Ciao Ciao!
This week has definitely been one of the most fun, spontaneous, and memorable weeks not only of the trip but of my life. Finishing out my time in Sardinia in the beginning of the week was absolutely insane. My friend Faith and I had the privilege of taking a boat tour along the east coast of the island and swim the crystals lear waters of beaches inaccessible by car. We even got to dive down and see a shipwreck! It was so cool and swimming under the towering limestone cliffs of Cala Golroitze made me feel a sense of the sublime. We have been reading romantic poetry in class and it was cool to really experience this sense of the sublime that they had talked about. It was crazy to think about how only days before I couldn't have known that I would be having such a life changing experience. We finished the day clubbing in a fortress on the beach which was completely surreal and to make it even better, they let us in for free! I'm so glad I got to take the trip to Sardinia during my time in Italy and I would recommend to anyone studying abroad anywhere to venture out of their designated city even if it feels a little stressful and scary.
I returned to a week full of my favorite excursions yet back in Rome. Despite being completely exhausted from our trip (I still haven't fully recovered from the sleep deprivation and I honestly don't think I will until I'm back home in 2 weeks), the excitement surrounding the Galleria & Villa Borghese, Keats-Shelley House, Tivoli, and various other plans with my friends here pushed me to rally. In the Galleria Borghese I got to see some of what would become my favorite sculptures and paintings ever. Seeing the very scenes I've read about in my HUM classes back in San Diego was really cool and it produced and overwhelming awareness of the history of the city of Rome, the most intensely I've felt it over the entirety of the trip. The ones that stood out to me were scenes from Ovid's
Metamorphoses. We also got to do a scavenger hunt of the Borghese Gardens which was a lot of fun because we weren't allowed to work together. It was cool to experience the serenity of the gardens on my own. We followed this tour by going out for kebab with the professor which was a ton of fun!
At the end of the week some classmates and I decided to dress up to go see a Romeo and Juliet ballet at the Circus Maximus. This was awesome because it featured a full live orchestra and it was at night. Because of the way it is in a valley it was also the first time I've been outdoors in the past month without dripping sweat which was a really nice change. The next day we went on a day trip to Tivoli which I honestly knew nothing about but I'm really glad we went because we got to see the ruins of Emperor Hadrian's palace and the Villa d'Este which was stunningly beautiful.
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