Portal to another world

Italy I have come to find, is a very hot place. Yes, we would all like to think of nothing ill about Italy, save perhaps unsavory thoughts of Signore Berlusconi or perhaps a stray thought of how they only won the last World Cup because the Mafia made it happen... but alas, aside from abundant crime and perhaps "false governments" that are mere toys and facades of the underground (or not so underground) crime organizations that lie beneath the surface, there is one thing that puts a slight blemish on the bronze skinned, well lubricated through years of olive oil usage and poor liver function due to the more mature form of the common fruit known as the grape. Heat. Dear God! I have to wonder at how JP II lasted so long here even with his Popemobile. Shouldn't he have suffered from heat stroke at least as many times as Cheney had heart attacks?

Ok, ok I'll stop complaining at least long enough to take a sip of wine, a bite of freshly baked bread dipped in olive oil and... ok go ahead and twist my arm, a nice scoop of gelato... or 3. Despite the heat, it's quite lovely here in the hometown of one of the world's former great empires. Friday made for an incredibly uneventful day as I spent most of it helping my friend prepare for the last leg of their English Certificate No. 1 exam. The spoken portion was last weekend and this Saturday was the written and reading comprehension section which lasts a mere six hours. Poor little buggers... several incomprehensible reading passages, a bucket load of broken rules, and plenty of misplaced prepositions later, the exam proved to be much harder than they had bargained for. Ah well...

Instead of busting my head over the table and wanting to thrust my No. 2 Taiconderoga pencil through my eye, I spent the majority of Saturday morning and early afternoon with two of my Villa buddies and three of the UD students from the group that comes to Villa that I had met at my surprise birthday party. Amazingly enough, they are actually very nice guys and even more amazingly, I had no qualms with spending time with them. What was even better is that regularly, I got to play interpreter... and I actually was pretty good at it. I did not realize until now just how much I have improved. WOO!!

We started the day by going to a very famous outdoor market where the vendors only speak Roman dialect (so having Gabriele there who not only is a Roman but also frequents this market was quite helpful) and the name of the game is bargaining. They are serious about it to. So seriously in fact that several times I had to drag one of my American comrades along with me as he was being physically pulled by someone trying to seduce him into their "store." I also came to realize that with all the merchandise in this vast market, you were never really sure what was real or fake, legit or stolen. It was a trip. I decided to buy an Armani zip up hoodie (which I am quite sure is fake) just because fighting with the lady over the price was one of the most hilarious and altogether frightening experiences of my life. She did not even come to my shoulder and even so, I think she probably could have taken me out... or had one of her "friends" do it for her.

After grabbing some lunch, gelato and then walking through Piazza del Popolo and seeing the lovely festival being thrown by none other than everyone's #1 guy, Berlusconi and even getting free merchandise from one of my brother's favorite people, we headed for home sun burnt, dehydrated, and happy. A little later after trying to recoup my water levels, I headed back out to the city with Antonio and Paolo who had more of the city to show me which of course comes with boat loads of history. Being that it was late in the day on a Saturday, the center of the city was packed and trying to get around proved to be quite difficult. It was obviously annoying my two companions, but when you're not the one driving, watching the faces of other drivers is quite entertaining. Watching people fight and swear at each other is far more exciting in Italian... and slightly scarier as you aren't quite sure they will contain their fight to just the two of them.

As we got closer to the center Antonio suddenly remembered that today was the National Gay Pride Parade which was being held in Rome (which apparently had caused quite a stir... gee, I wonder why), but he did not even have to say it as it was already quite apparent. More than once I questioned whether the person walking next to me was of a male or female persuasion and I suddenly became even more aware of the very tight t-shirt I was wearing... oh goodness. We ended up going to parts of the city that I had not yet visited. The best was when we technically left Italy altogether and went to the state of Malta (did you know that the Vatican is not the only place in Rome that can be called its own state?). In this tiny little... um... state? County? Which is all enclosed behind old stone walls which hold beautiful gardens and cobblestone streets, there is a huge set of double steal doors. They do not look like much but on the left door there is a small hole no bigger than the diameter of a quarter. When you look through this hall you find yourself looking down a very long corridor of vines which are in full bloom. If you look a little longer and let your eyes adjust (the sun had set and was now casting a faint glow over the city) you realize that at the end of the vine covered alley there is a shape. The dome of Saint Peter's, across the river. A portal to another world. I could not decide if it was real as the sight of it was just to amazing, even when it could only be viewed through this frustratingly tiny hole. We spent the rest of the night walking the city and talking about art. It just keeps getting better.