and now my life is almost complete.

This week has been the most stressful so far. Not because of one specific thing, necessarily, but a culmination of a couple things. My bank account situation got worse, and in waiting for my new ATM card (which I finally got today) I had no cash. And for those of you that aren't aware, a lot of places in Italy are cash only. So no cash led mainly to skipping lunch or spending more money than normal on lunch cause I would have to go to the grocery store to use my credit card. But mostly skipping lunch, which probably wasn't very good for me. 

We also had our first real project for studio this week. It was site analysis, and the process of finding out information was pretty easy, but when it came down to actually putting a presentation together I was not the happiest person. One of the main reasons I don't like working in groups is that for me to do my part I have to wait on someone else to finish their part, and when it's 9:30 pm the night before it's due... I think it's obvious how irritating it is. And they wait to tell me that they couldn't open one of the files I sent them to continue working on until 20 minutes before it was due, so that part didn't get finished. Groups are unreliable and more of a hassle than a help most of the time. 

Now let's get to the good parts of the week... Our walks this week were two museums, the Centrale Montemartini and the Ara Pacis Museum. Both were very cool. Montemartini is an old power plant that was converted into a museum, so the statues are placed throughout the building in front of all the case iron engines and boilers, etc. It seems strange, which it kind of is, but the contrast between color and style and material is very intriguing. The Ara Pacis Museum is a modern building by architect Richard Meier, and it basically acts as a display case to house one artifact -- the Ara Pacis -- the funerary altar of Augustus. It's a beautiful building. Basically all glass, you can see right through the museum so you can still see the city. There is, however, a lot of controversy around the building because many people are still unsure of whether or not a historic city such as Rome can welcome modern architecture. As long as you're not compromising the historic fabric of the city, I don't see why some modern buildings can't exist. They should still somehow speak to the city though, as does the Ara Pacis Museum, in my opinion.

Besides having a load of homework to do this weekend, one event made this weekend amazing despite everything else. I went to my first professional, and foreign, soccer game. It was Lazio (one of Rome's teams) and Milan, and the fans were definitely as into it as I had heard about. Unfortunately the fans we were sitting by were all into it in the angrier sense of the game -- Lazio lost. I didn't really care who won though since I don't know enough about professional soccer to really pick a team. I definitely didn't mind watching Milan win, especially when one of the assists was made by David Beckham. I wish I had been like twenty feet closer, but either way, David Beckham was right there!! It was amazing, and my life is officially one step closer to being complete. Haha.

My next post should be full of interesting things. We're leaving at seven am tomorrow for the Campania region to see the Naples area -- Paestum, Herculaneum, and a couple other sites including a volcano. Our class trip officially ends on Friday afternoon, and from there a bunch of my classmates and I are taking an overnight ferry to Sicily. We'll stay there for the weekend and fly back to Rome Sunday night. It will definitely be an amazing week, especially with no classes to worry about!

Ciao!