Brad -- Life is Good
I must say, it's getting better all the time in Rome! Our classes are very enjoyable -- particularly, in Film and Mafia we have been watching such classic gangster films as the original Scarface, The Godfather, and Lucky Luciano. We are beginning to pick up Italian quite well and can formulate some sentences and at the very least, get our point across to people in order to communicate.

We also started doing daily "Gladiator Workouts" -- which in reality means that we are too financially challenged to join a gym, so instead I put on my iPod and take laps around the Coliseum, run to places all over Rome, and in our apartment do abdominal workouts, pushups on the stairs while Jaime pretend-jump-ropes and does pushups (and not girl pushups I might add) and various aerobic exercises. I felt absurd complaining about my gladiator workout hurting my wine-weakened liver while running around the colossal structure where real gladiators had their livers stabbed until they died, though I suppose it made me feel a little better in comparison.

The album cover for Jaime, Brad, and Andy's music videos

A fountain in modern day Pompeii

Dome in the church in Pompeii

The ruins

Jaime chilling in Pompeii

Light shining on a fresco in a house

Daisy, Ashley, and Luisa on the ancient crosswalk

Jaime and Cassie in Pompeii

Jaime and Brad in front of Mt. Vesuvius in Pompeii

The mold of the last seconds in a Roman's life amidst pottery

Daisy so excited for sweets, cake, and pie for breakfast!

The "face" lying face up in the mountains

Jaime climbing Vesuvius with her walking stick

Jaime frightened of the crater erupting lava

Jaime and Brad in front of the Bay of Naples on Vesuvius

Luisa, Daisy, and Brad in front of Bay of naples with Vesuvius behind

The sun is beginning to shine in the city, and today I ran to Villa Borghese, a gigantic park north of the Spanish Steps and Piazza del Popolo. It was beautiful with green, grassy fields dotted with small daisies covered in the shade of pink cherry blossom trees. There were fountains, arches, busts, dirt trails to run on, people picnicking and couples spending some romantic time together. While running I decided that we are going there with some food, wine, and a blanket for our own picnic.

Jaime -- Oil Tasting
On Thursday afternoon our school arranged an olive oil tasting with a company that tastes olive oil for a living. These expert oil tasters taste more than 1000 different kinds of olive oil every year from all over the world. Italy is a big producer of olive oil, and most of it comes from here.

We each got to taste three different olive oils. Two were high quality and the other was an industrial generic one. It was incredible to be able to taste how different they are, especially between high and low quality.

We learned how to taste the oil professionally, it was a bit difficult, but you basically put a little in your mouth then smack your lips together a few times and swallow. The expert said if you don't feel a bit of spiciness or bitterness in your mouth or throat, then it probably is not high quality. I am not sure that any of us were really that good at tasting, but it was really cool to learn about, and we got a free can of high quality extra virgin olive oil! I think I like wine tasting better though ;).

Brad -- Wine Club
Our Wine and Culture professor, Heather Hanson, holds a wine club every Thursday night. So in order to practice our vino tasting skills (and taste great wine without having to take notes for an hour beforehand), Jaime and I ventured to Campo di Fiori to her apartment for wine club. She lives in a beautifully refurbished ground level garage of the upstairs owners. Everybody that had signed up this week cancelled, so it was just us three -- which was fine, more wine for us.

We tasted three different bottles of Montepulciano d'Abruzzo. Abruzzo is a region east of Rome that has a national park within. They were delicious, and after we tried all of them and wrote descriptions of their visual appearance, aromas, and tastes, we each did a blind tasting, where all the wines were shuffled around while the taster was not looking and then were identified by their previously defined characteristics.

This is not an easy task, but after the second blind taste, each of us identified all of the wines correctly! I thought my deviated septum from an old broken nose had diminished my sense of smell, but apparently that is all in my head.

Our professor, Heather, is really nice and chill and from California, so we had a lovely evening listening to music and conversing and tasting wine. She also adopted two cats from the cat sanctuary in the Argentina Ruins in the middle of Rome, and they were just as entertaining as they ate catnip and played with wine corks. This week for wine club, we are going out to a wine bar to do a tasting, so we are very excited to put our new skills to use in style!

Brad -- Pompeii
Friday night, Jaime's friend from Chapman University, Andy, came to Rome from London for the first few days of his spring break. He could not get over how amazing Rome is and said it was one of his favorite cities in Europe. We hung out at our apartment and Jaime cooked gnocchi as we all drank a few bottles of wine (of which we learned about in our wine class) and some limoncello before heading to The Surge-Irish Pub across the street for a Guinness. We were up until the wee hours of the morning posting ridiculous webcam music videos of ourselves on Facebook and taking pictures of each other jumping off of various things.

Needless to say, it was not that fun waking up early the next morning to catch the train to Naples. I slept the whole way there. From Naples we got on a bus that took us to Pompeii. I slept the whole way there too. And when we arrived we had a few hours to kill, so the eleven of us from Lorenzo de' Medici took a stroll around the contemporary city of Pompeii, went inside yet another beautiful church, and then ate at a pizza restaurant.

I had La Pizza Frutte di Mare -- which in Italian translates to something like "the pizza with yields of the sea", but really meant that the entire beach was on my pizza and I spent more time shelling than eating, but it was delectable and definitely worth the wait.

In the middle of the city was the site of the original ancient ruins of Pompeii. It was established around 600 B.C. by the Osci, a people of central Italy, later taken over by the Etruscans, and then conquered and taken over by the Romans. In 72 A.D. the great Mount Vesuvius exploded in a violent eruption that buried Pompeii and other surrounding towns in 23 feet of scorching hot ash, killing all its inhabitants.

Pompeii was not discovered until nearly 1600 years later when builders were excavating the site, and was not seriously uncovered for another 150 years by archaeologists. There is still 2/3 more of the town to be uncovered -- though excavation has been halted because of concerns over the graffiti and erosion that is destroying the uncovered parts of Pompeii.

Our tour guide was a very knowledgeable Italian man who walked us through the ash preserved ruins. Because they were covered by ash for so long, no moisture, air, weather, erosion, or people were able to deteriorate them. The lack of sunlight preserved the fresco art as well; therefore the site is a remarkably accurate glimpse into the lives of 1st century Romans.

And they were remarkably promiscuous. 25 brothels are scattered across town with large erections carved into the road to point the direction. The olive oil lamps that lit the door to the brothels emitted a red light that dubbed the areas "red light districts." Each room in the brothel had a fresco above the door displaying the working girl's specialty.

Apparently, the male reproductive organ also symbolizes good luck, because the phallic symbol was sculpted all over town. The "horn of plenty" has since evolved into a sign of good luck and our guide carried around a small gold one in his pocket just for this purpose.

We went inside a washroom that had a basin below an open ceiling to let rain water in. Apparently they mixed in ammonia-containing urine with the water in order to whiten their togas. On the inside of a house we were also able to see beautiful frescoes painted with a red pigment from a hematite compound from the nearby volcano and blue hues exported from ancient Egypt. There were mosaic marble tiles pieced together on the floor and a square opening in the ceiling that let light in and drained rain water into a square depression on the floor and flowed under the ground into the street.

The streets were their sewage drainages, so it was a good thing Pompeii was situated on a hill. The ancient crosswalks to avoid trekking through the excrement consisted of huge flat stones that were situated exactly one meter apart to let carriages cross over them -- the traffic indentations from heavy wheel traffic remain in the street to this day.

The stones on the side of the street also had loops carved out of them for people to tie up their animals when they went inside shops. They also had fresh running water at various points through the city -- Jaime even filled her water bottle up in one. Needless to say, the Romans were brilliant engineers.

Political slogans were preserved on the walls, and numerous brick oven pizza bakeries were discovered. An amphitheatre with perfect central resonance was situated on the edge of town for political assemblies and plays. To be honest, it sounds like it was a fabulous place to live for the most part.

Among an abundance of clay pots and jugs were the molds of several bodies from when Vesuvius erupted. The bodies disintegrated immediately, but the ash around them remained intact, so archaeologists injected plaster into the cavity to obtain a mold of the people. It was rather eerie to see what these people looked like in their last moments.

After our amazing tour, we went to a local limoncello shop and had free samples. Limoncello is best in Southern Italy. Limoncello liqueur is made from the skin of the peels of lemons being soaked in alcohol for eight days and then mixed with sugar-water simple syrup and put into the freezer for a few months. It is delicious. Southern Italy is also filled with stray dogs, and I played with four local canines that were just chilling in the street. They followed me most of the way to the hotel, and I wished I could have taken them home.

We were all exhausted but had a lovely meal at our hotel of pasta, swordfish, baba (a pastry soaked in Rum) and some wine. I retired to our room to watch CNN global news -- apparently European channels focus more on the world news whereas many American news stations are focused on America. And if you want an update, it seems as though our world is still as chaotic as ever, but at least we had such a great time in Pompeii!

Jaime -- Mt. Vesuvius
We woke up after I had about 11 hours of much needed sleep on Sunday morning. Brad and I both showered and were down in the hotel corridor for breakfast by 8:30. The breakfast was quite a pleasant surprise of a table full of an array of different pastries including nutella stuffed croissants, a nutty chocolate cake, and a typical pastry from Naples, sfogliatelle. It is a layered pastry with flavored ricotta inside and looks something like a ridged seashell.

It was very delicious, and the mother of our student advisor, Barbara, requested that she bring home a dozen of them after the trip! We also had delicious cappuccinos and fresh squeezed blood orange juice. However, it was a very sugary and not a very healthy meal so we were lucky that the bus arrived 30 minutes later to drive us to Mt. Vesuvius for a hike.

It took about 30 minutes to get to the visitor center on the volcano; most of the drive was on bumpy and winding roads. The hair pin turns that led us up the volcano seemed very desolate and lifeless. It was a beautiful drive getting glimpses of the mountains surrounding us as well as of the Mediterranean Sea.

At one point there was part of the mountain that looked like a face lying down with the nose up. The bus driver said it had something to do with a legend, but he didn't really tell us what the legend was. When we arrived to the visitor center we started the hike immediately, being sure not to forget our hiking sticks that an old Italian man was handing out to us.

The hike was not easy, but it was not tedious either, especially because there was a trail. It was a clear and sunny day, so it was very pleasant. There were views of Naples, the Mediterranean Sea, snow covered mountains, the islands of Capri, Ischia and Procida, and many little towns below, including Pompeii and Herculaneum, (the towns destroyed from the 79 AD eruption).

Part of the trail had snow on it, but is very rare to see Mt. Vesuvius with snow on it at all. Once we finally made it to the top of this 4,203 foot stratovolcano, I began to feel a little terrified, mostly because I realized I was standing around a crater of an active volcano which usually erupts every fifty years and last erupted in 1944 and could potentially erupt again at any moment. It was amazing being able to look down inside the crater and see the view of everything from the top.

We spent quite a bit of time on the top taking pictures and relaxing. Then we hiked down, met the bus driver and he drove us into Napoli for the afternoon. It was such a gorgeous warm day so many people were out and about. It was also "Women's Day," so all of us girls got Mimosa flowers at lunch for being women!

We walked through a major piazza and then down to the water which was filled with sailboats. We then went and got some lunch near the water. It was delicious. Then we met the bus driver again so that he could drive us around Naples a bit and show us some nice views of the bay of Naples. However, there was quite a bit of traffic and if our train had not been delayed five minutes or if we had not sprinted through the station, we would have missed it.

It was definitely stressful, but we made it to Rome on time and did not get blown off the side of Mt. Vesuvius!