Progressing east

I'm on summer vacation! I got back home last Thursday, which puts me solidly in the eastern time zone. The next time I will be in central time is in January! From here on out, it's all going east, east, east.

There are a little over 3 months left until I leave for the Mediterranean. We still haven't gotten housing assignments yet, but I'm hoping those will appear within a week or two. I did order all my books, however, and I think they've just about all come in (one or two might be missing still). I'll make a post on that soon, once I get my room a bit more organized and get all my Rome stuff into one concentrated area. Mostly I just wanted to make my presence known again after a full month of insanity that kept me away from the blogosphere, for the most part.

Meeting #2: Meet the New Boss

....somewhat similar to the old boss. Or routine, rather.

Except for the part where it's in Rome.

The second (of 2, I believe) pre-departure meetings was yesterday. Besides turning in my travel plans, so that if I'm lost in transit the program knows where to begin, we also met our teachers for the program and talked in depth about what the academics will look like. Housing will come out in a few weeks, probably not until summer. I also learned the total number of people in the program; according to our roster, there are 26 of us, only about 5 of whom are boys.

A few days ago we got assigned to language level groups. The fact that I'm currently in Italian 203 means that in the fall I'll be in the advanced level group with one other girl. Most people are in the beginning level and there are another 3 or 4 students at the intermediate level. Beginning and intermediate students take classes with our grad student assistant, Miriam, who is native Italian and who is kind of like our on-site program coordinator. We two privileged students considered "advanced" actually take classes at Italidea, a language school in Rome (see here for more info). Allegedly the class is just us two and a "chill" instructor, and we basically talk about current issues (wars, immigration, stuff like that) in Italian to practice advanced grammar and all that good stuff. Our program coordinator, Elana, says that the advanced class always gets "rave" reviews, so I'm pretty excited to try it out.

So yeah, academics besides language. What we're actually all here for is the civilizations in Rome program, where we take three quarters of the college civilizations requirement in one quarter's worth of time. Civ, as it's called, is basically like a history-anthro-vaguely art-y thing, as far as I can tell, and we're doing the sequence called, appropriately, "Rome: Antiquity to the Baroque." A few thousand years of Roman history in ten weeks--not at all compressed or anything like that.

Anyway, we have three teachers who each teach for three or so weeks. The first three weeks are ancient Rome, up to about 400 or so, taught by a classicist named Emanuel Mayer. We don't have a syllabus yet for this, since Mayer just got back from teaching in the Athens study abroad program, but he said it will involve a lot of site visits to all the ruins. He teaches us from 9/25-10/17, and in the middle of that (from 10/6-8) we go to Napoli, to the Villa Vergiliana, from which we visit Pompeii. We'll be reading about the Romans, I'm sure, as befits such a course, and Mayer claims we'll be spending a lot of time "outside" seeing stuff, clambering around ruins, all that sort of good stuff.

The second three weeks or so (from about 10/18-11/8) are taught by Aden Kumler, who's in the art history department. She's teaching "Medieval Rome," aka Rome from about 400-1400ish or so. The main book we have to get for this part is called Rome 1300: On the Path of the Pilgrim, and there's also an artsy guide we're recommended to get about all the art (naturally) in Rome. The stuff we're reading about is persectuion/Constantine's Christian Rome,  the barbarians and Charlemagne,  Gregory the Great, Innocent III, "the Jubilee Year 1300," the Babylonian captivity of Rome from 1309-1378, and the transition out of "medieval" Rome. We have a "midterm" and a final for this section of the class. We're also doing a crapton of site visits here, which so far (according to the calendar/syllabus we have) include the Arches of Titus and Constantine, the Basilica Nova, San Giovanni in Laterano, Santa Sabina, Santa Maria in Cosmedin, Santa Agnese, Santa Costanza, San Prassede, Santa Maria Maggiore, the Sancta Sanctorum, San Clemente, Sans Cosmas and Damian, and Castel Sant'Angelo.

The last three weeks (from 11/9-12/1) are taught by Niall Atkinson, also in art history. He's teaching Renaissance and Baroque Rome, basically Rome from about 1400ish-1600ish, I think. We're supposed to get books like Art in Renaissance Rome, the Life of Michelangelo, Rome of Alexander VII, that sort of thing.  Site visits galore yet again; according to the current syllabus/calendar, we are visiting the Vatican, San Pietro in Montorio, Villa Farnesina, the Capitoline and its museums, Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza, the Gesu', Sant'Ignazio, Tivoli and the villas there (Hadrian's villa and the Villa d'Este), Galleria Borghese, San Maria della Vittoria, San Andrea al Quirinale, San Carlo alle 4 Fontane, San'Andrea delle Fratte, Palazzo Spada, Piazza del Popolo/Spagna/Navona, Santa Maria della Pace, the Pantheon, and Santa Maria Sopra Minerva. Our course requirements for this section are basically journal entries/short writing assignments, a brief in-class presentation, and a final (which is apparently oral).

As far as how all this gets fit into ten weeks, we have class Monday-Thursday, and long weekends each weekend. Civ is Monday-Thursday, 9:30-noon each day. Language classes are Mondays and Wednesdays in the afternoon, depending on level; my advanced class meets from 2:30-3:20. It's a lot of time in class, but quite a bit of that is out of class, on site visits, I suppose. I am glad that we're doing so much and hopefully getting the maximum amount possible out of ten weeks in Rome (it's said that you could live there permanently and still not see all the things there are to see in Rome, after all.) The program also encourages us to hit the town while we're there, try all sorts of restaurants and bars and sporting events. Rome is apparently quite nice for a large city, with not too much violent crime (though lots of pickpocketing if you're not careful, allegedly).

All this has made me pretty excited to go. After the Roman era, I don't know much if anything of the history of Rome, so it will be cool to be there on site while learning about it (and getting to see a crazy lot of monuments and stuff while there). Such a huge info dump, I know, and yet so cool.

A little over 4 months until arrival in la citta' eterna....

Lull

Sorry for the dearth of news in the past two weeks or so, but there really has been nothing at all going on when it comes to Rome 2011 now that tickets are booked and whatnot. Our next pre-departure meeting is a week from tomorrow (the 16th), where we'll find out specifics about the academics we're doing and our professors and whatnot, which is cool but still several days away. Nothing is moving on the housing front, either, since I don't think they'll get around to assigning apartments and roommates until later, maybe not even until the summer; since I don't particularly know anyone else in the program, I don't even have anyone to specifically request as a roommate or apartment mate.

So: an update on how there are not really any updates! Less than stellar, I know, but after the 16th there should be academic news to report, and then it will be almost the end of the academic year here, aka time to pack. This year packing will be interesting (read: obnoxious), since I'll have to take home not only what I need for the summer but also what I'll need to bring to Rome in the fall. The rest will be sitting in storage here in Chicago until January. Wince.

Until then.

Itinerary (rough draft)

My scorn about travel agents in this day and age seems to have been largely misplaced, as the emails I received today from my mother about my flight bookings show. My flight to Rome has been booked, as have my parents' flights out to Europe and so forth; the hotels are still being worked out some, I think. The rough draft of Europe 2011 looks like this:

Wednesday, September 21, 2011-Thursday, September 22, 2011: Alitalia from Boston Logan (depart 5:45 PM eastern time) to Rome Fiumicino (arrive 7:45 AM Rome time)
Arrive in Paris evening Sunday, December 4, 2011
Arrive in London sometime Friday, December 9, 2011
Tuesday, December 13, 2011: Delta from London (depart 10:30 AM London time) to Boston Logan (arrive 1:45 PM eastern time)

I'm not quite sure of the details of the time in London, but there is a hotel booked for Paris and apparently appropriate flights booked between cities, which I have not seen yet. Regardless, possibly the best news of all is the fact that my flight to Rome and my flight back from London together cost only about US$800. Transatlantic travel for about US$400 each way? Not too shabby on the travel agent's part, assuming that these aren't totally crap seats. Alitalia's luggage policies don't seem terrible, per se, but I am extremely wary of trying to bring a bunch of stuff back on Delta from London, considering how I will be in Europe for 80-odd days and will probably accumulate some interesting things in my travels.

All told, I am glad that things in the logistics department are progressing well (and, so far, remarkably cheaply), considering that I have until mid-May before we get to meet our professors for the program and learn the nitty-gritty details of our academic time in la citta' eterna.

Little ado about everything

The Rome front currently is occupied with housing issues dealing with UChicago, actually, and where I live when I come back to campus next winter. (Current conclusion: there will be no conclusion on this issue until December. Nothing like a good, solid, timely resolution to all your issues.) I'll likely be claiming to want to move back into the housing system, and assuming that a room is available either in my house (ideal but relatively unlikely as it stands now), in my dorm (something I'd definitely take assuming that it's a single), or in a single in a dorm near where I am now or with a similarly acceptable proximity to food, I'll stick with the housing system. I will not stick with housing if my only options are a double (I'll have had enough of rooming with strangers after a quarter abroad) somewhere outside my current dorm or a slot in one of the first-year-heavy dorms with first-year-like cultures. The housing system is mostly first- and second-years anyway, but there's a world of difference between my current dorm and others on campus in terms of culture, and while different people work better in different cultures, I know what I want and don't want. A slightly neurotic, still-high-school-y culture works well for some people, but it is just not for me at this point in my college career.

If no housing system next year, then what? Staying in the International House on campus is a high option, assuming that they would likely still have rooms open on short notice (this is something to discuss with them, obviously.) This would probably require me to cook for myself, which hopefully is something I can sort-of handle after wrangling with my own food in Rome. If no I-House, then I could throw myself at the mercy of renters in the area, of whom I know a few. Transient subletting is a very undesirable possibility but hopefully one so low as to be able to be considered improbable. I could sell myself out as a maid or something to friends. Also extremely improbable, but I guess it's good to have options.

Besides domestic wrangling with various housing authorities and resigning myself to the fact that it's going to involve rolling the dice and hedging my bets, the Rome front is quiet. Parents are apparently beginning the process of making reservations for a) my flight to Rome, b) their own flights to Europe in December, c) our accomodations for touring Europe after my program ends, and d) our collective flight home from Europe before Christmas, something that all has to be finalized before May 16th. Since this is a complex transaction, my mother has indeed begun the process of engaging the help of travel agents instead of simply trying to trust Expedia or something similar. My father has also apparently expressed reservations about trying to cram three European cities into two weeks, so the initial plan I related in my last post may be modified to cut out London or something. This makes me a bit sad, but Paris is just as cool as London, and as my father and I are both neophytes in European travel, one is as good as another to us right now. I'll be glad to go just about anywhere in Europe.

Meeting #1: The works

Today was it, the first official pre-departure planning meeting, as they called it. We got a folder brimming full of all the info we could ever want to know, everything from lodging info (we provide our own bath towels but that's about it) to electrical adapters to money to public transportation to who else is in the program. Most of the things told to us were things I had already learned, thanks to my "recon" meeting with my ex-housemate who went to Rome this past fall, so there's actually nothing really new to pass on. Our professors were also announced, but I don't recognize any of their names in particular. I do recognize some of the people going from classes, but I don't actually know any of them. Some seemed to know each other already, so hopefully the trip won't be too cliquey or anything. I have faith, however, that it will go well.

It turns out that for countries in what's called the Schengen Area (click for Wikipedia article--basically most of the EU, with the exception of the UK and Ireland), US citizens do not need a visa to travel or study as long as they are there for 90 days or fewer.  The time spent studying abroad will be about 74-75 days, so I am set. (Over 90 days and you need an official visa.) However, the latest plan is actually to kind of do a mini-tour of Europe after the program ends on December 4th, with my parents, since I don't think my dad has ever been to Europe, and my mom hasn't been for 10+ years. As the plan *very* tentatively goes right now, my parents would arrive in Rome at the beginning of December and see some sights while I am finishing up my program, and then we would go together to Paris and then to London and fly home to the states from London on December 13th or so, which still keeps me inside the 90-day visa-free zone (my 90 days are up on December 20th, assuming I arrive in the EU/Italy on September 22nd).

I am very excited to go, of course, and also excited to see some more of Europe, assuming that works out; I have never been across the Atlantic to the Old World, and I'd like to see Paris and London too. That way if I ever go back at some point, I can concentrate on visiting some less commonly visited countries after having seen the "big three" (London, Paris, and Rome) sites of Europe.

Now to book flights; my mother is considering getting a travel agent to help. This surprised me in part because I did not realize that travel agents still existed as part of the travel industry. I suppose it makes sense, though, crossing so many country borders and staying in different places and whatnot.

Me times 6

In preparation for Wednesday's meeting and the passing-in of much paperwork, I got my photo taken today (Monday, since I've begun this right before midnight but it has technically posted as Tuesday) at the ID and Privileges office on campus. ($8 will get a current student more passport-sized color photos than you ever imagined necessary, it appears.) I need a total of 5, but they only print them in batches of two, so that equals 6--the five needed plus one to spare, in case I ever want to look back on that moment at 10:30 central time this morning when they took my picture.

The photo is remarkably bad, in part because of my own lame attempts to be serious. With passport photos, they tell you not to smile (allegedly it distorts your facial features? something like that), and since I wasn't exactly sure for what these copies of me would be put to use (visas? something else official?) I took a similarly stolid, no-smile stance. Which just looks kind of foolish when combined with my hair, which was remarkably askew, probably still in protest against the annoying 9:45 a.m. fire drill we had this morning thanks to some jackanape in the dorm deciding to pull the fire alarm. (I was already awake when it went off, but it was less than pleasant outside.) A housemate of mine, however, who went to Athens last spring quarter believes the photos might be necessary for ID to get into ruins (we are going to Pompei, after all, at least so far as I know), which are strictly access-controlled in many countries. If so, it probably wouldn't have hurt to smile. At least they know I'm serious?

The rest of the paperwork is filled out; I just have to put it all together and get ready to see what is next in the process. I suspect flight-booking will be the (fun but absurdly expensive) next step, but I'm not going to put money on that or anything. We will see, we will see.

A blizzard of paperwork

Yesterday I got an e-mail from the program coordinator giving dates of the two program meetings this quarter (April 6th and May 16th) and giving me a giant heap of paperwork to complete in the next week. These papers include a travel waiver (which begins, hilariously, with "I recognize and acknowledge that there are certain risks of physical injury (including death) which may arise from travel, study and work abroad"), a health questionnaire, and a health insurance form. We also need three photocopies of our passports and at least 5 passport-sized photos, all by next Wednesday. (I assume they use the photos and passport info to begin settling visas.)

By the May meeting we also have to fill out a form detailing our travel plans with specific flight details and whatnot there and back from Europe. This means that I can officially start booking flights, since they also gave us the start and end dates for the program. I have to be there by Thursday, September 22nd, and the program officially ends on Sunday, December 4th. I'd love to fly direct from Boston Logan to Rome Fiumicino, which happens about once daily on Alitalia, but it's somewhat pricey. If you fly British Airways you'll be going through London Heathrow, if you fly United or Delta you often end up going through Frankfurt or something, etc. I guess we'll see what happens. I'll probably start seriously looking at booking flights after the April 6th meeting, once I see who else is in my program, if I know any of them, if any of them are also from New England, etc.

But now I officially have some things to do, namely getting passport photos from the card office here on campus and finishing filling out these forms by next week!

La mia famiglia

Time on spring break means no news about Roma, of course, but time with family back in New England, my homeland. Like any person whose family has roots deep in New England, my actual heritage is a vague smattering of white European--mostly Scottish on my father's side and Portuguese/Irish/Italian on my mother's side. My great-grandfather (my mother's father's father) spent some time in Italia, I think; it's uncertain where he was born (he possibly was born on the voyage over from Italia to gli Stati Uniti), but his family moved back and forth a lot while he was growing up before eventually settling in New England. In Italy my family hails from the area around Campobasso, in the southeastern portion of the country, I think a fairly rural area.

Location of Campobasso in Italy, according to Wikipedia

Anyway, Italy is a place my grandfather has always wanted to see; his father and that side of his family grew up there, after all. He was in the Navy in World War II but spent most of that time in the Pacific and I'm not sure how much of Europe he has seen, never mind Italy. In any case, when my mother has told him (repeatedly, once for each time he's forgotten it) that I'm studying in Rome for ten weeks this fall, he has 1) asked if I need money, and 2) asked, half-seriously, if he can go.

When I was in sixth grade, my parents, my grandfather, and I went to the British Virgin Islands; this was 2003 or so. I think that was one of the last times my grandfather went anywhere outside of New England, and it's been several years since my grandfather has left a 20- or 30-mile radius around his former house, now legally owned by his son, my uncle. My grandfather lives in my hometown now, in the residential care unit of one of the branches of the state veterans' home system. For him, driving anywhere in a car is excitement, and he's mostly resigned himself to living under 24/7 guidance. If he didn't, he likely would have accidentally killed himself long ago, forgetting to turn off a stove or accidentally overdosing on medications or slipping in the shower and breaking his hip or...anything that happens when you literally lose your mind with dementia. He has a room with a bathroom (but no shower), a nice bed, and a TV. He still likes to walk around and talk to people, mostly the staff or visitors since many of his fellow inmates (as we so bitterly call the other residents at times) no longer speak anything even approaching sense. He eats three times a day, occasionally walks outside or around in the hallways, sleeps, watches TV, waits for visitors. The staff give him his medicines, bathe him regularly, help him dress, help him eat, help him shuffle along. It's like having a small child all over again. He knows the general season and time of day but does not generally remember the specific month or day it is. He still knows his family members, amazingly, and can tell stories from 60 years ago more easily than stories from a day ago.

He likely will never leave this general vicinity again and definitely will never, ever see Italy, see the place where his father and grandfather and all their forefathers grew up. While he knows he is old and forgetful and weak, I think he thinks that this is, in many ways, just an illness that could possibly somehow be suddenly reversed, or at least get better, well enough to travel. Italy will forever remain a bittersweet, childlike wish of his, but I will taste the smog of Roma and touch soil our ancestors touched in six months' time, whether or not he is still alive to know that when it happens. And he will probably ask, from time to time, to go until the day he dies.

Reconnaissance

Today, after my finals were through, I met with a housemate of mine from last year, a third-year now in the college, who was in Rome this past fall for the same program I'm doing. We sat outside in the glorious weather Chicago is having right now and just talked for 45 minutes about the program and how it all works, and it really made me look forward to this fall even more. I learned a lot of useful tidbits and got a great sense of the scope of the program, which I'm going to list here to give everyone a sense of how things will work.

Housing
--We live in apartments in the Monteverde area, near Trastevere, which I believe is on the northwest (?) side of the city. They hold anywhere from 4 to 8 people or so and have 2-4 double bedrooms; you can pick your roommate but not your other apartment mates.
--The apartments are quite spacious (for Rome, anyway), and some have washing machines. There are no dryers because Italy (and Europe in general) does not do dryers.
--The apartments include a very small cooking area, but I think it's basically just a stovetop, with no oven. As a result, most people eat out a lot, which apparently is not as expensive as I had originally feared (it's still not cheap, however). My housemate said she spent about 100 euro a week on food, for 10 weeks, which is about 1000 euro ($1300-1400) for the entire quarter.
--Food and books, as well as flights there, are about all we pay for, however; we get free public transit cards for the Metropolitana (the subway, basically) in Rome as part of the program, and housing is part of the fee attached to our bursar bill
--The apartments are a 15- or 20-minute Metropolitana ride from where classes are, near the Pantheon. Interestingly, apparently even the cheap public transit trains (like the Metropolitana) are extremely fast and quiet, and not too shabby-looking either, a far cry from the slow, jerky, and loud CTA
--Sheets and the like are part of the housing deal, so we don't have to worry about bringing them out with us
--The apartments even include a weekly maid service. Win!

Program/Academics
--The program is one quarter, about ten weeks. We do not get a break in the middle like many other programs do, but we only have class Monday-Thursday, so every weekend is a long weekend.
--We take basically two classes: the civilization studies class we're there for in the first place, as well as a twice-a-week language class, depending on your prior experience with Italian. We get credited for 4 classes on our transcript, however, like a normal quarter: all three quarters of the "Rome: Antiquity to the Baroque" civ sequence as well as credit for the appropriate level of Italian
--Mondays-Thursdays we have civ for three hours a day, I think in the morning from about 9am to noon. Mondays and Wednesdays we also have language class for an hour or two in the afternoon, after a lunch break period. Thursdays are often "site visit" days, where we go to all different sorts of historical sites in the city, and so civ on those days actually is often less than 3 hours long.
--A few weeks into the program we take a long-weekend trip to Napoli, to a villa right on the Mediterranean, where we spend a few days looking at ruins and get 2 (apparently huge, classic Italian home-cooked) meals a day for free. It is apparently ungodly beautiful.

There were lots of stories of all sorts of varying appropriateness told, including stories about trips to Orvieto, to a wine festival just outside the city, to Firenze, and to Venezia, among others. Some people travel a lot, others don't; my housemate said her one big regret about the program was not traveling more while she was spending these ten weeks in such an amazing country. Traveling will be a bit expensive, but I'd really like to try it. I know people who will be in Prague, in Paris, and in London, among other places, and while I don't know that I'd get that far out, it sure sounds like tons of fun to try.

I'm now appropriately excited to really start getting this journey off the ground; it is going to be amazing, I know.

Payin' the dues

Today I went into the study abroad office to officially accept my place on this Rome excursion and pay the admin fee/deposit/"show of good faith" (that's what they call it on the contract) of $550. Rather a lot to write out on a check--I've never written a check that large, which makes me a noob, yes, although I used to pay monthly $200-$300 checks for piano lessons and the like back in my early high school days. It's been a while since I've had to write out anything even remotely close to "Five hundred-fifty and 0/100," however, and the money I'm spending here is actually a combination of my mother's and my grandfather's, not even really mine. But still.

I should probably clarify what I mean by "contract" above, since it sounds so official. It's actually a piece of blue computer paper with a rip-off top for me to keep as a receipt; the rest simply has my name, student ID, and program on it and tells me to check the box next to either "I accept admission to the Rome program" or "I decline admission to the Rome program" and then sign. A check mark next to "accept," my John Hancock, and a $550 check officially sets me on the road to Rome; there's no backing out now without losing that $550.

(But why would I really want to back out of Roma? There hasn't been a good reason yet.)

First program meeting is on April 6th, which is second week of spring quarter. I don't think I'll have much to say until then, really, but the road is truly beginning.

Ciao!

Welcome to my sub-blog, you could say, about my upcoming study abroad venture to Rome for ten weeks in fall 2011! Today is March 8th, 2011, and I have officially received my acceptance to study in la citta' eterna. The program begins in mid-September and ends in early December, in conjunction with the quarter system here at the University of Chicago.

For now, details will be slow, since the next step is accepting my position in the program and paying my deposit, and I'm not sure how rapidly the rest of the timeline moves along. Regardless, should everything go well, I will be in Italia in a little over six months--far away, and yet really not so far. For the next six months, this sub-blog will be mostly more menial notes on preparations, what it takes to study abroad, and more, but I will continue blogging regularly at my main home on the internet, Composed Chiefly of Nothing and I will note there when I have a new, Italia-specific post up here.

A presto,

Aja