so i'm back in the united states and haven't posted in over a month.  what the hell is wrong with me?  i guess it's a combination of laziness, work, and the inability to sum up an amazing four-month journey in one neat little package.  when i got off the plane i wasn't sure if i was waking up from a dream or slipping into one.  it was like reverse ( Read more... )

...and, just like that, i'm back.

i just finished my international relations final. last test of the semester. school is done. good riddance.

one good thing about the election of benedict xvi was that it freed up my weekend. i didn't want to risk missing the white smoke so his election let me get away from rome without any worries. john, mandi, sean, and i spent the weekend in the cinque terre. this is a stretch of the ligurian coast up near genoa that has some of the most beautiful ( Read more... )

so i got to see the white smoke. we went to the piazza right after theology on tuesday. we didn't expect them to elect a pope so quickly so i guess we were lucky that we decided to go that day. we were pretty close to the basilica when it happened. at first the smoke was definitely grey at least, if not completely black. the smoke system is ( Read more... )

so, ratzinger it is. benedict xvi. and i was there for it. amazing.

so rome was a madhouse last week. officials estimate that somewhere between three and four million people came to rome to pay their respects to the pope. rome has a population of three million. the place was crawling. supposedly two million polish people came by whatever means they could afford. now i don't know if that figure is accurate but ( Read more... )

alright, it's been a while since i updated and a lot of stuff has happened (namely the death of pope john paul II). as you can imagine, rome has been absolutely insane for the last week. i'm going to start with venice because that's where i was when we got the news ( Read more... )

so i got to spend holy week in the center of all christendom this year. it was quite an experience. i kicked things off with the stations of the cross at the colosseum. it took place at night and the outside of the colosseum was illuminated with candles. since the pope is ill he appeared live via a video link on a huge tv screen. they showed ( Read more... )

we went to florence this weekend. it's an absolutely amazing city. we took a train in on friday morning. our hostel was nice and clean, right by the train station. the only annoying part was that this guy was painting a mural on the wall during the days when we were there so we had to wait for him to finish before we could go inside our room. ( Read more... )