All Roads Lead to Rome

It has been a long time since I've written on here. My time from then until now can pretty much be summed up by the picture I put at the end of my last entry. Once I returned to Miami from Japan/China, we were inseparable. In fact, we only spent two days apart from each other when I went up to Maryland to celebrate a birthday/baptism. During August, we joined my family at the beach for a week and then hung out at home for about four days afterward. It's great to be in love. I found it hard to pull sacrifice time with her and friends to write on here. But now that I find myself half way around the world again and people have asked me to write, here I am. Evidently, there are a few of you out there who are actually interested in what I'm doing or, at the very least, want to live vicariously through me ;)

There are few places in the world that have the history, grandeur, wealth of information, and emotion that Rome has. At first, people were drawn here to be apart of something bigger than themselves, for protection, or wealth. Then, pilgrims arrived seeking salvation and to show their reverence. Now, tourists arrive to the "theme park of history" where they wait in lines seeking thrills and postcardesque pictures - or at least the ability to go back from where ever they came and say "Yep, I saw that." For architects (referring here mainly to the Western species; for my comments on the East-West divide and the deficiencies on our education, see earlier posts), Rome is our Mecca. Throughout history, we've been coming here to study and learn. Personally, I've been working on getting here since I was eight and first found a book on the Roman Empire. I took Latin in high school because I was still obsessed with the time period and loved the mythology - not to mention that I got to build a model of some building in Rome for every one of my projects. Once I became serious about architecture and started to learn more and more, there was a draw to this place. It has a gravity about it. I visited for about five days while I was studying in Paris and it was wonderful, but it only wet my appetite. It is an honor to be here and to follow in the footsteps of so many greats.

For now, I'll stop with the esoteric considering I know that half of you probably skipped the last half of the previous paragraph anyway . . .

So because I kept meaning to do it while I was in Tokyo, I've taken a series of pictures to show you where I live. My apartment is about two blocks south of the Pantheon; it's an awesome location. My roommate and I share a vestibule with another apartment that has three girls from our program in it. Once in the main door, you turn right to get into our's. A small kitchen is on the left with the bathroom straight ahead. To the right is our main living area. My roommate finds the sofa more comfortable than the beds upstairs in the loft so he sleeps there. There's not much space, but the ceilings are high and the french balconies open up almost the full height providing a ton of light and a great breeze from the courtyard. Unfortunately, they also let in all the noise from all the other apartments and from the courtyard. Sleeping was hard the first couple of nights, but now it's not so bad. We're still getting used to all the different appliances and general way of life, but we're definitely pleased with our temporary home.

I've been here for two weeks now and have seen so much that it would take me forever to name it all. Unfortunately, my digital camera was inoperable for the first week, but I'm sure as I write more I will post random pictures of me in front of all the recognizable places and some a little less identifiable.

My classes are going really well. I'm taking studio, italian, history/theory, and drawing. In studio, we're taking one of Piranesi's original vedutas (view of Rome) and redrawing it orthogonally. It is going to take a lot of time to research, measure, and draw. I was a bit disappointed that we are not doing a design project, but I can see the value in it. Italian has been pretty familiar thanks to my french and latin, but it's also confusing for the same reasons. I actually translate more from french to italian then from english to italian. Our first history/theory class will be this coming Friday before we leave for Naples, Pompeii/Herculaneum, and Paestum on our first program trip (I can't wait!). Drawing is my absolute favorite though. It is so challenging, but I can't wait to see how far I progress while I'm here. I'm kind of annoyed that it has taken me until my next to last semester in my sixth year for someone to actually teach me how to draw and watercolor, but there's no better place to learn than here.

That seems like a pretty good overview for now. I've got to get some work done today before going to watch some football. I'll write more later. The picture below is of a few of us in front of the Spanish Steps during Rome's White Night that occurred last weekend.