Unreal City continued.

My first night was a blur. It being a Sunday, not a lot was open, banking or food or otherwise. We (my new roommate and a large group of other students) trudged around until we found a promising pizza shop, which turned out to be closed. Then our next attempt was too small for the whole bunch of us, so about seven of us wandered around in search of something else, which turned out to be another pizza shop. Italian pizza shops are a bit different. There you order by the slice, and instead of saying "I'd like one slice," they assume you want one slice. The question is, how big. They cook huge sheet-pizzas and cut off whatever size you indicate with scissors, weigh it for price, pop it into an oven for a few minutes, and wrap it for you to eat on your way elsewhere.
We got back just as I was finishing mine, just as the olive oil that had been steadily dripping into the wax-paper wrapping spilled out all over my hand. (Olive oil is HUGE here. And I've never realized how tasty it is...) Some people were crowded around the small tv in the lobby watching a soccer match between Rome and Naples, so I joined (Rome won, but about 5 minutes after I started nodding off), then promptly went to bed.

Day 2:
A morning orientation followed a breakfast unusually rich for my ...unbreakfasty tastes. We were welcomed by Franco, the jolly and rotund Italian head of Centro administration, who quickly described how things worked, what wonderful perks the Centro (the best place in the world) had to offer, what fees to pay, that we are not to buy drugs at all ("we have better stuff here"), and that we shouldn't buy wine until he's taught us all about how to drink wine, and what sorts to buy. Then Nigel, our head professor, took the stand. Nigel teaches in Wales, and is in charge of the Ancient City course and the intermediate Latin course. He's British (obviously), middle aged, and seems very interesting. I learned today that he was in charge of a huge project in which all of the monuments of Rome were catalogued and described and published in a dictionary five volumes thick and in four different languages (not, unforunately, in four different language editions, but rather that each entry is in one of four languages, depending on the author's preference), which will probably come into heavy use in our classes and research projects. (Incidentally, we privileged Centristi will get access, not granted to anyone else, to the extensive library of the American Academy.)
Lynn, a professor with a more linguistic orientation, will teach Advanced Greek (Thucydides) and the second advanced Latin course (Suetonius' Nero). I will not spend a lot of time with her, apparently.
Jeremy, a professor from Wabash (w00t Indiana!), will help out with the Ancient City, and teaches the primary advanced Latin course Urbs Romana, which I am taking.
Finally, Joel, a NYU grad student who reminds me of Daniel Jacobs, teaches Intermediate Greek (Medea), another class I'm in.
Someone else who was not there, possibly and probably two someone elses, will cover Italian and Art History.

This introduction was followed by a tour of the neighborhood, divided into groups. Mine was led by Nigel, who answered questions and pointed out things like, "Italians don't really go to bars the way Americans do; they'll usually only have one or two drinks at dinner. There's an Irish Pub right over there. I'm not recommending it, I'm just saying it's there. It's quite noisy at night. I live around here, so I know. Not that I've been there..." His accent is distinctly British, but it's one I've never heard before. I don't know whether it's a Welsh thing, as he teaches there (and who knows where in Britain he's from), or whether its from his time spent in the States (Wisconsin) and Italy, or what. For example, where in an Oxford accent words like "there" tend to be pronounced like "theyuh" or "theuh," he says "theyah," with a harder, more emphasized, slightly nasal last syllable.
The neighborhood only served to heighten my impression of the unreality of Rome. Gone were the Midwestern suburbs of flattish land, wide streets, driveways and separate houses (or 3-story max apartments). Instead, a moist, crowded, colorful jumble of five- or six-story buildings heavily adorned in ornate balconies bursting with alien plant life competed for space, and tiny, bubbly European cars packed the space on either side of the street, crammed in at corners, sideways, and even on sidewalks. Despite assurances that this was an upper-middle class neighborhood, graffiti covered every surface available up to about eight feet off the ground. Shops and booths were built right into the apartments, with garage door openings that shut securely with the closure of the shops themselves. A nunnery next door to the Centro , faced with a tasteful tan stucco, has a statue of Mary above the entranceway, framed in bright blue neon lights.
In Italy commercial businesses aren't necessarily what they seem. I think florists are merely florists, and perfumeries sell perfume, but tobacconists sell, in addition to tobacco products, salt, stamps, greeting cards, and other odds and ends on a regular basis. Bars are primarily coffee shops. Most sell some sort of food, sometimes gelato, sometimes pastries, but alcohol is definitely not a part of their definition. They might serve it as an aperitif. Stands sell beautiful fruits and vegetables, including (it was comforting to discover) Chiquita bananas, imported from Ecuador. The oranges around here are simply succulent.
As we walked around these neighborhoods, trying (unsuccessfully, on my part) to memorize the locations of the nearby Chinese restaurant (also not recommended), the cartelieres (I will need to go buy additional school supplies as soon as possible, probably tomorrow afternoon), banks, ATMs, and gelato shops, I noticed that one of the peculiar aspects of Rome was how extra-three-dimensional it felt. As I looked around corners angles felt sharper, views were unexpected, lighting and road curvature were completely new. I quickly realized that I had never before spent time in a city that was not completely flat. I'm from Indianapolis, I've spent time in Chicago, in Fort Wayne, lots in St. Louis, and I've visited many other grid-patterned, flattish cities. But Rome has hills (famously), and hills make everything crowded and more cut off. You can't see past the block in front of you, the buildings to your left tower higher even than they would if you were level with them, and you never know what to expect around a corner, whether it will be two large and close buildings, or a picturesque view of an entire street.
Occasionally our windings around these streets brought us upon unexpected sights. A high brick city wall rose up next to an intersection, a few old trees peering over it. This, Nigel explained, was the 17th c. reconstruction of the 4th c. AD Hadrianic walls. We Centristi live outside Rome proper, according to this division. Later on, we came upon the gatehouse into Trastevere, and we received another enthralling, brief history lecture about the events that took place here when Rome declared itself a Republic in the 18th c. We continued on up the street and around a corner, glimpsing a small park, some orange trees growing private property behind a fence, and we could hear rushing water. As we approached it, the gigantic fountain (aptly nicknamed the Fontanone) drew all of our attention. Its marble structure, it turns out, was mostly stripped from ancient monuments (and we later learned that that is the case with a great number of Rome's grander buildings), and it faces down the hill, which drops sharply just across the street. We turned to look that direction and got our first (and a glorious) view of the city proper, spread out below us in a jumble of ornate stone and terracotta roofing. Again the feeling of unreality hit, but this time we had a guide. Nigel directed our attention toward a low grey curving roof just beyond this other building, and told us that it was the Pantheon. Over there, through the gap in those bushes, was a palace built much later by someone else whose name I've forgotten. It was beautiful, and I wish I'd had my camera with me. I plan to bring it along and to go back, and I will get those pictures posted as soon as possible.
The afternoon continued with a lecture on the topography of Rome, what features of ancient Rome carry through today (roads, for example, often follow ancient pathways), etc. Finally it was time for the dreaded Latin placement exam, for which all but three of the 37 students (those three planning to take only Greek) trekked into a crowded room, cowered as we scratched rust from our brains, and struggled through a chunk of Martial and a passage from Marcellinus. I didn't get a single entirely cohesive sentence out of mine, but I understood the gist of pieces of them. (The results came in yesterday; they took all of the students bound for the Advanced Latin and divided them in half. I made the cut for Urbs, and am glad of it.)
The evening was concluded with a welcome dinner, at which all of the students, faculty, faculty families, administrative staff and families, kitchen staff and maids were in one room. The food (as every in-house meal is, it was served in several courses) was delicious, topped with a fantastic tiramisu.

I went to bed tired, but had to read for a bit to fall asleep (that's a nasty habit-- I shouldn't train myself to sleep at the sight of my homework), and when I did I slept soundly until 3am. I struggled and lost that battle, getting up to take a shower shortly after 4 (stupid jetlag). By 3pm I was drained, so I took a nap, but only after an exciting morning in the city, where it finally sank in that Rome is for real.