The last week! I’ve had a wonderful time here in Italy. I can definitely say that I learned a plethora of grammatical rules and tenses in Rome with ItaliaIdea. I am so very grateful to the donors who were generous enough to give me this opportunity, and I will undoubtedly be back in Italy, if not Rome.
This past week, there was the national holiday Ferragosto on Tuesday. Ferragosto was originally a pagan holiday, but because Catholicism is the national religion of Italy, it has been transformed to celebrate the Assumption of Mary. That day, the whole of Rome seemed void of Italians. This is because most Italians leave the city to flock to the beaches and have lunch or dinner and party with their friends and family. Since I didn’t have class, however, Huda and I had an American breakfast at a bar called Meccanismo in Trastevere and then right after, we went to the Borghese Gardens. We got refreshments and sat in the park and talked, watching Italians and tourists alike pass the holiday out in nature.
Later that evening, we met one of Huda’s friends, Jurgita, at the Spanish steps. Coming from Lithuania, she had just finished an internship in Florence and was living in Rome. She had just returned to Rome from a vacation at home and it was her birthday, so we celebrated by getting gelato and then sitting on the spanish steps to talk.
Friday, my last day, I ended up having lunch with Huda before class and we went to this Sicilian bakery we knew near Via Arenula. Later that night, we had our last dinner tonight at a well-known restaurant, Nonna Betta, in the Jewish Quarter.
