I was totally going to write a post yesterday that was going to be a whole lot better than what I can do now in the limited time I have, but I'm going to try to put something up before I forget.

yesterday we went to Ostia. Ostia was the port town of ancient Rome until the river silted up and the coast moved farther out. then it was abandoned and left to ruin. for the most part people didn't really remember it was even there until about the 1930s when huge archaeological work began on it. according to Prof. Stanford they wanted to have the world fair there, but then the world war broke out and the didn't have a world fair at all. but because of all the rediscovering and stabilization it is really a nice place to go and see what a real Roman town could have looked like. The roads are more or less in

tact, there are whole street fronts where, except for the fact that it probably doesn't go as high as it did, and there are no roofs on anything, it looks like how it would have looked back then. I took so many pictures of every thing, and I'm already afraid I'm not sure what I was trying to take a picture of in about half of them. But I'm not going to erase any of them because I'll figure out what I was taking a picture of soon, and then record it to remind myself. Prof. Stanford told us we couldn't climb on or in or around basically any of ruins because....

well I don't really know why. But sometimes in my discoveries I couldn't help but climb up onto a wall to see where I was and where I needed to go. I only ever stood on the ones that had been re-enforced in early excavations, and I figure especially with the re-enforcement the walls had stood there for a long time and were bound to stand there for a while longer. I really felt like I was in a maze for a lot of it, but I didn't mind because every turn brought a new sight and something spectacular to oooh and aaah over. I was so happy my roommate Rachel was with me because she got just as excited, and with two of us we could explore both sides of the streets in the same amount of time and find the best things. We found tunnels underneath buildings, lots of arches still standing, courtyards that still seemed to have statues of gods in them, temples, stairs leading to the upper apartments of buildings, and even the public restroom!

I was so excited to be there and seeing a bunch of the things that I had learned about over the years in latin class. That's probably why I nearly exhausted my battery and took over 200 pictures.

I'm not sure I'm going to have time to put any up this morning, but I'll come back in this afternoon and add some so you get a glimpse at the wonder I was in yesterday. (as you can tell: done)

Today we are going to the Colosseum. I know we were supposed to go on tuesday, but there was a strike and a lot of the monuments and museums were closed. so we had to change our reservation for seeing all the stuff and went on a tour of the churches instead. it was pretty fun, but not nearly as much fun as going to see the Colosseum and Forum and... I never can remember what else today. hopefully my camera will not run out of batteries because I forgot to charge it last night. but I guess you'll find out later today or tomorrow.