Hanging out on a Field Study for Ancient Rome and Myth

Sometimes on Fridays the kids protest having class and throw a huge party
near my apartment in the middle of the street, blocking all the trams and buses.

An overview of the "FORUM"

Mid-Terms, Mid-Terms, Mid-Terms

^Oktoberfest 12 hour bus ride through the ALPS^

Relaxing with everyone in Cinque Terre!

Hitting up the ATM before we spend all of our Euro an hour later
at a Discoteca called "Coyote" in a area called Testaccio near Trastevere.

This week has been to say the least hectic. We had our Italian oral presentation which Ty and I gave a 3 minute quick power point in Italian on our journey of Oktoberfest from a few weeks ago. For some reason my teacher, Marta, made all of us memorize our speeches even though I can't memorize a speech in English. But overall that went pretty well. We studied all night on Wednesday after I got home from the gym, which I am starting to like more and more as time moves on. Can you believe I have been here almost 7 weeks and my trip is basically half way over. How crazy it is when time flies by so quickly. Thursday I had class in the morning and then we went to a museum for my ancient Rome and Myth class that was located near Termini. It was a lot cooler than I thought it would be. After that for lunch I grabbed a "kabob" which are becoming a huge hit to us Americans throughout the duration of our stay here in ROMA. I studied with Ty in the basement of school for a couple more hours. I went in and took the Italian mid-term in about 35 minutes and I would say it went "okay..?" but we will see how that turned out. Thursday night we were supposed to go to the re-opening of this club called MOOD but it ended up not opening so we went to a different smaller club called LEVEL. The night was crazy and basically our whole program eventually showed up there. This was our last weekend in Rome before Fall break so we all figured we have to take full advantage of being done with Italian mid-terms and all. Friday was a pretty fun day as well since we do not have class to attend on Fridays we basically have all day to do whatever we want! Me being the studious kid that I am tried to crank our some homework during the day with Ty. Actually we got a lot of work done sitting at my living room table, I made a study guide for all the different Roman paintings and such that I have to remember for my mid-term in classical art on Tuesday. Then we got a pretty big group together and went to our local Italian restaurant called "Tony's" which is always a good time. I had Gorgonzola gnocchi and boiled chicken breast along with some red wine and bread. About ten of us came back to my place after the three hour dinner extravaganza and once again got ready for the crazy night that was about to be ahead of us! Mood was officially opening tonight and Jeff (Who knows a club promoter named Francesco) has a hook up. We got on the tram to get to Mood at about 11:30 p.m. and made our way there. Usually there is a cover but we did not have to pay and drinks were TEN EURO which is absolutely absurd. We danced on tables to awesome "house" remixed music all night, partied on the couches, and mingled with the Italians. Finally after sweating through all of our clothes we made our way home. I walked home with my two friends from class Carly and Julie while Jeff was lost and then miraculously we found Jimmy and Gina wondering the streets on their way home too! Last night was insane and of course tonight another club called Le Mesone is opening which was re-located because of the Winter weather that was coming up quicker than expected. As for today went, I got up early and cleaned the place, threw some laundry in and went to the gym. This week was a very good running week and I put in about 60 miles which was nice for a change. Ty and Jeff came over to study with me! Ty and I also went to the grocery and then we made ourselves chicken sandwiches for lunch. Tonight the plan for dinner is "Mexican night" where everyone brings five euro and something to pass, while we make awesome burritos and all hang out at our place! Then we may or may not go out. I am going to try to cram in a lot of studying before that and maybe watch a little college football at the same time. I hope everyone is enjoying the Fall weather change wherever you are in the world. It is getting pretty cold here at night and even today I am wearing sweatpants.

Keep in touch. Love you all. -Kev-

let the actual schoolwork begin

Finally the time has come where we have to do things for school, although I have been trying to keep up with everything; I am not gonna lie it has been difficult with all the fun places we have been visiting lately! This week we have our Italian mid-terms which are bound to be impossible (Oral exam on Wednesday and written exam on Thursday) then we party! Mood opens this weekend which is an awesome discoteca located in the middle of Roma. Le Mezone also opens up this weekend so we will most likely goto that on Friday. I am planning on staying in on Saturday and studying for mid-terms since I have four next week and I am starting to stress out about it! I have been very busy and will be all the way up until fall break:


Amsterdam: Friday - Tuesday
Dublin: Tuesday - Friday
Barcelona: Friday - Monday

Should be a blast! Tomorrow should be a tough Italian class along with Thursday.. I have been running on a treadmill lately and loving it for some reason, but today I forgot my gym card but luckily the man let me in no problem. I need to study as much as possible when I have time, but I will try to blog as much as I can throughout the next week.

Be safe to you all and thanks for reading as always.

best,
kev

Discovering yourself.

Studying abroad is such a life altering experience. You take a chance on yourself. You come to an unknown place with no one to fall back on but yourself, you figure out who you actually are and appreciate things more than ever. There are always awkward moments that are not awkward, no hesitations, just a place where you feel you can finally live freely. The truth is I left O' Hare airport in Chicago being more scared than ever before. Am I actually doing this? Now I have came to the conclusion that it does not matter where you are, its the moments you make while you are in those places. In Roma a family has been created, each and everyday we strive to find out every thing about each other. Each person has such an impact on the group as a whole, and each person makes it special in a precarious way. Some people are close to others, some people hate others with a passion, some even don't even know the others name, but the important thing is that we are all here together and striving through this unbelievable experience together. Even if you don't know someone so well, here in Rome is the place to get to know them. I absolutely am happier than ever with the people I am with and got so lucky. True I do miss home and the TEAM but I am here for less than three months. I want to complete the list of top 100 best things to see in Rome. I wanna party hard in Barca for Halloween. I wanna check out the castles in Dublin and I want to see the sites in Amsterdam. I wanna swim in the Trevi Fountain. Watch the sunrise on the Spanish Steps. Complete that 20 mile run passed the Colosseum and the Vatican. Everyday I appreciate being here more and more. I can't even explain to you my feelings running through my head everyday. I am walking passed thousands and thousands of years of real true history on my way to class.

This morning I went on a run up the main hill in Trestevere and passed Villa Borghese which is the cliff where you can see the entire city of ROME. It was unexplainable. As for this weekend went most of us stayed here in Rome because we are all trying to save $$$ for our 11 day fall break extravaganza. Yesterday some of the guys went to a pub and watched the Penn State vs. Illinois football game. I am very happy with my decision to hang out for the weekend and not always be traveling, not that I caught up on sleep as I should have, but it was a blast.

Week "6" is coming to an end.

Gladiator Costumes for 264 B.C.

The Colesseum, yeah this is what I do for class..

Week six of my amazing journey in Rome is coming to an end, it is going quicker than I could have ever imagined. This week was full with a lot of homework, running, and planning for Fall Break. We still have to book our hostels for Amsterdam, Dublin, and Barecalona for Halloween. It should be an unreal time. I just learned that we have an Italian mid-term next week, should be interesting to say the least. Today I had to give a presentation on Gladiators in the actual Colosseum, which as you can imagine was as surreal as it could be. Then I had a long day of walking because I tried to find a few things by myself and of course got lost! I also am going to buy a train/bus pass for 30 Euro this month hopefully. Rumor has it that Lady Gaga will be playing Dublin while we are there. Looks like we will be attending that weirdos concert. It should be a blast actually.

Anyways I am just relaxing this weekend in Rome and getting some stuff figured out with school and such. I will most likely blog again this weekend.

Keep in touch, Buonacera

Oktoberfest, heaven on earth.

This past weekend was one of the craziest weekends of my life. Sure you hear about Oktoberfest being a huge beer drinking fest where Germans dress up in there ridiculous outfits and drink beer uncontrollably. But what I encountered was so much different than I ever expected. I will start from the beginning...

The trip to Munich, Germany was through bus2alps which is a big student studying abroad company where they do most of the planning for you. Our trip to Oktoberfest was scheduled to leave from Termini which is the biggest train station in Rome @ 8:00 p.m. My buddy Ty and I brought our bags and stuff to Italian class which ended at six so that we wouldn't have to go all the way and all the way back because Rome is such a huge city and it takes time to get places especially at rush hour. We had some time to kill so we randomly picked a restaurant and sat down for a nice dinner before the dreadful 12 hour bus ride through the ALPS. I had thick spicy pasta and water while Ty had veil and potatoes with a beer on the side. Somehow our dinner turned out to be 20 Euro each, but that is besides the point. It is nice to sit down and have a good meal every once and awhile. Next, we made our way towards termini where we stopped into the grocery store to buy some snacks. Ty also bought a new pair of Nike shoes and sweatpants which will be talked about later in this blog. Anyways, time passed and we got on the bus. Everyone was partying but I was trying to get some rest because I wanted to feel 100% for the weekend. I did not really sleep that well but after several stops along the way we arrived in Munich at our campsite that was called "Stoke Camping" It was run by a bunch of middle aged Australian kids who partied just as hard as we did all weekend. We paid 15 Euro at the entrance to the site for unlimited all you can eat (breakfast) and drink (all day). It was actually quite a steal. The tents were two a tent or three if you wanted the extra body heat, but being boys we didn't figure we would need that. Well we were wrong the tents were absolutely freezing and all six of us ended up in the same one by the end of the night for one reason or another.

We got into our campsite at around 9:15 a.m. on Friday morning and after we all checked in we had a little breakfast which was pretty good for a campsite quick breakfast and we found out that our shuttle was not running to Oktoberfest. So they gave us a little piece of paper with public transportation directions, in German of course. We found our way to the bus then to the train and when everyone go off the train we were told to follow the crowds. So we did and it led us to heaven on earth as they call it in Germany. The tent we went to that day was called the HB tent, it was one of the many beer tents at this festival. The tents hold anywhere between 2 and 10 thousand people. The beer is served in 1 liter huge awesome mugs and cost 8 Euro and some change. But everyone pays ten! The drinking festivities continued all day with people taking naps on the lawn. We got there too late on Friday to get a good table but we walked around and mingled all day. Tyler and I left the tent and went on some carnival rides, we also both won little plastic whistles at the balloon popping game. Everyone lost everyone. After a long day of partying with the Germans and Americans we went home relatively early around 9:00 pm and passed out for the night. We all set our alarms for 5:00 am only to be woken up at 4:30 am by the crazy Australians who ran our camp ground feeding us beer through the zippers of our tents. We all got up as well as about 100 other people and got on the bus, dead tired might I add, and heading out to the fest. No one showered or changed clothes because there was simply no time in the day for this. This was the festival of a lifetime and we wanted to be first in line to experience it!

It was a sad site to see when Jimmy wasn't with the crew all weekend, but it just so happened that his whole college booked Oktoberfest back in May at a Holiday Inn with a pool, while we all slept in dirty old sleeping bags in 40 degree weather. But camping might have been the just as fun as the festival.

We made it to the festival on Saturday morning no later than 7 a.m. and the tents did not open until nine but we wanted to make sure to get a table in the middle where it would have been the most fun near the band. Of course something went wrong. One of the security guards knowingly told us the wrong entrance so we waited two hours in the cold at the wrong entrance when some of our friends got there at 8:30 and got a prime table. Luckily those friends were Jimmy and his Santa Clara crew. So a group of us got a table on the side and then just ran up and hung out with our other friends all day! The day went by pretty quickly, eating huge pretzels and whole chickens all day. Towards the end of the night Jeff, Caroline, Stephanie, and I went on some rides (roller coaster, swings, and log rides) which was definitely a highlight of the festival. Then Jeff and I snuck back into the HB tent somehow but could once again not find anyone. Somehow we made our way back to the campground later that night. As we arrived we found that Ryan and Tyler's tent burnt down because supposedly someone flicked a cigarette on it. Luckily no one was in it or hurt. We partied at the campground until 4 a.m. We were once again woken up around 8 am and made our way to the festival again, this time visiting Hippodrome. A more relaxed and low key tent. The girls ate some German food and some of the boys had beers. Before we knew it we had to rush back to the campground to catch of 12:30 p.m. bus home. The bus ride was long and boring but ended up being an amazing ride because we passed through the ALPS which are just a huge amazing range of mountains. We stopped at a local truck stop to get dinner around 8 p.m. and I had a terrible dinner. It was super super expensive but I was starving so we all ate a bunch of stuff. Finally after 12 hours of hell on a bus that smelt terrible since no one showered all weekend. We got dropped off at the Trestevere train station and of course we were all out of money so we walked home and did not cab it.

There are so many crazy stories from this past weekend that I wasn't able to put into words. I will explain to you all in person when I get home!

Oktoberfest 2010 will never be forgotten. I am so happy with the friends I have made here in Rome and I am sure there will be plenty more to come. I definitely wish some of my family and friends from the states were with me this weekend. One day we will all go back together. I also got a little homesick recently, but realized before I know it I will be in the States back with everyone missing my tiny apartment in the center of ROMA.

Be safe, arrividirchi.

Kev