After Donatella walked in on me shirtless, I got dressed and Owen and I walked 45 minutes to the train station. I’m glad that we’re both motivated (and by motivated I do mean poor) enough to want to walk places instead of taking the buses or a taxi. In a lot of cases buses take as long as walking. I walked for an hour yesterday to get new sneakers. Before I left I checked google maps to see how long a bus ride to the same place would take and it said 56 minutes.

Both sections of our Art History class were there so we had to wait for 40 kids to dribble into the station. I really like our professor. He has a very dry sense of humor and I think he likes me and Owen the best. We joked around while we were waiting for our train to show up. The train ride might’ve been my favorite part of the whole day. The countryside of Italy is beautiful. Owen and I took turns telling stories and laughing for the first half of the ride and then settled down to listen to music and look out the window for the second half.

I don’t love the other people in my program. They spent the majority of the day complaining. Our professor has a rule that you can take pictures before and after he’s talking, but please not while he’s actually lecturing about something. Which seems to make sense, but the people in my group reacted like he’d asked them to cut off one of their hands. At the end of the day, our professor took us into one final church for about ten minutes and I overheard one of the girls behind me say “this is my worst nightmare”. In my worst nightmare Lord Voldemort was chasing me around a ceiling fan, but whatever, I guess, to each her own.

Our trip started in the Palazzo Massimo, a museum of ancient art. My favorite sculpture was a bronze statue called “the boxer”. Contrasting to the other sculptures which showed athletes and gods in various poses of glory. The Boxer was exhausted, having just finished a fight. I loved the emotion and the fatigue. Stupidly, I didn’t take a picture of that so here’s a picture of one of the most famous pieces in the museum instead.

“Discobolus”

We spent about 3 hours in the first museum, which went quite a bit over both my museum and my social quota for the day. Knowing that we had about five more hours of the same thing that afternoon, Owen and I set off to get drunk. We walked into a restaurant and bought pizzas and ordered two of the cheapest drinks on the menu – shots of Jagermeister. Unfortunately, and also hilariously, our professor and two TA’s walked in just as the waitress was delivering them and sat down at the table just behind us. “Cheers!” she said, as Owen and I cringed behind the pepper grinder.

Of course, we weren’t so ashamed that we didn’t order two more shots later on. After that I had a really great time. We went to four more churches, the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore, the Church of San Pietro in Vincoli, the Santa Maria della Vittoria and the Church of Santa Maria degli Angeli.

Church of Santa Maria Maggiore (I think)

To use the phrase we’ve coined, Owen and I got Duomo’d by the Colosseum. For those of you who haven’t read past posts, or didn’t understand my initial description of the “verb” to get Duomo’d by a building is to have it come looming out of nowhere in such an obvious fashion that it leaves you feeling both startled and pretty stupid. It’s the equivalent of a building shark attack. Owen and I were walking down the street looking to the right (because I was like “I think the professor said the Colosseum was over there” and Owen replied, “that seems right”) and then I glanced to the left and there it was, in full view and about thirty feet away.

Owen and I have a running joke that, to everyone else, makes us seem absolutely stupid. We point at something, usually a lamp post or something along those lines and ask, “do you think that’s the David” to which the other replies “almost definitely”.

We did that with the Church of Santa Maria. Owen pointed to it and asked, “Do you think that’s the Colosseum?” And I said, “Yeah, or the Parthenon. I think that’s in this area”. Causing half the class to look at us in abject horror. Only the teacher smiled.

“We should really stop talking in front of other people,” I said, when everyone had looked away again.

“Yeah,” Owen agreed.