Charted

In my very first blog post, I quoted a Sara Bareilles song called "Uncharted" which talks about what it's like to leap into the unknown--no background, no road map, nothing.  Just 3 and a half months ago, the song perfectly described my relationship to Rome.  I had a single semester of Italian under my belt, little information on the history or present of the city I was about to relocate to and few attachments here.

It is mindblowing how much things can change in a few short months.  Now, I feel that I have truly "charted" Rome.  My entire apartment has been in total denial about leaving for the past few days. We can't imagine life anymore without daily supplis (fantastic breadcrumb coated rice and mozzarella balls) from the pizza shop at the top of the hill from our apartment.  What will we do without the Pantheon and St. Peter's basilica practically in our backyard?  And how about Frigidarium gelato and handmade gnocchi?  How will I transition back to American coffee from delightfully bitter espresso? What songs will I jump up to dance to when American discos aren't playing Don Omar's Danza Kuduro?  And I have to stop saying disco in the US because people will think I'm talking about Saturday Night Fever, the musical or Danny from Grease, not just your average dance club.  How will I practice my Italian without the guidance of Susanna and her friends?  I can no longer hop a train to another historically rich and vibrant Italian town or book a last-minute flight to an awe-inspiring country.  Abroad has spoiled me, but I have also grown from it.

It hasn't just been food and wine and picturesque panoramas.  It has been making lifelong friends and singing in the streets in the middle of the night.  It has been learning to navigate foreign environments with language barriers and cultural obstacles obstructing the path to success.  It has been missing trains, taking walking tours, taking bike tours far less gracefully, learning the importance of history and rediscovering religion.  It has been sleepless nights and movie nights, laughing until I can't breathe and drinking more espresso than any human should.  It has been learning who I am inside and out, what I need, what motivates me, how I can help others and how I can make the most of any situation.  It has been transforming a far, far away city into my city, imprinting my insights and experiences on this town and absorbing all of the history, beauty and lessons it provisioned me.  It has been making a home away from home.  It has been dancing until 5 in the morning or calling it an early night after chatting at Bar San Calisto.  It has been Vespas and smart cars and walking until our soles are as red as Merlot.  It has been meeting Susanna's extended family and eating a hybridized Roman and Philippino pranzo that was absolutely beyond delicious.  It has been doling out 5 euro Secret Santa gifts on the top of Gianicolo our last night together, tears in our eyes, love in our hearts, Rome's wisdom filling up our insides.  It has been real.

Roma, I'll miss you beyond belief.  Thank you for all you have taught me and all of the happiness you have brought me.  I can only hope that as I continue my life's journey, there are more moments in store as magical as the ones I've had with you.  You've made me more independent, grateful and whole.  I see things with new eyes; it's as if this city has given me new contact lenses (and I thought I had 20/15 vision).  It's been the best, but now it's time for the next chapter.  Grazie mille per tutto.

ABV (my apartment-mates, minus Susanna) at our IES farewell dinner.
Dre's mom bought us all Chicago hats! :)

A domani (Stati Uniti!!),

Alexi

The Last Supper

There are many great ways you can top off an incredible semester abroad in Rome.  You can go to a Roma soccer game, scream your lungs off in pride and potentially risk being assaulted by the enemy team.  You can take a trip to see all of the glorious tourist sights, musing at how familiar the landscape has become, which my apartment-mates and I did on Friday.  You can go to Papal mass and re-explore Vatican city.  You can tour the breathtaking Borghese gallery one last time.  But if you think like I think, all you want to do is eat until the cows come home.

Sara and I enjoyed one of the most absolutely incredible meals of our semester at Antico Arco restaurant, a ten minute walk from our apartment, when my aunt and uncle were visiting in late September.  The culinary experience was so memorable that, despite the steep prices, we promised we would return to toast to our final days in Rome.  Last night was the night of our "last supper." Okay, maybe not exactly our last, but by far our best.  And I had to go all out.  If you know me, you know that I'd trade a trip to Paris for an unforgettable meal. So that is sort of how I rationalize selecting the tasting menu.  There are only a few instances in your life when you can feasibly rationalize eating such an amount, especially when you are a 20-year-old girl who probably needs to refamiliarize herself with gym classes, but this was our last hurrah.  This was it!

The meal was absolutely divine (see courses below) and it was incredible to rehash the past three and a half months with Sara, who has been there through it all and who I luckily get to take back to Emory with me.  I know that, down the line, when we are missing these days to the extreme, we will be able to get together in our Clairmont apartments at school, throw some gnocchi al pomodoro together, listen to sappy Sara Bareilles songs and relive it all again.  That is what is keeping me together right now, knowing that when it's over, it still won't be over for us.  Cheers Roma!  Thanks for your gastronomic goodness and the ultimate experience abroad!

Anchovy crostini with passionfruit mayonnaise

All of Sara's overjoyed expressions capture my
feelings about this food as well...

Amber jack fish tartare with ginger, lime and puntarelle salad

Poached egg, cauliflowers, yogurt,ricotta cheese and black truffle

Spello chick pea soup with chestnuts and breadcrumbs
flavored with dill

Risotto with Castelmagno cheese...nebbiolo sauce to the side
(the best red wine flavor ever!)

Eating her Rigatoni Gerardo di Nola with carbonara sauce
and black truffle...they gave me a little portion, too...as if I needed
to be eating more...

Beef tenderloin, pioppini mushrooms, pecorino cheese sauce,
potato and black truffle puree

Pan brioche chips, goat cheese with herbs and a fruity compote

A mini palate cleanser...walnut ice cream with dark chocolate!

And the final touch of any life-changing meal: Molten chocolate
soufflé cake with vanilla & rhum ice cream

Sara snacking on killer tiramisu

A cheesy Christmas tree pose was essential here

In 6 days I will be back in Rockville, MD.  It's surreal.  Hoping the last six are as great as the past three months and change have been.

Baci,

Alexi

Espresso and Introspection

It is becoming that time in my journey where all of the little thoughts that popped up in my head while I was walking over Gianicolo on the way to school, waiting for the 870 bus, visiting the Ara Pacis museum, trying tapas at Mercat de Mercats in Barcelona, strolling the streets of Trastevere, or trying to find my way home from a foreign neighborhood are rushing to the forefront of my mind.  I have never kept a daily journal so this has served as a repository for my thoughts, but often the need to update everyone on travel and food and the sights bars me from delving a little bit deeper into the greater meanings of life abroad.

There are endless aspects of the experience to analyze.  Being away from home forces you to see a new side of yourself.  You are tested in a multitude of small ways which contribute to your development.  In Italy, I am in this fixed space, separate from the fast-paced drive of my everyday life at school.  This is a time out of time for personal growth, for enjoyment of a new culture and exposure to differences I would never have encountered in the US.  I have relished in many little accomplishments and in the home I have created here.  There are also times where I wish I could have done more, pushed myself a little bit further to try a different activity, to see a new place or to make more of a rainy Sunday when I simply cozied up in bed with an Italian caffé.  Sometimes, I think I should have found an internship here where I could have interacted more directly with Italians and given back to this incredible city that has given so much to me.  I also know that I am going to miss life here more than words and that I will return someday, hopefully in the not so distant future.

At IES, we have "core" meetings where we try to dig a bit deeper into our experience abroad and the emotional stages that one typically faces.  I don't think I follow the typical format.  For me, I have been pretty steadily contented, with intermediate spurts of stress over travel and the nuisances of the slow-paced Italian culture, but feelings are starting to catch up a bit now.  At our last "core" session, we had to stand by a quote that summed up our experience here.  I can't remember mine word for word, but the idea was that this experience has only just begun and it will continue to affect me long after this program.  Being abroad hasn't made me instantaneously realize what I want to do with my life.  I honestly have no clue what job I'm going to have and I don't know where I'm going to be next summer or in 5 years.  To be completely truthful, I thought maybe I would waltz on over here and have an epiphany.  I am meant to be blank.  I want to do X,Y,Z when I graduate.  I need to do A,B,C to be successful.  I didn't fill in that blank or replace X,Y,Z  or A,B,C with the keys to my future. I still don't have all the answers.

But that's not what living in a different country does for you.  It doesn't fill in the blanks of your life as if it were a  Mad Libs book.  No one can do that for me, but myself and I can't altar the timeline fate has set for my life.  However, being here has introduced me to many versions of myself that I don't encounter on the daily at Emory.  For example, abroad Alexi has met Alexi who just missed her train home from Siena.  Abroad Alexi has encountered Alexi who accidentally sent her suitemate on a train to a different town in Germany (long story).  And abroad me has had to figure out how to deal with these varying distressed versions of myself.  Sometimes, I get totally flustered and I have to piece me back together.  At times, these hectic, anxiety-producing moments of abroad really scared me, but sometimes you have to make a real mess of things just so that you learn to put all of the pieces back together.  And after some difficult encounters with the foreign environment, abroad Alexi had the pleasure of meeting Alexi who could hold a conversation with an Italian student for an hour. Abroad Alexi also met Alexi who can successfully travel from San Lorenzo to the Colosseum in record time.  At the risk of using my own name more times than any non-egomaniacal person should in a paragraph, abroad put me in situations I could never have faced under a cozy American security blanket.  It is the stresses, controversies, intricacies, and triumphs of this new situation that have made my experience so special and rewarding.

Today was my last day of courses at IES.  As I prepare for my final exams and check the final items off of my bucket list, I am dealing with a whole host of feelings that I didn't realize would surface so quickly or so fiercely.  I will avoid writing you all an entire book here, but wanted to thank my family a million and one times for this unbeatable opportunity.  You are the best!

In front of IES...an appropriate picture as the semester wraps up!
Photographed by Becca

A presto (veramente!),
Alexi

Home Meets Rome

With the holiday season fast approaching, nothing could have been a more perfect early present than having a best friend from home visit me in Rome.  Becca is studying in Amsterdam this semester and recently decided to book a trip over here, much to my delight!  Our visit was brief, but we packed a lot of sights into such a short time, caught up over Dutch stroopwaffels (a new fave sweet treat) and tea, and enjoyed the blast from the past that always accompanies reunions with old friends.  It is nice to know that no matter where you are or how long it's been, when you reunite with a close friend, it's like no time has passed at all.

Friday afternoon, I took a mid-afternoon bus to meet Becca at the Terravision café and give her a huge, much deserved hug before we started our day.  We had little time to lose so we headed over to Vatican City so that she could get a glimpse of St. Peter's basilica and snap the essential tourist photos of Rome.  We did a little loop around the Tiber, making our way past Castel Sant'Angelo, over the Ponte Helio and to my school.  I hadn't thought about it for a while, but she made me realize again just how pretty our school building is.  I can't say it's always a whole heap of fun studying in it, but I definitely appreciate its amazing location, even more so when a new visitor points out just how special it is to be Tiber-side.  After that little section of our city tour, we enjoyed gelato from Gelateria al Teatro, one of the most famous spots in Rome, just a five minute walk from IES.  Becca opted for pure chocolate and coffee, while I changed things up a bit and tried a fruit and cheese flavor.  It was definitely a bit strange, but totally delicious.  Rome's gelatified version of cheesecake...perfetto!  

We caught the 870 bus to return to Monteverde and enjoy a little down time before dinner at Lumie de Sicilia a few streets over.  Kristen, Megan and I discovered this sweet little gem over fall break; the adorable owner loves to chat us up in English and offer the best recommendations.  The authentic antipasto included thinly sliced squid, a few cuts of savory meat and various marinated and breadcrumb-crusted veggies, but our ravioli variations were the winners of the evening.  Bex and Sar opted for ricotta in cream sauce, while I ordered the pasta with sea bass and artichokes...I am going to miss this carb-filled existence!

After dinner, we prepped for a night out with Susanna and her friends.  Blowdryers were handed off like batons in a track race and hands were flying with everyone furiously grabbing for tops and applying eye shadow.  Just your typical weekend night in an apartment with 7 (this weekend, 8) girls! We drove over to EUR, Mussolini's utopia in Rome (really a sight to be seen--the buildings are very futuristic in an almost unsettling way!) and attempted to get into Pure, our first choice for a night of dancing.  But it seemed that private parties had completely reserved all of our top choices (or Susanna's recommendations--the American girls are not all too familiar with nightlife in that section of Rome) so we decided to check out Futura Arte.  It was an interesting experience to say the least...a lot of 30 and 40-somethings dancing to a combination of 80 percent Italian music I haven't heard and 20 percent random American jams like "Summer Lovin'."  Now, I love Grease, but this was a little bit weird.  Still, we all enjoyed changing things up a bit, learning some traditional Italian dance moves from Susanna's friends and not having to sweat up a storm while breaking it down to David Guetta for a change.

Saturday was an ambitious attempt to fit Rome's most important sights into a one day period.  First stop: lunch at Piccolo Buco by the Trevi for gnocchi with four cheeses and a mushroom pizza, fuel for the day.  Unfortunately, the forecast for "scattered showers" wasn't what we were hoping for, but we made the best of the rain and took some cute shots with our cheap umbrellas tossing our coins into the fountain.  Next, we made our way over to the Spanish steps and scaled the entire building (okay, it wasn't that difficult...it probably took five minutes) for another credible view of Rome's rooftops in their rainbow of pastels: awe-inspiring splendor.  Luckily, Bex has an insane camera so I will have to steal a couple of photos from her to provide the full effect.  I know, you're all probably getting sick of the superlative adjectives, but I'm being sincere I promise!  We needed a break after all of that trekking and stopped for a drink at Dolci e Doni, a cute little café on a sidestreet.  Unfortunately, the waitress didn't understand when we asked for ice tea, no sugar...we ended up with what essentially tasted like 4 euro Snapples, but you just have to laugh at the little blunders.  We sipped, quipped and flipped over how crazy it was to be in Rome together.  After finishing our sickeningly sweet beverages, we made our way over to the Pantheon.  Right before we entered the piazza, rain started pouring sheets upon us and we sought shelter in Tazza D'Oro, a famous little café, before I freaked out, realizing that the Pantheon is most beautiful when you see raindrops pouring through its central opening!  Luckily, we were able to catch a little bit of the drizzle when we arrived at the monument. It is actually unbelievable--you feel like the heavens are opening up and you have the front seat to the show.  I only wish we could have caught the view of the rainy spurt from inside.  Finally, we enjoyed a nighttime view of the Colosseum where Bex carried out a little photo shoot: moonlit cobblestones, hands on the Colosseum's travertine columns, every angle of the massive ampitheatre.

After our long day at the city's center, we met Sara in Trastevere for dinner at Aristocampo restaurant. Before we arrived though, I had to take Becca to our favorite cannoli place with ricotta filling to die for and pastry with just the perfect amount of crunch.  Dinner was fantastic. Meals here (as you all know by now) go: pasta, pizza, repeat, pasta, pizza, repeat.  We toasted, talked, and tasted each others' yummy dishes and had just enough time to make it to the Trastevere chocolate festival before heading home.  Bex and I ended up enjoying a cozy night in.  We had more than enough to catch up on and were able to relive our high school slumber party experience with a rom com.  Except this time, we were in Rome.  So surreal!

A daytime shot at the Colosseum from History class this past week!

MD + Emory/Rome friends in one place...at
Lumie di Sicilia...awesome and delicious!

Bex marveling at the embarrassing amount of change
I laid out for our meal at Piccolo Buco.

So cute!

Coin tossing in the rain!

Bex + Lex + rain + Rome = A-ok! :)

At the top of the Spanish steps!

It was hard to say goodbye to Bex this morning and face the mountain of work piling up as finals lurk right around the corner.  This also means that I leave in less than 2 weeks.  And I can't lie, it's definitely getting to me.  I start to think about how drastically different "abroad problems" are from real world issues.  Seriously, my roommates and I have crafted a mental list of our "crises" here and how silly they can be.  Case in point, today's abroad problem from Megan: "I hate when my socks are different thicknesses."  Yes, it's a joke, but we're also not plagued with constant deadlines.  There are no travel barriers.  There's no limit to how far you can wander or what you can do tomorrow morning or next Friday night.  Losing that will be hard, but I have to remind myself to smell the roses while I can and take everything one step at a time.  I hope I don't sound terribly redundant with these thoughts, but they keep striking again and again.  Still, I am so looking forward to seeing all of my loved ones so soon.  What would life be without you all?

Love,

Alexi