08.

If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay home. 

This past week spanning from Monday, March 13th through Friday, March 17th has truly been a week of Italian (and some Irish) culture. I have had the opportunities to experience mass in St. Peter's crypt, learn the ins and outs of Italian wine making and understand the frustrations of public transportation that the Romans face almost on a daily basis. 

SAN PIETRO

CUA Ministry offers a wide variety of different masses and bible studies weekly at the CUA Rome campus. Of course, you can choose to go to as many or as little as you'd like. CUA Rome Ministry also really tries to keep us informed about larger masses going on in Rome and any other special services, such as the different station churches that put on mass every morning during the Lenten season. This is a great way for someone to go to mass every morning while getting to experience a new church. The latest opportunity that they gave to us students was to be able to go to mass in the St. Peter's Crypt. This was a very interesting opportunity for us to go to and it turned out to be a beautiful afternoon where we were able to get a small tour of the crypt, have a mass offered by Father Michael and experience the inside of St. Peter's. As an added bonus, Father Michael even showed us a great shortcut from CUA Rome campus to St. Peter's, which probably saved us about 15 minutes of travel time! 

VINO

There is this nice restaurant in Rome that isn't too far away from Campo di Fiori that goes by the name of Risto Renato e Luisa. Nice, as in the type of place you'd take your family if they were here in Rome visiting you. We learned all about different wine, prosecco and champagne. We also had quite the variety of different appetizers to go along with the wine tasting. It was a great time for our entire class to spend some time together in a non-traditional academic setting, considering we were still learning! Educational topics that were covered included the true wine making process and how it differs from that of prosecco or champagne, how to uncork, how to distinguish the color to a specific category and what foods pair well with different types. We were introduced to a fun game where we were given unknown aromas and had to guess the scent... and luckily my group won the grand prize and were able to take away the most expensive bottle of wine off of the prize table. Whether you're in a larger group looking for a wine tasting or just looking for a really nice dinner, then I would definitely recommend this place. 

ARCHITETTURA ISTRUZIONE.

This week our sketching subject was Villa Giulia. Pope Julius III's villa which is now home to quite an impressive Etruscan museum of art and artifacts. Lots of money was put into this villa and now only the main property is still intact, for the vineyards and path down to the Tiber have been filled with what we know today as the regular streets of Rome. Villa Giulia is still considered to be one of the most delicate examples of Mannerist architecture which played around with visual and spatial norms. This was all made possible with the understanding of the perspective. Therefore, it made sense that our daily sketches revolved around the perspective. We had an hour to sit, sketch and enjoy the beautiful villa and Rome spring weather. 

MEZZI DI TRASPORTO. 

Thankfully, every month we students here at the CUA Rome campus are given monthly transportation passes which allow us to use the tram, metro and buses. I think this is a great way to get students to get fully immersed in the day to day life that people here in Rome experience. However, it is interesting to note that transportation strikes are so incredibly common here and it often causes difficulty for us to get to our off campus classes or anywhere in general. Good thing none of us mind walking an hour or so to class but it just struck me as very interesting. Taxi strikes are just as common as well and you shouldn't find it uncommon if you find yourself at the train station without a taxi in sight. In terms of regular cars... people park anywhere and drive pretty recklessly. You're definitely putting yourself at risk if you attempt to jaywalk because these drivers come out of nowhere. 

GIORNO DI SAN PATRIZIO 

Irish heritage is celebrated pretty decently here in Rome! For Saint Patrick's Day you would see plenty of people spilling out of pubs with Guinness' in their hands. For those who were celebrating and not in a pub, you would find them taking pictures alongside the green Colosseum...