Where Did December Go? Happy New Year!

I haven't given a real update for much time. I'll give my busy excuse...which I always give...and really is just quite lame. But again, here I am, much overdue for an update.

So December came and is gone. I now embarassingly see that I didn't even have a real update for the ENTIRE month of December! So here's a quick recap:

The beginning of December, the weekend of Our Lady's Immaculate Conception, my friend Katlyn Head came to visit. She is studying in Winchester, England, so it was pretty easy for her to fly over here for a couple days.

Immaculate Conception we celebrated by going to a High Latin mass celebrated by Cardinal Pele from Australia. And of course, ate some Chinese food to celebrate the Blessed Mother.

The next weekend was I believe when we went to Norcia. Sausage galore. Every street has at least 2 boar sausage shops on it. I do not know how each one stays in business! Apparently the whole of Italy is after this amazing sausage though. This is the town where St. Benedict and St. Scholastica were born. They were twins, and both founded religious orders. And both eventually became saints! Imagine! This town is surrounded by mountains, which was amaaaaaazing.

One of the community nights Fr. Carola led us all in singing Christmas carols. :) It was the first time I had really sang any. We sang the 12 days of Christmas and I was given the 5th day! Alena, I belted it out in your honor. (even with hand motions-it was awesome).

The next weekend I went back to Norcia by myself. I think I posted about this previously.

THEN the family came. And oooooh what an event that was! Tuesday I was supposed to meet Dave and Jen...well I was late about 45 mintues, then waited an additional 45 minutes for them, was about to leave, when I asked Mother Mary to help me out...crossed the street, looked up and let out a noise. I say a noise because I couldn't actually believe I just about ran into Jenny on the sidewalk in Rome. It was somewhat of a scream/yelp, and I'm pretty positive I scared her as well. Missy, Cassie, and Jason showed up later on in the day, and mom and dad we ran into on the street when we decided we were too hungry to wait any longer.

I took them to L'Insalata Ricca for their first Italian meal...and we were EXHAUSTED. Wednesday was Christmas Eve. We woke up late, and finally got out the door to do a bit of touristing. We saw the Pantheon and Santa Maria Sopra Minerva (where St. Catherine of Siena's body is). Then we raced to Bernardi for Christmas Eve dinner. It was so much fun to have some of the people's families there. Dave happened to know some of the same Jesuits Fr. Carola knew and everyone commented on how chatty my brother in law was. Also, poor Jason kept being questioned whether he was teh "real" Jason, or the creeper who had started to get our family's emails accidentally. All of Bernardi knew the story and had red email, and thought it was hysterical. The pic of all of us is from the terrace of Bernardi.

We headed back to our apartment and took a nap and at about 7 headed over to St. Peter's to wait in line for midnight mass with the Pope! I wrote about this in my last post...It was wonderful and exhausting. We got back home and to bed by 4am.
Christmas day we had hoped to get a good look at Rome. Unfortunatly, by the time we woke up (2pm!!!) and out the door (5pm) it was basically dark again. We were not adjusting to the time difference very easily. We saw a few of the sights, and had some gelato.
The 26th we headed out to Pompeii. 35 Acres of ruins! And so well preserved. This was amazing. Mt. Vesuvius erupted and lava pumpled the whole town. There are still some frescos on the walls though!

The 27th I think was the Collessium and the Forum, which Jason and Dad were uber pumped about. Ha. Jason has been excited about Collessium ever since we started to plan the trip, so it was really awesome to be there.
We also went to the Mammertine Prison, where Saints Peter and Paul were kept. Later that day they also saw the catacombs.

The 28th was Sunday, and we spent the morning cold and wet waiting in line at the Vatican Museums. It was free that day, so it took us a good 2 hours to get in. The inside is amazing, but also quite overwhelming. There is just SO MUCH to take in. Then afterwards we checked out the inside of St. Peter's, since we hadn't been in there except for midnight mass. It was a long exhausting day at the Vatican, and I'm not sure we could handle much else. Later that night we went to mass at the Gesu (motherhouse of the Jesuits) and out for some warm yummy Irish Stew at my favorite restaurant when I'm sick of Italian food: Abbey Theatre, and Irish Pub. They also had American football on, so the men were very excited.

The 29th was the Scavi tour. We went below St. Peter's and got a tour of what St. Peter's is built on: centuries old moseleums. And also, St. Peter's grave!

Then we caught the train to Assisi, and ate at a place recommended by Rick Steve's. (Of course!) It was so funny because we were lost in the city trying to find the place, but when we'd ask the locals that we were looking for a Trattoria, they all immediatly knew which one we were looking for. Apparently Rick does good work. And it WAS. Had the most amazing biscotti with dessert wine ever.

Then mom got ridiculously sick, and we did a whirlwind tour of some of the churches. Ran into who else but ABBEY VOGT at Santa Chiara. Small Xavier Catholic world, eh?

We headed to Siena in the afternoon. While mom napped, Jason, Cassie, Missy, dad and I meandered through Siena. They had an ice rink and had shipped in snow. It was cute :) Dave and Jenny got there really late...they had stay longer in Assisi. The next day we did a walking tour, saw the famous sites, and left at about 4pm for Rome. It was New Year's Eve, and we had to go to Bernardi to get all the luggage, then spend about an hour and a half on the metros to get out to Ostia where we were staying. It's on the beach, which is pretty, but basically was out of convenience because the airport is really close.

We finally got to Ostia at 10pm, and were really hungry since we hadn't had dinner yet. We bummed around looking for a place that wouldn't charge us a cover charge and wasn't too expensive alltogether. We managed to find this hole-in-the wall restaurant where no one spoke English. There were about 5 other couples there, all over 65 and they all seemed to know each other. It was very cute.

At the end of dinner, our waitress came over to our table, set down an oval plate, snickered, and shuffled away. We all stared at each other confused, looked down at this supposed plate of beans and sausage. "Who ordered this?" None of us had, and we were really confused. Our waitress walked passed, snickered again, and walked away. You could hear one of the ladies ask the waitress in Italian if we were American. "Oh boy, we look like a bunch of tourists/idiots!" Then another lady came over and exclaimed "IT'S MONEY IT'S MONEY!" We all stared at this bean/meat concoction wondering how in the world this could be anything like money. "Oh it's GOOD LUCK!" says Cassie. "Si Si! Buone Anni!" proclaimed the woman. Apparently
Apparently lentils and sausage bring you good luck. Whoever came up with that idea just wanted to make people eat some gross food. We eventually did finish it off though.

Then the bombs started going off. Well, they sounded like bombs anyway. Nope, it was just fireworks! They were being set off from the planters by the owner of the restaurant right outside the front door. There were other people throwing them from their apartment windows at the apartment complex next door. Praise God for the insaneness that is Italy! And HAPPY NEW YEAR!

As if that wasn't eventful and hysterical enough, we came back inside to Italian cake and champagne! The waitress came around with a bottle of cheap champagne for every table, and we toasted to our new Italian friends. Mostly, a woman who kept telling us her family lived in San Franscesco and got really excited, talking about a mile a minute. Of course, we didn't udnerstand a word, and the more she asked us "Capiche?" Do you understand? And we said "no" She jsut started talking all the more...faster, louder, "Capische? Capische? hehe heehee...Buone Anni!"

We toasted to her, and I became friends for life with her (doing the ceremonial linking of arms and drinking champagne deal) while her husband stood nearby talking on his cell phone shaking his head and smiling. Another couple came over by us, excited to tell us how much they LOVED America, and how her husband was goign to go there soon. He and his awesome comb-over spoke about his love of Frank Sinatra and Michael Buble. I knew I loved this guy's comb-over for some reason.

Needless to say it was an eventful night, ending with us going outside to more chaos of fireworks, and managing to find Jenny and Dave at 1am looking for food. They had just made it back from Siena, and had to leave to catch their flight in about 5 hours. It was craziness, but a funny way to start the new year!

January 1st: Feast of Mary, Mother of God. We slept in, made it into Rome to find what looks like a tornado went through. Apparently Rome had more chaos than ever, and none of the shops were open. We meandered about, the streets deserted. It was kind of eerie but also peaceful to not have the normal hoard of people around. Apparently they take this day more seriously than even Christmas, because there was literally NOTHING open!

We ended the day with mass at St. John Lateran, headed back to Ostia, and CRASHED. We were up early at 5:30 the next day, and the fam was off! It was quick, busy, exhausting, and wonderful!

After that, the rest of break was resting up and not doing a whole lot else. We went out to dinner a lot, and that is about it!

Well January has begun, and starting this past Wednesday our classes did too. It is wonderful to have everyone back from their travels and now the house is full again. Everything is buzzing and we prep for the last three weeks of the semester. Unfortunately, it's hard to start up with classes since this means it is the final push of papers and tests as well.

Rome is buzzing as well with a new swarm of St. Thomas students studying here for J-Term. The Theology 101 students were over on Tuesday for lunch, the Theology 300 students have been visiting Bernardi, and at different restaurants and on the street we have managed to see the emerging purple and grey sweatshirts from two business groups, an engineering group, and also supposedly there is an Art History group here as well. This is another great way to study abroad, to even just get a taste of what being abroad might be like.

I cannot imagine though just being here for that short of time. I am so grateful to be here for the year. To really get to know Rome as my home. Especially living in the community of Bernardi, we have really grown as a family, something great I had heard about the Bernardi community, but was not really sure what to expect. I cannot believe that we only have three weeks left. The semester really flew by. I’m really trying to soak up as much as possible from the group before they have to leave. Everyone is really trying to soak up what they can from Rome these next few weeks. Visit what sites that they have foregone until this final stretch.

Wednesday was the start of our community nights again. We had Fr. Brown come talk to us about the relationship between Science and our faith. He is a Jesuit who works for the Vatican observatory. Yes, the Vatican has their own observatory! He had a doctrate in astronomy and he and some others live at Castel Gondolfa (sp? it's the Pope's summer residence) and study the stars and the solar system!

It's another fascinating way God calls us with our individual gifts to work for His greater glory.