These past two weeks in Rome were amazing. I experienced so much in such a short time I don’t know if this blog post will be able to do the two weeks enough justice. I still remember when we finally were ready to go to St.Jons for the very first time. In what I would later see as typical Italian fashion, we were eating for the bus for almost an hour. The moment right there set the tone for me for the entire trip. I remember looking around the airport and being very impressed with all the Italian men I was seeing. Erika on the other hand, was not very impressed.
As we arrived to St.Johns, I was tired and ready to call it a day but surely enough we had to start our first adventure in room that evening. That first bus experience made me have an internal panic attack since I don’t like crowds or buses in general. After awhile I got used to riding on the buses. I much preferred traveling in the trains because it reminded me of New York City. I guess the looking at the transportation system can give u an idea at how European views on personal space differ from American ones. People had no problem getting really close to each other and touching each other. That’s not something we really find here in the states.
I remember the first full day we spent in Rome. We visited the Fora and I was really tired and hot. I started to doubt if this trip would ever have moments of freedom and fun. Eventually I learned to power through the long days and I am glad we saw the things we saw. I appreciated it more when we come into contact with tour groups and I would realize that they weren’t seeing all of Rome, but we were. Or at least we were seeing a much more complete version.
I also appreciated that we travelled to place ourselves even though I wasn’t found of it at first. It allowed us to have more day-to-day interactions with the people of the city, and be able to see what our readings really lacked. Most of them lacked good accounts of what the every day people were doing. We would know what important people and writers were doing but never the average roman.
One thing I truly regret about the trip was not having any Italian knowledge at all. Most people said that if you know Spanish you can get away with Italian and I figured this was probably true. I would like to prove those people wrong. I often could catch/understand very little of what was said to me in Italian, and I wouldn’t even know how to respond. Reading it I think was a bit simpler but as our restaurants adventures prove, it was still no easy task. I wish I had known some basic Italian because I think the language barrier made me feel less likely to socialize with Italians or even go out on my own.
On that note I also regret not taking amore active role in trying to navigate the city. I would often rely on being with either Gia, or Liz, or even Dan and Jackie. I didn’t really get the hang of things until the last 3 days were I became confident enough to go out on my own and comeback in peace. I wish I had gotten to that point a lot sooner because I wouldn’t have felt as limited as I did.
My favorite place I think would probably be the palatine. It was my favorite day and we saw some of the most beautiful and interesting remains on that hill. I enjoyed traveling around it with my fellow Romani, and making plans to eat dinner that night and eventually go out later that night. My least favorite place I think I traveled to was the Vatican. While I enjoyed touring the Vatican necropolis, I didn’t like touring around the church itself. I found it to be over crowded and it didn’t really have anything I thought was worth mentioning. It just seemed like another really big church in Rome to me. Granted by the time we had seen the Vatican, we had been to several large churches already.
I wish we had gone to the mosque that is in Rome. When I first learned about it I was amazed by the fact that there was a mosque there period. Visiting the Jewish ghetto definitely made me want to go there even more. I found it interesting to saw how the catholic faith dealt with citizens of a different religion in the city. I t would have been nice to compare. On a side note we didn’t see and I don’t think there are any protestant churches in Rome, so the fact that there is a mosque is even more intriguing.
One thing I owe to the eternal city is it gave me confidence. It is in Rome where I went to my first gay bar. While this wasn’t apart of the main trips agenda I still find it significant, because it was a big step for me personally. Before this trip I had only been to one other gay bar with a larger group of queer friends. In Rome it was just Maria, and me whom I didn’t know terribly well. I was making a big leap because I don’t normally do these sorts of things, and by the end of the night I felt really comfortable in that environment. I owe that to Rome. I entered this trip with the thought of trying new things and trying to be in different situations than I’m used to. I never thought I would use Prof. Fords quote in this context, but I thought I would lean into discomfort.
As a whole I will miss Rome and the people I was there with. I do intend on returning and revisiting some of the places we went to. I also intended to visit the places we didn’t get to go
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