I am a horrible blogger.
Actually, I'm a great blogger, I'm just a horrible updater.  I always have been.  I've started about twenty journals from the time I was in middle school, and I never keep any of them longer than a few months.  I feel like this needs to change:  My life has taken a turn that I never would have guessed in middle school, and what I'm doing now is more important than anything I've done in the past.  I feel like it needs to be documented.  Therefore, I apologize for the extended period of time that I have been awol since Santa Fe.
I have to start, but where?  I suppose the most logical place is at the beginning... I've never had a whole lot of faith in beginnings though, only because beginnings surely lead to ends.  Maybe my life will be cyclical - a constant journey.  I have always felt that I am constantly in transit... and I plan to continue to attraversiamo - or cross the road, which brings me to my next point.
I have been living in Rome, Italy since for three weeks now.

For a week before I came to Italy, I went back to Chicago to say hello and goodbye, and to feel what I always feel in that city again, so it's fresh in my mind, in the hope that I won't forget that feeling even though I am in Italy until December.  Chicago was an adventure in itself.  I went wild, and wild details don't belong on the internet.  I assure you, it's not as crazy as you'd think, but we're young, we're invincible, and we make our own rules these days.  Miss Ashley McSwain, one of my closest friends from home came with me, to spend a few more days with me before our year apart.   Days were over so fast, but nights seemed to last forever.  I guess that's how it is when sleep isn't a priority.

On the plane on the way to Roma!

On the 25th of August, 172 students from Loyola University, including myself and several of my close friends boarded an Alitalia airline bound for Rome.  You would think that nine hours would fly by, but when you're suspended 30,000 feet in the air above the ocean, can't sleep, and have no other choice but to watch an Italian film about a small boy that sees ghosts of his grandparents, the minutes seem like ages on their own.  It was a strange sensation.  When we took off, every nerve in me was alive with some sort of mix between dread and thrill (a very fine line).   That feeling slowly dulled, and exhaustion took over. Yet, as soon as I saw the Alps, there it was again.
When we landed in Rome, I realized how different it would be.  There are no words for how foreign a place can feel when you don't know anything about it.
When we first got here, there was so much paperwork - we have to jump through a bunch of hoops to stay in the country, which I understand - it's just a pain sometimes.  Since then, we've seen so many amazing things; I'd do anything to stay here in Italy.
 The first weekend we were here in Italy, the school had an orientation trip. We went to Assisi, Ravenna, and a small country called San Marino.  We got on the bus really early the first morning, and it was freezing the whole way.  Each bus full of students had one or two teachers or SLA's on the bus to help explain all of the history and rules and things.  On our bus, we had Mike Beazely and Alexander Evers (AKA the Dutch wonder).  Needless to say, it was the best bus.  I haven't laughed so much in a long time.

Santa Maria degli Angeli

After a few hours of traveling, we could finally see Assisi gleaming on the side of the mountain.  We stopped at the bottom, at a church called Santa Maria degli Angeli (Santa Maria of the Angels).  St. Francis built a small, very humble chapel there when he was alive.  Now, his tiny stone church is preserved and engulfed by a huge basilica.  The contrast is amazing, but not what he would have wanted I think.   He built the chapel in the place where he first heard the voice of God that led him to begin the Franciscan movement, which stresses poverty and humility above all things. There, in that place, there are roses - but these roses only grow here.  This is the only place on earth that they have ever and will ever be.  The myth states that when he decided to renounce his previous way of life, Saint Francis (or San Francesco as the Italians call him) rolled in the brambles in the garden.  Where his blood fell, dog roses grew, and have grown ever since.
We had a quick sack lunch in front of the church, and then got back on the bus, which took us up the mountain to Assisi.

Assisi.  Oh my goodness.  What a wonderful place!  It's literally built into the mountain, with roads going every which way, and alleys and niches everywhere you look.  Not creepy alleys like in America, but alleys that lead out to terraces with amazing views out over Perugia.  The air was so clean and so cool and pure. It was beautiful. The city is based around two main churches - the Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi and Santa Chiara (Saint Clare).  The basilica was the first place we visited.  It is built in two styles - the bottom level is very romanesque, while the upper church is gothic.  Underneath the romanesque level is the tomb of St. Francis.  That was the first time I had seen the remains of a saint.  It didn't feel much different -  think there was a disconnect with it.  He is buried in a gilded coffin, elaborately decorated with gold detail.  It's hard to imagine the remains of someone so pious and humble in such a splendid place.

The romanesque part of the church overwhelmed me.  It was so beautiful.  The ceilings were completely painted, and there were mosaics everywhere.  Compared to the stark outside of the basilica, the interior is an explosion of color and wonder - the ceiling in the entrance beneath the lower rose window is decorated with a repeating pattern of stars in the heavens.  I feel that if churches looked this way in America, more people would be drawn to them.    This level is also completely silent.  At one point, there was too much noise from people shuffling their feet and one of the guards came on the loudspeaker, yelling, in stern and traditional Italian, "Silenzio!"

The upper level of the church, done in gothic style, didn't seem as magnificent to me, but that's only my opinion.   The ceilings were painted here too, but in a different way, a harder way to describe - less whimsical and more alpha-Catholicism style.  If I had to pick one word to describe the church, I think I'd pick 'tall.'  Something about it just rubbed me in a way that wasn't quite right.  The colors, or the paint, or all of the gold - I don't know, it just all seemed too gaudy.  The view from this church, however, was amazing.

After the tour, we were free to explore on our own.  Assisi is so... whimsical.  Everyone is in a frenzy in the maze of streets.  Everywhere you look, there's something to see, whether its a view, or a shop, or a restaurant.
The town was so quaint.  I can't imagine anything bad ever happening there.  I think crime is nonexistent.   I've never felt so safe before in my life in a place that I had never been.  I"m trying to find the words to describe it.  Everything is simply beautiful.

At the very top of the town of Assisi is the Church of Santa Chiara.  The church used to be richly decorated, as it is the final resting place of St. Clare.  However, during the black plague, the building was used as a hospital.  When it was over, the walls were washed clean to get rid of the sickness.  Now, the church is a stark, white ghost of what it used to be, but as tragedy has its own beauty, so does simplicity.

I think nature also goes hand in hand with simplicity, and the views from the front of this church are the best in Assisi.  I hope my pictures begin to capture the whole atmosphere.  I've been taking alot of mental pictures of the places we've been because they're not just beautiful aesthetically.  Each place has an energy that is unique and intoxicating.  Each has its own characteristics.  I always tell people I have a problem.  I fall in love with places.  I can love places so easily because they aren't afraid to be exactly what they are.  They know they're beautiful even though they're not like any other place.  They don't feel pressure to be like any other place.  They live and breathe their entire self.  Some of them seem to even have souls that give them life.

On the way back down the mountain to our bus, Sarah and I made several stops.  We shopped for postcards, looked in the shops for trinkets and at beautiful pottery, and, of course, found ourselves at a cafe.  It was called Gran Cafe, and the pastries, like everything else in the town, were absolutely beautiful.  We split one, but left quickly because the lady who owned it seemed to be annoyed by the fact that we're American.  Better to not split hairs in a place as peaceful as Assisi.
We left Assisi in the freezing bus with the Dutch wonder and drove through the beautiful Italian countryside for five hours.  It really does look just like a calendar, or a picture from a magazine.  My soul feels so full these days.  There's so much beauty, so much to wonder at, so much culture, so much history.  It feels like a gap inside me is filled... a gap that I used to fill with other things that weren't so good for me.  I can't explain what it feels like to have a full soul.  It's like... I finally don't have to go inside myself anymore - It's no longer a scary place because there's finally enough to look at when you get there.  Maybe it's because I feel like I have questions again; like there's still mystery in the world that I thought was gone.  There's still things buried under our feet that no one has seen for a long time.
We got into Ravenna late that night.  I was disappointed.  We were staying at the Holiday Inn outside of town.  I had such high expectations for Ravenna, and the area we were staying in... wasn't anything like the pictures I had seen in my art history book.  I had memorized so many sights there.  I couldn't wait to see the mosaics.  Here I was, nervous in the pit of my stomach like I was about to go into surgery, all because I thought we wouldn't see any art in Ravenna.

I did see art in Ravenna, starting the next morning.  Sarah and I got off the bus and made it to the first church with our group.  San Appolinare Nuovo is quite simple from the outside, but elaborate on the inside (which seems to be a theme so far).  Because I would, I was so busy taking pictures of the mosaics that I was completely distracted. We turned around, and our group was gone.  They weren't just gone. They were gone gone.  We went and looked both ways down the street and walked several minutes in each direction.  I thought, "Cool.  We're lost in Ravenna, in the middle of Italy.  I don't speak Italian.  All I have is my camera." And then I thought, "This is perfect.  It's exactly what I wanted."

Coins in the Font in the Baptistry

The Mosaics at the Basilica of San Vitale

Unfortunately, we figured the most responsible thing to do, seeing as our parents generously paid for this trip, would be to join the next tour group when they came around, which happened to be conveniently soon.  After we latched on, we visited Dante's grave. Then, it was time for what I had been waiting for for over a year: the Basilica of San Vitale.  I fell in love with this church through pictures.  I read books.  I googled it.  I took in everything I could.  And now, here I was, walking towards it.  Are you ever afraid to see something you've wanted to see for a long time?  Do you ever think, "what if I don't like it after all this time?"  What if I liked it better from the pictures than I would in real life?  I decided that was near impossible.  After a brief stop at a beautiful baptistry, we made it.  San Vitale exceeded my expectations in every way, shape, and form that it possibly could.

The Clerestory at San Vitale

This was probably the first time in my life that the aesthetics of a church have struck me to my knees.   This kind of thing makes all the power we felt as children in mass seem real.   I found myself suddenly humbled, a small child, afraid of the power of God.  When you can feel divinity ring through your mind, fall through your heart, and spiral downward to your fingertips because of the art...

Galla Placidia from the Doors of San Vitale

A short way from the basilica is the tomb of Galla Placidia.  This was also in my art history book.  The tomb is beautiful, but very dark, very hot, and very quiet.  Americans don't understand reverence for the dead like the Italians do.  I've been thinking alot, because we're visiting so many churches, about faith.  I decided that I definitely believe in God.  Why else would i feel the fear and the passion that I feel in mass?  But I also think I'm spiritual and not religious.  I don't think belief should be regulated.  All of these rules floating around in the Church don't make any sense.  Is it really what God wants?
We spent one more night in Ravenna - a very strange night as it were.  In fact, I don't want to remember that night in as much detail as I do.  I was so ill, in a sense that I have never been ill before.

The next day we set out for the small country of San Marino.  I loved San Marino.  It is the third smallest country in Europe, behind the Vatican City and Monaco.  It reminded me a little of Genovia from the Princess Diaries book series, only because it's so perfectly clean, safe, and storybook-like.  The main part of the country sits atop a hill, and the main city still has its ancient walls in place.  At the top of the mountain is a castle that looks out over the Adriatic Sea.  Everything inside the walls looks just the same as it did when it was built, but now the windows are filled with designer watches and sunglasses.  We spent the morning in this small country, and ate lunch at an amazing little place called Miramonte.  Course followed course - there were appetizers, red wine, pasta, fish, dessert, espresso... Oh I could live this life.

The bus drivers scratching their heads.

After spending the morning and part of the afternoon there, we got on our way.  We hadn't even made it out of San Marino when one of the buses broke down.  That's what Europe is though - it's everything going wrong and still being completely okay.  We waited around for two hours, and then got on our way again.  Our bus began having trouble too.  We finally made it back to the John Felice Rome Center around midnight.   It was the perfect beginning to a perfectly imperfect European experience.