Well,this hasn’t been a terribly exciting week. I’ve mostly been staying on campus, trying to study. Place the emphasis on the trying.

Wednesday was an art and architecture trip to Hadrian’s Villa. I liked it a lot, but I fear I’m not clever enough to say much about it. Its amazingly intact for its age–though, like all old roman buildings, it’s been stripped of all the marble for new buildings… Hadrian’s Villa is big stuff to architects. They’ve been coming to Rome to look at it for centuries. It is one of the earliest examples of non city architecture that’s left in the area. The city is very rigidly constructed (though it may not seem like it at first), but this villa is where Hadrian would go to relax. It makes use of monstrous concrete vaults, like he later used in the Pantheon to create the dome. There are pools of water, streams, fountains, baths. It is spread out over a huge amount of land, and has a seemingly random layout. What’s left of it is only a very small part of what was originally there. There are also endless underground passageways, some lit from above, some not. I’d love to go back with a hard hat and flashlight and climb through them.. Some of them aren’t excavated in their entirety, and lots are closed off. This is similar to what Nero did in his Domus Aurea, of which there is very little left. I hear that whats left is worth seeing, but you have to reserve a spot to get in and they only let a few people in every 15 minutes. It’s underground because the Romans buried it because they hated Nero so much. As a result, there are real humidity problems– bad because of all the paintings that are still down there.

Classes are going okay, Western Theological Tradition bites, but that has something to do with the fact that the professor reads from his notes and doesn’t have anything to say. My Philosophy professor’s theories are far-fetched and he’s condescending on top of that. Dr. Crider, our literature professor, is amazing… Most of what we’re studying is Greek Tragedy, though he opened class with a study of the fall of man in Genesis, the story of Job, and the crucifixion of Jesus in order to start asking questions about why man suffers and dies… Which ties in nicely with Philosophy of Man, and the never-ending stream of Christian martyrs we’re studying in theology.

My Western Civ. professor is fascinating as well. He has a wonderfully European sense of humor, and makes good use of it in class… This is good, because the early greek city-states are less than fascinating to me. Art and Architecture is taught by a Dr. Flusche who lives in the city and knows it like the back of her hand.

Signs for Toy Story 2 are all over the Metro, it apparently opens here 11 Feb. I wonder if watching it in Italian would be fun.

I think I’m going ice skating for the second time in my life tonight… I have no idea where, I guess I’ll find out.

I’m getting to know people, which I guess is good… There are only 112 of us on a very small campus, so its hard not to get to know people.. After we’d been sitting around drinking Chianti for a few hours the other night while avoiding our books and listening to music in the Capp Bar, a game of “hackey sack baseball” broke out and went on for a few hours.. I’d try to explain it, but I don’t think there’s an explanation. It was fun anyway…

Anyway, I’ve been here for almost an hour now, so more next week or so.

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