Last Sunday in Italy (at least for now)

So it seems like forever since I last wrote anything for everyone.  It’s been a pretty busy week since we were given homework and had many sightseeing trips planned.  I ended up filling my first memory card on my camera (1 GB).  Actually I’m trying to upload some of the earlier pictures to our flickr site now.  Not exactly sure how it works otherwise I’d post details.  I finally got a chance to partially catch up on sleep today.  We’ve been up late most nights working on papers together and now we’re almost caught up.  So I badgered Grey until he posted.  Hope everyone enjoyed his comments.  Now we’re working on Veronica (the surprise participant) to get blogging.  We’ll see. 

I think the most amazing things about Italy are the tastes and colors and smells of everything.  The only smell I don’t really like is the exhaust from the automobiles.  The lectures have been really interesting.  There was only one that I almost fell asleep in (not because of the subject matter but because I was really low on sleep time the night before).  The men from the lab have given us a taste of Italy–visually and in the food sense.  Augusto is so much fun to talk to and he pretty much gave us his office space for the week.  His office partner, Stefano, has been our tour guide in both L’Aquila and Rome.  He studied theology for 4 years along with engineering so he really knows his stuff and is a lot of fun to eat supper with.  Andrea also hangs with the engineers and brought us to Micron for a tour of the facitilies and to Santa Stefano and the ruins of a castle.  I’ve really enjoyed hanging out with everyone involved in this program. 

We toured Micron (makes image sensors) on Friday.  The building is huge (the clean room section is as big as a soccer field)!  We got to tour the clean room which is class one (meaning any cleaner would be a vacuum and Borexino’s clean room is no comparison).  To go in we had to go through a whole process that started with hand washing and a hair net, moved to booties, a cloth helmet, a clean suit and gloves.  Then we walked through an air wash and into a yellow lit room.  The tour was really interesting.  It takes a minimum of 20 some days to make the simplest microchip image sensor.  I didn’t understand everything because my mind was trying to wrap around the enormity of the building and the small size of the chips produced.  Getting out of our suits was as much of a process as getting into them.  The company gave us some pens and pins as gifts.  Andrea took us back to L’Aquila for the afternoon since Augusto was sick and couldn’t give us a lecture.  I’ll have to get pictures from him while he’s at Princeton since he’s leaving tomorrow morning. 

Barbara finally tried Kebab (and really liked it)…she’s so fun to watch in her cycle of excitement and disappointment.  She’s really been helpful in explaining things when our lecturers can’t seem to get everything across.  Yesterday we went to Rome.  We caught the 8am bus in and started our tour by foot (after my first ride on the metro) around 10:30 near the Santa Giovanni (the actual church of Rome’s Bishop–aka the Pope–according to Stefano).  I was in awe about the size and age of Rome.  We walked all around the city and it was already hot enough to sweat by 11am.  We found a cool place for lunch and I could tell I was already getting burnt.  We continued walking all afternoon, trying to see everything and still keep cool and enough water in.  We made it to the Trevi Fountain, the Panthenon, and eventually made it over to the Vatican.  We did a little shopping along the way.  Grey likes to wander so we ended up on top of a very tall museum overlooking most of Rome.  It was a breathtaking sight.  Veronica and I were very tired by the time we got to the Vatican and I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to go inside since I was wearing shorts.  We met Stefano outside and he gave us a history lesson there.  Then we made our way inside (our clothing was all acceptable I guess).  Stepping in to the Vatican was even more amazing than seeing the outside.  It’s huge.  Stefano told us more stories about the door only opened by the Pope once in a great while, the sculptures, and the pope’s walkway.  When he got to the one about people touching Peter’s feet I got very excited because I knew the story and I had a chance to join the millions that have done that very thing.  There was a mass going on and I contemplated receiving the Eucharist but I felt bad for not being there the whole time.  We sat and listened to the music (amazing acoustics) and looking around.  Eventually we made our way downstairs to where all the popes are laid to rest. 

We did a little more shopping before heading out with Stefano for a quick tour of parts of Rome we hadn’t seen and some gelato and Chinese food.  It was an amazing night.  We caught the last bus at 10:45 back to L’Aquila (we were worried we might not get back).  After talking to my parents when we got back I went to bed and actually slept 8 hours straight.  I’m still a bit tired and dehydrated from yesterday but it was totally worth it.  I think a person needs a week to truly enjoy all of Rome.  It’s fun to visit but besides being expensive I think there’s too many people in Rome to actually ever want to live there.  I will have to upload those pictures some other day (Grey ran out of memory that day and I took over 200 just in Rome). 

Today we wrote 2 papers and I went to Mass.  Kinda a quiet day.  We have one more lecture and maybe a tour tomorrow.  Tuesday we have to relax (maybe shop…we’ll see how much money I have left) and pack since we have to meet a bus to Rome at 6am to catch our flight.  So I guess this satisfies curious minds for now.  I’ve been really homesick lately (so know that I’m thinking about all of you) and even though I love it here, I’m ready to be back in the U.S.  Can’t wait to hear from all of you and I hope you’re well.

More later,

Sarah