Good Morning Peter!

Despite not wanting my weekend of travels and adventures to end, I started my week bright and early (at 8:45am) in St Peter's Square with my Renaissance and Baroque class. It was supposed to rain all day, especially after the thunder and lightening the night before (which might I add, I have never heard anything quite like it before I was afraid the building would topple over since it shook with every blast of thunder), but luckily the rain held off during our 3 hour class period. We waited in the security line and made our way into the church. I had no idea what to expect, and Daaaria (our professor, a Borghese if you've heard of them.) had given us a pretty good run down before, but it was huge and gorgeous inside. Tourists had traveled from all over to wander through looking at the statues, amazing ceiling art, and history that lay under the dome Michelangelo had designed. Not to mention the Swiss guards weren't too shabby to look at. Our professor said that they didn't pick Italian military men because they knew that if people slipped them enough money they could easily be swayed to break the rules and that the Swiss army has very specific look requirements for their soldiers. They need to be a certain height, no glasses, etc. Gabby and I were happy to hear about and see a few of them.
The rest of the day was pretty uneventful. We finally tried this sandwich shop near school because we were out of groceries and couldn't make our own lunches and the sandwich shop was extremely good. I had a spicy salami, ricotta and pesto sandwich. Noms I tell you. Classes were the same, youtube videos of Jersey Shore in Media and Gender and learning a new verb tense in Italian, but I got my quiz back (the one I complained about because the teacher called it a quiz but it was like 6 pages long with a short essay and listening section) and I guess I shouldn't have complained so much because I got an A-! Woohoo! Starting the semester strong (I know, it's almost midterms/AU is in the middle of midterms, but we don't have many assignments here). Next assignments are an Art History paper due Monday, which I'm doing on Raphael's Triumph of Galatea and then a critical response on The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone by Tennessee Williams, which I'm ready for Writing Rome. Off to actually read some of the novella before I have to venture to school in the rain. HAPPY MARCH!