ive started to think about what its like to become intimately familiar with a city that is not "your own"... its not your home, its not even in your country... but for some reason you get to know it very well, and you love it for some reasons and hate it for others... but it could almost be home because you begin to know it like the back of your hand... strange... me and mike were running today and we were looking around (as usual because theres just so much to see) and we saw a pretty high brick wall and mike speculated out loud that it might be part of some old wall circuit... for those of you who have not become intimately familiar with rome, "wall circuits" is the lame-o historical/architectural term for the GIANT THICK VERY TALL BRICK walls put up around the city at different times in its history, and if you walk around you tend to run into still standing chunks of the wall pretty much everywhere around the city... interesting huh? and then i started to think about the 50 or so buildings in rome that i know all the details of... all the w's (who, what, when, where, why)... i could identify about a dozen palazzos, a bunch of villas, a whole bunch of churches... i cant do that at home... which is a little bit strange for me to think about... like why dont i know my own home the way that i know a place that ive been living in for under 3 months? probably because i wasnt required to take extensive history classes on the art and architecture of staten island... but honestly, a lot of this stuff i might have figured out anyway... its very strange
in other news, the prepaid phone company here (TIM) is getting on my nerves today... last week i went to the TIM store and paid them 20 euro (no small sum of money) to put some minutes on my phone... now i dont use my phone much, but when i use it its usually with a phone card to call my parents... so when i put the minutes on my phone and then tried to call my parents with the phone card, i assumed that the reason i got some random message in italian about having no credit was because my phone card was out of minutes... it wasnt until yesterday that i tried calling locally and realized that no, its not my phone card thats out of minute, its my TIM card and now i have to go back to the TIM store and harass them so i can get my minutes! the crazy part of this story is that while i was in the shower today thinking about what i was going to say to the idiots at the phone store, i started planning out what i would say in italian... like completely in italian... starting with "ho un problemo" and continuing along telling them that "non ho usato minuti, ma il mio telephono non ha minuti... ma ho pagato venti euro per minuti la scorsa settimana!" ... all said in a very angry italian voice... for those of you who dont speak italian... that means "i have a problem"... "i havent used minutes, but my phone does not have minutes, but i paid you 20 euro for minutes last week!" hahaha... im out of control... who am i going to speak italian gibberish to when i get home?
this week has been long and pretty much horrendous... to celebrate the end of a bad week and a beautiful fall day, me and mike took a walk yesterday... we picked him out some new sneakers (you'll have to see it to believe it im sure) and then got some pizza foldy thing and ate by the spanish steps (i dont know what i ate but i assure you it was delicious) and then we walked to the villa borghese park... which is the HUGE park that at one time was the private gardens of a villa just outside the walls of rome... and its absolutely gorgeous... theres trees and green grass and fountains everywhere you turn... so we'll have to go back another time to really enjoy it fully... then i went back to the apartment and made some baked ziti (mmmmm) and meatballs... delicious... which i plan to have for lunch in a little bit when i return to the apartment to do some work... im pretty excited about that... all in all, yesterday was a pretty good end to not such a good week... and that made me happy... this morning me and mike ran, which made this weekend even better, but now ive got some work to do because my professor is crazy and we're writing a book about baroque architecture and scripting... so if youve got any thoughts on that topic, let me know and maybe you can get in on the book too... pretty sweet huh?
i'll conclude with a pic of the view out my apartment window...
thats the market that sets up every morning in campo dei fiori, literally at the crack of dawn... and sells everything including but not limited to: FLOWERS, kitchen supplies, souveneirs, knockoff prada bags, fruit, veggies, fish, spices... the list goes on and on... its pretty intense... so i see this every day, and this is where i buy some, but not all, of my food... mmm fresh!
No comments:
Post a Comment