A Tour of the Academy

Soon I'll do a post about my apartment and neighborhood, but for now, this one is going to be about life at the Academy, where I'm spending more of my time right now anyway.

The grounds, both front and back are seriously beautiful. Extensively manicured, of course, but the variety of plants is pleasing, too. There's an olive grove in the back where the flock of green parrots live,



And there's also a decently sized kitchen garden with, among other things, an entire bed of basil. They're also growing zucchini, tomatoes, peppers, onions, and a lot more that I couldn't identify on sight. Green beans, probably, since we've been eating them at about 4 of 5 meals. There's also a bunch of fruit trees (including at least one fig tree) which aren't bearing now, but presumably will be soon.



The front of the academy has a large metal gate - if you want to come in, you have to check in with the portiere and be on a list of people to be admitted. Once you get inside, there's a large round fountain, which the Fellows (people who have been given an award to live hear all year and do research) were taking a dip in yesterday afternoon. I imagine that this is the only fountain in the city of Rome which you can swim with relative impunity.



The Academy actually has quite a large collection of epigraphical fragments and parts of statues, which are set up in various places as decoration. They were all probably acquired long ago when you could just pick up interesting fragments and cart them off, but those days are long over of course. The courtyard is lined with them on all 4 walls, and the white of the fragments makes a nice contrast against the orange stucco, especially with the green of the ivy and cypress trees in the middle. There's another fountain in the center of the cortile which adds the bubble and splash of running water to the atmosphere.



We eat our fabulous meals at long tables in the courtyard (or cortile), which is pleasantly shaded and nicely breezy. That's actually were I'm sitting right now.



So it's really a pretty fabulous place to hang around. There's also the library, of course, and many rooms where people stay. I might get some pictures of those later, but right now you've just seen where I'm spending a lot of my time.

Still here, just busy

Sorry for the hiatus - had a very long and very busy couple of days, and no internet access over the weekend. Wednesday was a tough one, during which I was feeling quite overworked and underappreciated, but it's all better now. Things haven't exactly gotten less busy, but many people have let me know in one way or another that they've noticed how hard I've been working. Eve bought me dinner the other night, for example. And I got to know some of the grad students on the Archeology program, which gave me people to talk to that I could relax a bit around. Unfortunately they all left today to go to their digs (at Pompeii and Ravenna).

Thursday and Friday were really long days - I left my house by 8, and got back after 11:00 both days. Thursday Eve and Dr. Leach and I did two museums, the Palazzo Massimo and the Centrale Montemartini, in prep work for the field trip this coming week. On Friday, we went to Ostia, which used to be Rome's major port city (pictures coming soon). There we visited a real live dig in progress with the Archeology program, which was pretty cool. They literally just started the dig last week, so they hadn't uncovered much besides mosaic tesserae and a single illegible coin, but the woman has been working on getting to this point for years. It was way out in the countryside, too, outside the excavated part of town, and it was startling to realize just how much hasn't been uncovered.

The program participants have started to arrive today, so soon we'll be right into the swing of things. I've still got some reading to do, but for now, I'm sitting in the cortile keeping watch for more of our people.

Adventures in my Italian kitchen

Uh, that was interesting... I made a bit of salad with lemon juice and olive oil, and then was planning on making pasta with a garlic and tomato sauce. Simple, right? I get the garlic chopped and the water boiling, and realize that I'm missing more supplies than I thought. First, the only utensils are tableware. Fine, I think, I'll just use a normal spoon and be careful to not let the plastic handles melt. Next I realize there's no colander. Okay, well, I'll just pour out the water with a fork held against the lip, that will work. Then, ouch, there's no potholders, and these handles get hot, but if I wrap them up in paper towels, I should be able to touch them for short periods. The absolute kicker? That can opener I was so relieved to see? Didn't work. After some serious effort, I managed to punch two holes on opposite sides of the top of the can, and I poured as much juice as I could into the garlic, but none of the actual tomatoes. I finally ended up with a really thin sauce, but it was passably tasty, and I have some leftovers for tomorrow.

Oh, and that salt? I missed the fact that the box was labeled "grande," which seems to mean that the crystals are somewhere between kosher and rock salt in size. Fine for salting the pasta water, but not too good on salad. So I might end up with another box. Rats.

Holy crap, there must be some kind of soccer match on or something - the city just erupted in cheers and car horns, and I can't think of much else that would provoke such a widespread reaction. Dan? Leave me a comment and tell me what happened. ;)

Settling in...

No pictures this time. Dr. Leach, Eve, and I had some meetings today and got introduced to the library. I still have almost no idea what I'm supposed to be doing, other than the one task of collecting all the readings for the seminar and putting them on the reserve shelf. Oh well, I'll figure it out.

Today was a shopping day, which came with a bit of sticker shock. Dr. Leach showed me the hardware store near the Academy, where I bought a knife, toilet paper, a night light, a corkscrew, and a Vape ("VA-pay"). The last object is something that would probably make the FDA throw up their hands in horror, but I am very glad to have it. It's a plug in diffuser with some kind of mosquito-killing and repelling ingredient little cards which heat up and vaporize while the thing is plugged in. While it smells a bit odd, it's much better than going to bed with bugspray on. I got 4 mosquito bites within my first 10 minutes back in the apartment, but none since I plugged it in!

I also went to another grocery store to get some salt (which I forgot last time) and walked out with a bunch of other stuff: yogurt, bread, butter, some lettuce, some plums, a little thing of milk, a package of apricot filled pastries for breakfast, a little bit of smoked mozzarella, and a big bottle of water to keep in the fridge and refill.

So all in all, that cost me about 25 Euros, 5 more than my budget for the day. But some of the stuff I've bought in the past two days, I won't have to buy again before I leave (the olive oil, the nightlight) and some will last several days at least (the juice, the salad).

Now I am going to attempt to cook my own dinner...

I'm online!

As you can see, I've now got my computer set up so that I can do the internet at the Academy. Yay! You would be amazed at how out of touch I have felt these last few days. So check frequently for new posts and new pictures on Flickr!

If you leave me a comment (and email me your address if I don't know it already), I will send you a postcard! I am not above a little bit of bribery in this case. :)

I have yet to get the phone situation sorted out, though that may be on the agenda this evening. I will be able to receive mail at the Academy, care of Dr. Leach, so let me know if you're interested and I will get you the address.

Now, time to check some websites and see what's happened in the world in the past few days.

Pane et circenses

Well, as of this evening, it seems like my days of leisurely exploring Rome are at an end. There was a big reception and dinner tonight at the Academy where I was introduced to tons of people whose names I don't remember but probably should. I take that back, I remember about 4. Not too bad. Tomorrow I have an appointment with Eve to be introduced to the library, after which Eve, Leach, and I will sit down and hash out a game plan of what we're doing this week and beyond. Should be interesting, especially since I have almost no clue, haha. Dinner was fantastic, though. One of the women we sat with said that the head chef used to work at Alice Waters' restaurant in California, which is famous for its focus on local, seasonal eating. We had pasta with a spicy tomato sauce and basil, followed by half a cornish game hen seasoned with lemon and garlic which sat on a bed of arugula, tiny string beans, and paper thin slices of zucchini. Dessert was sliced fresh peaches in a bit of syrup and bits of mint. Oh, and a really nice rose wine. So it was definitely worth 16 Euros - but dang, that's still a lot of money.

So that was the evening. The rest of the day, I did more sightseeing. I walked down into the south part of Trastevere to see a church - S. Cecilia. I wrote a paper on it in one of my Art History seminars, so it was nice to see it in person. The whole story of S. Cecilia is pretty interesting. This is the apse mosaic:

She's on the left, next to Paschal, whose square halo indicates that he was still alive when the church was dedicated.

The church was dedicated by Pope Paschal the 1st in 820, and was the beginning of a series of churches he built. The story goes that St. Cecilia was a young Roman woman who was shut up in the hot room of her own baths to be martyred in 230 AD. When they opened up the room, however, she was still alive, so they called an executioner who tried to cut off her head, but he botched it so badly that she lived for 3 days afterward. Gruesome as usual. Not long after Paschal became Pope, he declared that Cecilia had come to him in a dream and told him where to find her body in the catacombs of St. Calixtus. So he had her dug up and built this church to commemorate her.

What's really interesting to me is that he did almost the same thing (minus the dream) for another young sainted Roman woman, Praxedes (in Italian, S. Prassede), and also dedicated a church to the Virgin, S. Maria in Domnica. These were the only churches he built. At this point in history, Rome and Constantinople were in the midst of a power struggle over which city was the center of Christianity, and I think that Paschal's veneration of specifically Roman saints was a way of claiming the preeminance of Rome. I never did decide in the paper why he specifically chose to venerate women more than previous Popes, but it's definitely an interesting question!

Under the church, there's an excavation of Roman ruins with some interesting inscriptions (mostly Christian) and the remains of a 4th c. AD house, with an altar to Diana inset into the wall.

The rest of the day was spent walking up the Via Giulia, where I found this interesting church - S. Maria dell'Orazione e Morte (Prayer and Death) . This particular offering box outside the door used to contribute money to victims of malaria in Campania, which was a real problem up til fairly recently.

Mosquitoes, I can tell you, are still a problem in Rome, so I can see how malaria would have been an issue. I would really like to have seen the inside, but it was closed.

Oh! And I did go to the grocery store this morning, and picked up pasta, a can of tomatoes, olive oil, bread, orange juice, and a head of garlic. I forgot to get salt, though, so I'll have to go back before I can make dinner. Argh. A weird cultural note about Italy: you aren't allowed to pick your own produce. You tell the proprietor what you want (un aglio e due limoni, for example) and he or she selects them for you. Of course, if you are a fierce Italian granny, it seems this rule does not apply, but I wouldn't want to tangle with one of them either. For garlic it doesn't matter that much, but for fruit it is definitely annoying.

It was a long day, and that reception was a bit stressful, so I am very glad to be home in my little apartment. I'm starting to feel pretty settled in, and am really enjoying having a place to come home to.

I'm Here

I'm here!

This was one of the most uneventful trips overseas ever. The flight was fine, and I even got 2 hours of sleep! I finally got to talking to my neighbors about 2 hours before we landed, and it turns out that the husband was a Rome Prize fellow in 1958! He's a sculptor who works mostly in bronze and marble, so when I get the internet for real, I'm going to google him. He and his wife were on their way to their summer house in Umbria. Sigh. That would be the life... He used to live in a studio one street over from my apartment, and told me about a neighborhood restaurant around the corner which has good, cheap, working-man's food. I'll have to try it out!

My apartment is very nice, and the neighborhood feels very safe. There are lots of little old people wandering around, which is always a good sign. There's a grocery store literally across the street (more on that later) and a pizza-by-the-slice place and a cafe a few steps in the other direction. The only weird thing about the apartment is the things it is missing. Trash bags. Extra toilet paper. A corkscrew, and a knife that's sharper than a butter knife. There is, however, a cutting board. Weird, huh? I'm sure there's other things that I just haven't thought about yet. So at some point soon, I'm going to have to find a store that sells those kinds of things (the grocery store won't - they just do food).

Oh, and the apartment does have air conditioning! I don't need it yet, but that will be really nice in July.

Once I got in, I took a shower and a nap, and then I started walking. I walked most of the afternoon, to the extent that at one point I had to make myself go into S. Maria in Trastevere and just sit and contemplate the mosaics for 20 minutes. Without someone else to make me rest, I sometimes overdo it, especially during the first two days when I'm trying to not give in to jet lag. If I don't have a book, I don't usually like to sit at a cafe table by myself, so when I get hungry and tired I get a slice of pizza to go, which covers my need for food, but not my need for rest. So I made myself sit for a while, which was definitely needed. The apse mosaic of the church is pretty fantastic, too:



The church dates from the 12th century, and was one of the first in Rome dedicated to the Virgin. The central apse mosaic shows Mary sitting at the right hand of Christ with his arm around her, in effect justifying her veneration.

Oh, also: I first walked to the Academy, so that I could get an estimate for the time required. Now, Google Maps tells me that the apartment is .8 miles from the Academy. What it neglects to mention is that about a third of that distance is a very steep hill (maybe 30 degrees?) which is topped by a set of approximately 70 stairs. Ow. My rear end is going to be in fantastic shape by the time I get home! At least at the end of the day, it will all be downhill.

Once I met up with Chelsea, we went to the Gianicolo overlook:



We then wandered down to Trastevere, and had an expensive but delicious glass of fresh squeezed orange juice in Piazza St. Maria in Trastevere. Mostly I think we were paying for the ambiance - a perfect people watching spot. It was a nice way to end the evening. Now I'm back at my apartment, with a slice of pizza topped with squished cherry tomatoes, fresh basil, fresh mozzarella, and some kind of thin-sliced meat (maybe beef?). Hopefully I'll get my computer linked in at the academy tomorrow, where I can actually post this!

Blogging from the airport!

I'm in Newark right now, typing this on a program which will let me upload whenever I get a network connection again. This is partly a test-post, since I'll probably be doing the same thing from my internet-less apartment. My goal is be to write blogs at night, and then upload in the mornings once I get to the Academy.

So far things have been fine. For those of you who I haven't been talking to in person, I have to pay the remainder of my rent for my apartment in cash upon my arrival in Rome. Foolishly, that didn't sink in until, oh, yesterday - way too late to order Euros from the bank. So I ended up getting a bazillionty dollars of traveler's checks yesterday, which I would then have to cash at Fiumicino in one of the exchange kiosks, therefore pretty much guaranteeing myself a gouging in fees and a crappy rate, not to mention doing so in full view of curious cabbies and various riff-raff. But when I arrived at the Indy airport, I realized there was indeed a cash exchange there, and if you exchanged over $500, there was no fee. So I did that instead, though I'm sure the rate was still really bad. Plus, this way I won't have to pocket all that money in front of so many people, which I think is what was really worrying me anyway. I think I may have cleaned him out of Euros, though, haha.

Right now I'm trying to load up a few audiobooks onto my mp3 player to keep me entertained. I'm already halfway thorough one of the books I brought - Skin Tight, by Carl Hiaasen. Pretty dang funny, enough that I'm trying to pace myself through it. But it probably won't last me till dinnertime on the plane. Otherwise, I've got a Games Magazine, my Blue Guide, and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, by Michael Chabon, which will be good, but less easy reading than the Hiaasen, so it might wait til I get to Rome unless I get desperate.

Okay, guess that's it for now. I'm going to get up and stretch my legs!

Sploosh

Despite all the insane news reports, we're high and dry up here. It's kind of surreal to look at the local news and see water 4-6 feet deep in other areas of the county, while here it looks like the aftermath of a normal spring shower, if that.

We were supposed to go to the wedding of the daughter of one of Aaron's co-workers, but decided yesterday to skip it, and it's probably good that we did. They've closed the highway up to Indy, and the counties on either side are even worse than ours, so if we had gone, we might not have been able to make it home!

Unfortunately, we're supposed to get more thunderstorms tonight.

News in Brief

1. We had an insane flash flood downtown yesterday. After it stopped pouring, I walked out of Ballantine on the way to my car...and was confronted by this:

This little stream is normally about 4 feet wide. Dr. Long always called it the "Mighty Mighty Jordan" with more than a tinge of sarcasm, but on this day, the river got the last laugh.

2. I have an apartment in Rome! Sheesh, finally. It's this one: http://www.mercuriusrelocations.com/romanrentals/id115.html . No washer, AC, or internet, and probably it was too much money for having none of those amenities, but it's close, has a great kitchen, lots of light, and a bathtub. And more importantly, it's mine! I was wasting hours every morning perusing Craigslist and hoping that I would have a fantastic offer miraculously materialize in my inbox, but now I can finally focus on tomorrow's exam.

3. Sahara Mart now carries a bar of milk chocolate I can have! It's $5.00 a bar, which seems like a lot, but until Tuesday, I had not had milk chocolate of any kind for over a year. It's made by the same company that makes the dark chocolate bars I can eat, but it's a brand new line. Their dark chocolate is really good, of course, but it's also really intense. Sometimes I just want something light and sweet, although at that price it definitely won't be a weekly indulgence.

4. Special Author exam tomorrow morning. I still won't be done, though - I didn't find an Italian article to review til yesterday, so she told me I could just turn it in early next week. Argh. I really wanted to have this all over with... Aaron made me laugh really hard the other night when he referred to the criteria of "one foreign article" as "Affirmative action for articles."

5. Daffie's getting around easier, Aaron's over his cold...I'm the only one who's still kind of a wreck, but hopefully by tomorrow afternoon, at least part of the stress will be over!

6. My poor lime tree is in recovery. I had been neglecting it before we went to Maine, and when we got home, all the leaves but four were off. I put it outside on the porch where it could get sun, warmth, and lots of rain, and today I noticed that there are tiny leaf buds all over. Yay! I probably will never get as many limes off it as I did last winter, when it lived in the sunroom of our old house, but as long as it's green and smells nice, I will be happy.

Can't we just all sleep til next week?

Boy, we are a mess around these parts.

Daffie is still sore - or maybe even a bit injured - from her week at doggie daycare while we were in Maine. She drags her feet when we walk and practically creeps when going up stairs. We can't really see where she's hurt, even. It might be one of her hips, though she's not obviously favoring one over the rest.

Aaron has a cold and is stuffy and miserable.

And the special author stress is kind of getting to me. I didn't sleep a whole lot last night, and I doubt it will be much better before Friday. I can tell my stress level is high when Aaron beats me to sleep at night, and at this point, he's been doing so reliably for over a week (even before he came down with a cold).

But on the bright side: I just found out that I'll be going to Capri after our jaunt to Pompeii with Dr. Leach and Eve, and there were luscious strawberries at the farmer's market on Saturday:

Anyway, I'm procrastinating. Time for some more caffeine, then it's back to work....