Day Thursday

Today marked the second Thursday of the entire program. We had two classes scheduled today, Resat's class bright early and Kathie's class in the afternoon. This would also be the very first day that we did not have a trip planned somewhere. Today, the second Thursday, would be studious.

But I know it would still be interesting. For goodness's sake, we're in Rome!

The weather is very hot today, but in all honestly it doesn't matter for the guys since we live so close. Many of the girls tell us (the guys) that they have to wake up 30 minutes early just to have enough time for walking to class. This is nonsense, as most of the guys wake up 15 minutes before class starts, rushes breakfast, and then scramble downstairs just in time.

That is exactly what I (we) did, and we all did show up to Resat's class on time.

In class, the first thing we hear is a terrifying story about how the Italian police can and will make random checks for our documents. He handed us individual letters showing that we are legally here. The group was also warned to keep our passports at all times.

During class, we discussed 1500 hundred years of Italian history – no small feat!

It began with the decline at fall of the Roman Empire. We discussed how Italy, once at the top of the world, began to decay. The capitol of the Roman Empire was moved to Constantinople and Rome was sacked in 476 BC.

When the empire fell, communes and city states began to take control of Italy. What was once a unified Italy became separate provinces. Particular provinces became rich through trade (as Italy is perfectly situated between Asia and the rest of Europe). Various families took control of particularly successful city states such as Florence and Naples. The Renaissance was born from the patronage of these families, as each family wanted to use art in order to show their power.

All in all, this period (1000-1300 AD) was a very violent period, full of strive and corruption. Eventually, even the city states became weak and entered a period of decline from 1450 to 1650 AD.

Italy was again unified in 1860 by Risorgimento, with war playing a major factor.

Entering the 20th century, fascism and Mussolini came into prominence. We discussed how Mussolini rebuilt the city (watching a short clip near the end of class) and the fruitless African campaigns in Libya.

After class, half of us decided to get salad at the insulate place, and the other half chose to come back to the apartment and cook. Erik and I cooked packaged ravioli. He had half of his left and I had half of mine. Both packages contained what looked to be identical ravioli, but they definitely were not.

Looks good right? But it turns out that it turns out mine

were far undercooked in comparison to his, leading to what was

possibly the worst ravioli I’ve ever had.

Kathie’s class is a lot different in comparison to Resat’s. At first, we talked about what we needed to do for our project. There’s a lot more volunteers for the Joe Nafuma center than I thought. It’s tempting me to do a mixture of both. The photo essay sounds kind of boring in comparison to interacting with real people!

The rest of the class became a long discussion about migration and Italy. We discussed a long time talking about whether or not immigrants would become coequal citizens in a multicultural society or integrated as minority groups in Italy.

One interesting fact that we learned is that refugees can only legally stay in the first “safe” country that they travel to. Known as the country of first migrants, immigrants are often sent back to the first safe country that they pass though, should they try to leave their first country.

We talked about Father Michael’s speech. A lot of good points were brought up. Brandon’s accent is especially funny.

Bennett speaks up.

We began to discuss what the immigrants actually do in Rome. Many come here to Italy due to the underground economy. We got off to an interesting tangent about Moldovan/Filipino nannies that are everywhere. Sarah, Yuting, and Mauna all brought up really interesting, firsthand accounts about Filipino nannies especially.

David is not happy.

After class, most of us chose to watch the Italy game at Magnolia. Slovakia played very well, and Italy made a poor decision in underestimating its basically unknown opponent. Pirlo and Camoranesi weren’t even subbed in till there was like 15 minutes left!

For dinner, we decided to go to a random pizzeria across the Tiber. The pizza, which was really cheap, was very good!

Emilio digging into his pie.

Thus Thursday ends! Tune in next week.