the goddess wenus

I feel like it's about time for a new post! Laura is slacking (which is okay since she is 21 now), so I'm gonna try this out.

So much has happened since Laura last wrote, I'm not sure where to begin! Maybe with the day after she stopped...perfecto. Class on Monday was a doozy. Thanks to the bus strike, we walked to class, but since it was on-site it only took us about 15 minutes! We walked around the Forum Romanum and Paletine Hill, which is where Rome was founded. 4 hours in the sun takes a lot out of a person, so we headed back to our flat and rested. That evening, Krista was adventurous and made us pizza out of bread, pasta sauce, and cheese. Delicious. We decided that Monday night would be a prime time to celebrate Laura's 21st birthday since we did not have class the next mornin. This is a picture of us before we left. Note: Laura's curly hair courtesy of roommate Thuy and makeup thanks to Krista M. Kurz.

We started the celebration at 11 p.m. at Campo di Fiori. We invited everyone from API, and a good amount ended up coming! We had an absolute blast with a lot of laughs and many memorable moments. And as of 12:00 a.m. on Tuesday morning - Laura is 21!!! It's about time. Laura met some very nice Italian boys that taught her how to say "break a leg" and "happy birthday" in Italian. One of them was going to New York to study theater, so they bonded over that. Later that night, a random guy bought Laura a dozen roses which are now dead on our kitchen table. Adorable.

Tuesday morning (Laura's bday) we woke up semi-early to go to the Capuchin Crypt with some folks from API. It was a very eerie experience! It's a crypt located below a church that is the resting place of over 4,000 Capuchin monks from the 1500-1800s. The walls and ceilings were decorated with their bones. So there you go. Afterwards we all went to a nearby outdoor cafe for iced cappuccino. We were having a nice, peaceful cup o' joe when we started hearing chanting accompanied by whistles and megaphones. Apparently, an Indian company was about to close and was going to put 1,500 people out of jobs, so these kind folk were protesting and getting the word out. Exciting stuff. I tried to post a video...I guess we'll see if it works.

Tuesday evening, Laura, Krista, Shannon, Meredith and I went to the Trastevere area and ate at an outdoor pizzeria. It was a tasty treat. We then walked to JCU where we had wine tasting! It started off with an informational class about wines (snooze fest) and after they walked us up to the upper terrace of JCU where the fun was had. We started off with smelling and sipping 3 variations of white wine. This was then followed by 3 types of red wine and 1 dessert wine to finish it off. It was a merry time.

Wednesday morning we took a quiz during class in shadows of the Arch of Constantine. We then toured the Colosseum with the class and ended at the Imperial Forum. We had a relaxing afternoon and evening full of food and fun. We gathered around my computer that night to watch the Bachelorette finale and were all very pleased with the outcome. We ended the day with card games...my favorite.

Today we toured the Vatican museums. We kept thinking the Sistine Chapel would be "around the next corner" but that didn't happen. With every twist and turn, there was an overwhelming amount of art and history. It was hard to take it all in! We finally ended up in the Sistine Chapel and were in awe of Michelangelo's depictions of Biblical stories all over the walls and ceilings. By the end, our necks were sore and heads were throbbing (at least mine was) from staring at all the ceilings! It was very beautiful though.

We leave for Tuscany tomorrow and are very excited for a relaxing weekend!

We hope you have a great weekend as well. Bye! This is Jenna!

P.S. The title: Our teacher is German with a British accent. Because of this, he pronounces his V's like W's. Examples: wictim, walleys, and wenus. For your viewing pleasure, I have posted a picture of him below.