With love, from Rome.

Nearly the entire pinky toe of my right foot is a blister. I'm pretty okay with the hard work I did in Rome.

Rome is INCROYABLE! It is quite possibly the best city I will ever visit. I had been wanting to visit for as long as I can remember, but never thought it would be possible. This weekend was the best I've ever had! My program director, we call him Doc E, was hoping I'd appreciate Paris so much more after returning from Italy, but so far this hasn't been the case. I did miss the Paris metro system those three days in Italy. Italy needs a major improvement and Provo just plain needs a metro system.

Thanks to my one hundred or so art and humanities classes, I know quite a bit about the history and many of the monuments/works of art and when I got there--all this stuff I have studied in text book after text book was just...hanging out. I walked out of the metro and there was the Colosseum. THE Colosseum! We walked a couple and blocks and saw Trajan's Column. I've studied it a million times, but never really thought about how wide it was. It was gigantic. A few more blocks lead to Gelato, fruit, the Pantheon, and then Trevi Fountain.

Oh hi Colosseum, it is so nice to meet you. Finally.

(Pictures courtesy of Constantine/Olivia)

Our second day we spent nearly the entire day at the Vatican.  Didn't know that was even possible. This was the second best I've had since arriving in Europe. The surprises just kept coming. I saw things I didn't even know where in Italy. Among them, my favorite works Laocoon and Bernini's Ecstasy of Saint Theresa. I just stood and looked at Laocoon for at least 10 minutes--and then had to go back through the museum to see it again. It is incredible. The Ecstasy was less impressive than I was expecting, but still beautiful. I've written papers on both these works and never imagined I'd get to study them in person. I still can't believe I've been steps away from both. On top of those two breathtaking works, I saw Michelangelo's Pieta. I real statue!!

And to make it even better I saw 4 more Bernini's at Galleria Borghese on our last day. Three of them where amazing, the other...not my favorite, but undeniably Bernini. The way he sculpts flesh...it's more realistic than any other artist I've seen. The way Hades' fingers dig into Persephone's thigh, I was staring at it, knowing full well that it was stone, and was still having a hard time believing it wasn't real skin. I have never seen anything look more realistic and natural.

I know I've said this about a hundred times so far, but I still can't believe I shared the same space as these works! I was right there. Next to them. Within inches in some cases. It's crazy.

It's crazy to think that people live there, walk past these incredible works every day, and don't ever realize how lucky they are.



The only thing that could have made it better was if Ryan was there with me.

I decided to put on a special crown just for my visit to this Holy City. I think it's rather fitting.

Model of/Model for.....right Doc H?

Doc H taught us all about his (and my) favorite building on campus--the JFSB. It was designed after this plaza/square (which is actually a circle) in Rome. We pretended to walk about and contemplate our lives--both within our university and our future lives after we leave. What we were really doing was arguing about the lecture Doc H gave us about this place and missing him a lot. I think we all wished that we had been able to experience this place with him. It was great but could have been a MILLION times better. We definitely miss our teacher...a lot.