Procrastination still works in Rome

For my second day of classes I left my apartment at eight fifteen, and walked to school for the first time. Really we caught the first tram, and instead of taking our second bus we walked up a pretty intimidating flight of stairs. (not my picture by the way) My first class of the day is Bodies and Burials. Not to be confused with the mortuary sciences, this is an anthropology class, focused on the ways ancient civilizations buried their dead. We have several on-site classes that I'm really excited for. This class is so different from anything offered at Bv and I'm glad I took advantage of academic opportunities like this. We have one presentation, a ten page research paper, a midterm and a final in the class. That's it. One of the girls sitting next to me dropped because it was so much work. It blows my mind that people would drop a one hundred level course because its too much work.
I then had a three hour break between classes in which I soaked up the sun (it was a chilly but sunny day) ate a clementine orange and candy necklace (thanks mom!!) for lunch, and purchased two books for my Modern Tribes of Rome class. It set me back 52 euro, which is the most money I've spent since being here, but I'm pretty sure these weren't books I could avoid buying. I then went to my Introduction to Italian language and Culture class. I'm on a waiting list to switch out, but after today's class I definitely will not be disappointed if I stay. We basically had a group therapy session for culture shock. It was nice to sit and talk about differences between our culture and theirs with a group of people composed entirely of study abroad students who had been in the country for less than a week.
After class I walked back home (the stairs are considerably easier to walk down in comparison to the upward trek) and did a little internet browsing while waiting for my roommate to finish with class. Once Becca arrived we (Becca, Emily and I) left in search of dinner. After paying for my expensive text books I needed to use an ATM. Thank goodness they have a language option, I don't even want to begin to think about the damage I could do to my bank account if I had to operate one in Italian. We tried a trattoria that we found earlier in the week only to discover that it wasn't open until eight, which was in an hour. Being the starving young Americans that we were we pushed on in hopes of finding food elsewhere. And we did. We found a little cheap restaurant on our street. I had a glass of white wine with Spaghetti Carbonara, which I cannot even describe to you, as I have no idea what its made of. Very delicious however. Emily had tortellini with meat sauce and a glass of red wine; and Becca had gnocchi (little potato balls) in a four cheese sauce with a glass of coke. We ended up paying about ten euros apiece with tip included. It's been less than a week since we had last had gelato, but despite the cold we couldn't pass up the opportunity to have it again. Unfortunately we had no luck finding a gelateria, one roman informed us it was much too cold, to try again in March. Instead we each bought an assortment of baked goods, I had a little cream puff with almond flakes on top, and what I thought looked like three chocolate chip cookies. They were however, much harder than I had anticipated. Much harder. But still delicious, similar to an over sized piece of cookie crisp cereal.
Baked goods in hand we returned to the warmth of our apartment where I promptly changed into my pajama pants, and instead of reading for my class tomorrow like I most certainly should I instead read an online comic: http://axecop.com/ which is apparently written by a five year old and illustrated by his much older cousin. Entertaining enough to keep me from my school work, at least for a little while. The only thing left on my agenda for the night besides my homework is to shower, webcam with Stu, and perhaps have a 'family' meeting. One of the girls in our apartment thinks her food is being eaten (not by her :) so we might end up having a meeting to address the issue, oh the joys of female communal living. On that note good night (buona notte) I love you (all)