today was just as tiring as yesterday, but for an infinitely better reason; that reason being I am tired because I spend the day walking around Rome! I got to learn all about how the metro works and take awesome pictures of old buildings, see some sights and explore the city on "my own." I put my own in quotation marks because we are not allowed to ever be in less than groups of 3, but we definitely weren't with Professor Stanford.ha! I laugh because I realize now that I am not entirely converted to recording everything on camera. I suppose going through the 120 pictures I took today I could have realized that already since I didn't take pictures of a whole lot more than I did take pictures of things. However, thinking

about what I started my day with, which was namely buying food for breakfast, I didn't take a single picture of the store or what it looks like on the inside or anything. I suppose this is a good thing, since it means I would blend in more as a person and not be a glaringly obvious tourist. However, there is something to be said about being a glaringly obvious tourist at times: they at least know ahead of time that you won't be able to communicate that well. but I digress. so we went to the grocery store this morning to get fruit and perhaps even lunch supplies, since no one could remember if we were on our own for that or not. The supermarkets here are a little bit different than the ones back in the States because here, you have to weigh the fruit and get a barcode before you get up to the front check out stand. But what seems as simple as putting fruit on a scale and pressing a button to get a barcode really is that: putting fruit on a scale and printing up a barcode. the only hard part is figuring out what the right number to press is. there were buttons 1-50 or so on the scale, but no words. I finally realized they tell you the numbers on the signs also stating how much per kg, but it took me a while. and it took my apartment mates

even longer, but at least we all got it figured out in the end.

we then took the metro to go see the trevi fountain! I did a report on that during winter semester, so I was

especially excited to see it. plus the tradition that if you throw a coin in the fountain you will return to Rome. Definitely was going to do that one! As Professor Stanford explained, the metros don't go under the heart of Rome because they didn't want to destroy it and all the history that is under the current buildings, so we had to get off and walk a little. We g

ot to see a few other fountains while we were walking by and I'm sure everyone else in the group went a little camera crazy. that's why I'm not so nervous that I missed something important. I can just steal a copy of the best picture I want. :P

We also went to see the Pantheon after the Trevi Fountain. I had always thought it was kinda cool, but I didn't ever really think about it much before. that

thing is colossal! You can definitely see the dome above most other features of the city (I did get high enough to notice that) and it is supposed to be a perfect sphere. The hole in the hop is always open, rain or shine. But it doesn't matter if it rains, because they have a great water diversion system. I didn't get to see it in action, but that also meant I didn't have to walk in the rain. I think it was a good compromise.

The last thing we all saw as a group was the Spanish Stairs. I didn't really know anything about them, but evidently they were in

the Lizzie McGuire Movie: she does a cartwheel on them. therefore one of the girls in our group was told by one of her friends that she had to do a cartwheel as well. she did, and it was pretty awesome. After looking at that for a little while Dr. Stanford finally let us free: but not before warning us again that we needed to be in groups of at least 3, no matter what we were doing.

We decided to go get lunch all together. It wasn't so much a decision as lemmings following some undesignated leader. The half I was with didn't even know if we wanted to go in with them, so we played rock, paper, scissors to decide if we would follow or not. the one for going in won, so we all ate together. Americans are NOISY! We definitely had a room to ourselves in the restaurant, and I think its because they didn't want to put any other customers through dealing with us. but it was fun. and then we started to drift apart, which is what I always knew would happen, but Dr. Stanford wasn't so sure about.

I stayed with the group that wanted to walk around more because, lets face it, how often do you get an afternoon to yourself to walk around Rome and just see sights? and sights we did see. We saw about 5 churches on one street, and we of course had to go into all of them. We saw a gorgeous, open area with a few fountains in it that at least I, as the dork I

truly am, tried to figure out who the statues were of. one was Athena, and the other, without much studying of it, was Poseidon. We saw a seriously busy road and contemplated jaywalking across it, but were deterred by the barrier in between the two ways of traffic. We got lost and found within a half hour (maps can help, but only if you know where you are...) stopped at an open air book store and nearly bought some awesome old italian books (I really would have if I had found anything worth reading once I know Italian better) and walked all the way from the heart of Rome to our apartment on the outskirts (kind of) instead of using the Metro and making our lives easier :P

All in all a good day. I just need to get a band aid on a blister and give my feet a rest because I'll be walking lots tomorrow: Colosseum, Forum, and then whatever else I want to see. I suppose I should try to figure that part out. But all I know is I need to bring a map, because otherwise I would be lost in Rome with no way of contacting anyone who could help me and no way to easily get home. that's what saved us in the end. a good map and a better map reader.