Meat.

The title of this post is very important to my time here, but we'll get to that later...

It's hard to believe that almost three weeks have passed here.  Time is seriously flying.

Last Friday with my Christology class we went to the Cathedral of Rome, the Papal Basilica of St. John Lateran.  This marks the fourth Papal Basilica that I have been there in two weeks, which means I have been to all of them! Awesome!  St. John's is definitely by favorite of all the Papal Basilica's.  The design of the church had a huge emphasis on light, which attracted me to the space.  It was seriously beautiful!  And being a papal basilica there are some pretty cool relics, like a piece of the table from the Last Supper.  On Friday night we had our first spiritual event at the Augustinian house.  It was really great to meet with Fr. Bill.  He took us to their chapel and hands down it is the most beautiful chapel I have ever been in.  The picture does not do it justice!  Then, he took us up to the roof of their house.  The have one of the most incredible views of St. Peter's Basilica.  My pictures were taken with no zoom!  Gorgeous!   

Last weekend we took our first optional class trip to Casteli Romani.  It was a lot of really great things packed into a very short period of time.  We headed out on a bus at 14:00, also known as 2:00 for the Catacombs of St. Sebastian.  We went down into the catacombs with Claudia--who was once a tour guide there, one more thing she does great!  She showed us the tombs, graves, and plaques for the tombs, but the best part was seeing the tomb of St. Sebastian.  At the end of our tour of the catacombs we walking up to a wedding.  We watched the bride walk into the church and headed back on the bus. 

Our next stop was Castel Gandolfo--the summer home of the Pope.  We saw the Pope's villa and walked to see Lake Albano.  The lake was created by a volcano had had the most amazing view!  After taking pictures by the lake we walked about the sweet little villa.  We had some of the best gelato since I've been here and when we were leaving to get back on the bus we saw another wedding.  This couple had the coolest wedding car I have ever seen!  Precious!

Here is where we get to the meat.  We travelled to the town of Ariccia, a country town outside of Rome.  This town was traditionally a town for those traveling outside of Rome to stop and get a meal, so we came there to get a meal.  We had to hike up this huge hill to get to the town, but it was totally worth it.  The view of the sunset was amazing and we saw yet another wedding!  September 8th was a popular day to get married in Rome!  Ariccia is known for its meat, so we had a traditional country meal.  They brought out a huge family style pile of meat.  We had proscuttio, salami, capicolla, and porchetta.  The porchetta was delicious.  In a country where most of the food is carbs having meat was so good!  On top of the meat we had two kinds of pasta, bread, cookies, and lots of vino!  It was a great trip.  

This week has been a busy one for school work, but were preparing for a nice weekend in Cinque Terre! I am so excited!