Facciamo alla Romana!

Buon weekend!  I hope you all had a fabulous thanksgiving full of family, friends & foods.  The big three!  Niente di speciale here in Roma but that's ok, I do my fair share of being thankful for foods for sure.

Here are photos from a recent visit to the Palatine hill.  The TRUE birthplace of Rome!!  It is one of the 7 original hills of Rome & it has been inhabited since something crazy like, 1000 BC!  It is where Faustulus supposedly found those infamous twins suckled by the she wolf, good old Romulus & Remus.  Lots of wealthy Romans have lived on this hill throughout the golden age of Rome.  One of the most well preserved structures is the house of Augustus & Livia, a lot of beautiful frescoes & mosaics from the villa are now in the national museum.  

I enjoyed Il Palatino, here you will find a lot of nice green space & a respite from the tourist crowds.  Here is a photo of an ancient sporting arena of some type & some lovely umbrella pines.  

here is detail of some cool marble(?) floor mosaic work.

this is Ganymede, aka Zeus' "little boyfriend"

AHA!  the original caves where Rom & Rem were said to have been found!  

there was some low budget film being shot.  

yet another lovely city view!

And now you will find some quasi nature shots!  The colors have been changing providing some high nature moments!

this staircase of this old villa was covered in colored leaves, it was really pretty!

and I was obsessing about taking cool photos of these fish!

those colors were so nice, very impressionistic!

dad, look!  western redbuds in Roma!  (nerd alert)

vista of the forum & vittoriano

 One of my favorite spots in Rome is the Aventine Hill, another one of the "original 7 hills" of the city. It is a peaceful spot to take a passiaggata.  The Aventine was mentioned in myth by Vergil in the Aeneid.  A monster named Cacus lived there & Hercules killed him for terrorizing people & stealing cattle & such.

There are some quaint old churches, orange groves, views & nice homes.  In particular, there is this keyhole that you come to look into for a surprise.  The two times I've been there it has been a popular spot.  Once there were about 20 people lined up to peep into the keyhole & the second time, while I was there 2 separate cars full of Italians cruised up just to pop out of the car & take a quick peek into the keyhole.  What do you see??  A sweet view of St. Peter's!  It is a pretty special little spot.  I'll take you there when you come to visit!

If you want to watch a nice Italian movie I would recommend Pane e Tulipani, a really cute & funny movie I watched in school last week.  Also, in the theater I went to a really sweet Italian film that was just released, Il cuore grande delle ragazza.  Even though I couldn't understand everything, I loved it!  Check it out. 

On the job front...  GOOD PROGRESS!  A couple of people are visiting Roma this very weekend to help set up my office & Xray system & whatnot.  I believe that now I have all the equipment in place that I need to start up real soon!  There are some unexpected issues like, having a proper computer & remote storage for patient xrays & figuring out the proper way to transfer images & things of this nature.  Sure makes me wish I were more tech savvy.  Some part of my brain really shuts off when it comes to computers.  Thank goodness for this happy, user friendly macbook useful in internetting & photo manipulation!  Anyway, hopefully without too much more stress things will come together for work.  I am feeling better than ever about things.  (do I write this every time?  perhaps!)

Funny though, about work.  Now that I am actually going to start & am going to have to speak in Italian & miraculously heal these people I am having anxiety about it.  So, I am excited as well as nervous.

I have to work closely with an Italian Xray technician because technically I'm not able to take films solo.  He is a really great, like a little grandpa!  At first I couldn't understand a thing the guy said because he speaks real fast & with a lot of Roman slang but, now we are able to communicate pretty well!  Slowly but surely people, progress is being made.

I am thinking about going to Florence next weekend.  I am also thinking about buying tix to see some opera (madame butterfly) & ballet (coppelia) coming up.  I have my FINAL EXAM in my medio level italian class on Tuesday.  Wish me luck!  I think I'll have to stop taking intensive classes & switch to evening classes just 2x/week.  We'll see.

And, that's all she wrote!  Bacissimo!

xx