all a success. She was surprised by the delicious chocolate cake we bought from a local Italian pasticceria. We drank spumante (champagne) and bonded over some good conversation. Then we hit the bars.

After my Sunday run, Cat and I traveled to the Colosseum area to grab a cappuccino with Ashton...most expensive cappuccino I have ever had: 4 euro! Unreal. Word of advice for all you potential travellers: stay away from the tourist attractions when you're looking for food, but I'm sure that one is easy enough to figure out. Sometimes we just forget all these beautiful things around us are tourist attractions.

On the tram on the way home, I spent the entire ride in a staring contest with the cutest baby boy. He wouldn't stop looking at me with his gray eyes. Not blue, not green, but gray. It was the most mesmerizing color...my mother would have been brought to tears.

Monday started a new week of classes that dragged on, as the more I fall in love with this city, the harder it becomes to concentrate on school. After school, however, I went to dinner with some local Italians. It was three-course meal which, after trying to moderate my food intake post-Florence and our daily three-course meals, I was not ready for. It took me hours to stop feeling like there was a boulder in my stomach. But it was certainly delicious, so I can't complain. As for the company, I was excited, until the boy I was sitting across from continue to speak in English no matter how many times I asked him to talk to me in Italian. He even had the nerve to say "speak English. I can understand you better." That is probably the hardest and most frustrating part about learning this language. It's very true the rumors you hear about everyone speaking English in Italy. Of course, not every single person, but almost anyone you, as a visitor, encounter. Store owners, hotel managers, etc. If you try to speak to them in Italian, quite often they will respond to you in English. I don't even realize it sometimes, and I will continue speaking in Italian, while they continue responding in English. They sometimes will even spot you on the street or right when you walk into their store and greet you in English. It brings me back to our orientation in Florence, when the policeman giving the safety presentation said "they will recognize you" this was of course followed by "but you won't be able to recognize them." However taken out of context it may be, he may very well have been advising for the protection of my ego.

But despite the way it makes me feel when people refuse to let me speak my slow and broken Italian, it's a learning experience. Not just in improving the language, but it also puts things in perspective. I am a foreigner in this country, and many view me perhaps in the same stereotyped way that many Americans view foreigners in our country. It makes me think, have I not gotten irritated at not being able to adequately communicate with someone in my own country? Of course. And this is where the education begins.

As for yesterday, I went to my first DAVE MATTHEWS BAND concert!! It was so amazing. We waited in line to collect our tickets for about 20 minutes. Not too bad. But as soon as we had everyone, we sprinted into the Palalottomatica (the concert's huge venue in southern Rome) and ran into the first door we saw just to be able to catch the end their instrumental opener. It was unreal. I had been getting myself psyched for this concert for weeks, ears plugged up with DMB streaming through my iPod every time I was alone. I was about to see and hear "Funny the way it is," "Shake me like a Monkey," my absolute absolute favorite "Two Step," "Baby Blue," which literally brought tears to my eyes, and so many more great songs.

It was such a great experience. Even finding our way to and from the venue was an adventure. Getting there was easy, as we only needed to take underground metro and then walk a few blocks. However, Rome is a city that sleeps at night and the metro closes at midnight. Fortunately, I wrote down directions for the night bus. Unfortunately, I had no idea where the actual stop was located, only its name. Fortunately, we stopped to get some late-night snacks at the stands outside the show, resembling carnival food. So I turned to random people asking in Italian if they knew where the stop was. Of course no one knew. The irony is that after about the fifth person I asked in Italian, an American boy wearing a red bandana and a leather jacket asked me to repeat the name. Fortunately, he and his friends were headed that way. So we followed. Unfortunately, we got there and had just missed the previous bus, the next one not due to arrive until 45 minutes later. We waited around until we got annoyed and started trying to hail taxis. Fortunately, just as we were about to get into what would have been the most expensive taxi-ride ever, I saw the bus pull up and we sprinted like hell to get on. A twenty minute bus ride and a thirty minute walk, accompanied by the greatest friends (who would walk me thirty minutes home only to walk themselves thirty minutes back home), I was safely nuzzled in my bed and ready for sleep, the tunes of Dave still playing in my head.

Tomorrow is Thursday, which means at approximately 10:00 PM, I will depart to finally see the lovely Celia Fox! I am unbelievably excited, but also a little nervous. This will be the first time I have ever made travel plans on my own, gotten to the airport on my own (with Nicole, of course), and gotten from the airport to the place I will be staying on my own...in a country where the only word I know for sure how to say and spell is "woof" in English. So yes, I am nervous, but I am also excited to overcome this hump and prepare for all the future traveling that I will doing "on my own." And the destination is so worth any hurdles I may have to jump: PRAGUE!

Until I'm back in Rome,

Ciao!