Americans in Paris Rome

Yay for friends!!! This weekend, one of my very close friends from Baylor, Jennifer joined me in Rome! She's been working this summer as an au pair for an Italian family, so after some planning we got out schedules together so we could "do" Rome. I met her yesterday at the train station and it was just like something out of a movie. I mean slow motion running, bags falling everywhere... I"m pretty sure there was orchestral accompaniment somewhere inteh background.

This morning we hit the road early in an attempt to beat the lines at the Vatican Museum, which we were fairly successful at doing. Here are some of the highlights of our visit with our added commentary: free of charge.

Crappy chariot: we were wondering why no one was in this room and realized the answer when we noticed the only original part of the chariot was the little green around the edge.

Painting titled, "Strange Bird Contemplating Doom of Man," depression, much?

Creepy Pope...

Creepy Pope...

Creepy dead Pope...

But with all of our sightseeing and traveling here and there the best part of the evening by far was after the day was over. We got back to the room having walked straight from 7:00 am to 5:00 pm, straight. (Ok we sat for 30 minutes at dinner). Our entire body ached and we just wanted a bath. We knew that as soon as we sat down we weren't going out for dinner so we made our own Italian dinner and a movie!



We found a website to stream "Roman Holiday," which neither of us had seen before. (Crappy ending, I think, but that's just me). It was fun to sit and point out all the places in the movie we had been earlier that day.

Jennifer's "Italian family" has this for dinner alot of nights apparently: bread,
salami, pecorino cheese, and grapes (the grapes were our addition). And it was fantastic! Tomorrow Jennifer and I go our separate ways. I'm heading to the UK to see England, Ireland, and Scotland, and she's heading back to her "Italian family" for another week. "What about us?... Well, we'll always have Rome."

Southern Hospitality

Where else but in the South could you find a family of strangers willing to pick you up from the airport and house you for three days? Certainly no where about the Mason Dixon line. As exhausting and disappointing as it was for us not to get to Maastricht on Monday, I think many of up feel that it was a blessing in disguise. We learned on Monday morning that we wouldn't be able to get a flight out until Thursday (tom.) afternoon. This brought about the question as to where all of us would go for the next few days. Many of us, if not all dispersed to homes of other students who were from Houston.

I've spent the past three days in The Woodlands with Amy, Amanda, and Brittany, three girls who I didn't know at all. We've watch an untold amount of movies, relaxed in the hot tub, and spent the majority of yesterday at the mall just wandering and looking. I think that we've been able to get to know each other in a way we wouldn't have if we hadn't had this time together. So in essence, I've made friends because of the whateveryoucallit volcano.

With that said, we are scheduled to fly out tomorrow afternoon, and I'm really hoping we make it this time because plans have been made for the first week of traveling. It's time to be in Europe.