Monday 6/15 Broken Down!

So today was awesome, despite the fact that the camera battery died towards the end of the tour, so I couldn’t finish taking pictures. And you should be proud, I haven’t taken multiple pictures of the same thing. Giusi (pronounced joo-zee), our tour guide, walked soooo fast for an elderly lady. She was booking it. So there wasn’t much time to take a lot of pictures.
Before we headed out this morning, we had continental breakfast at the hotel, it was……interesting. Apparently it is “American Style”, don’t really know what that means. But the eggs were kind of gross, and the bread was really hard. But they had this fruit like you get in the cans. You know the pears that you get in the can that are in the syrup, yeah that was fresh along with peaches. And than they had this straight up juice, with no added anything. Like they just squeezed the orange and that’s it. Except it was like a mixture of citrus fruit, then they had pineapple juice, that was really good. Trying to communicate with people in Italian is really hard :-)! I try to get bye with my little knowledge, but its not enough. I am pretty good at ordering, but when they ramble off a question I just stare at them with this confused look and say “Scussi?” (I hope that’s the right spelling. Adam isn’t in the room so I can’t spell check it by him!). Then they have to try and get by asking their question in English. I feel bad, oh well!
(<- Giusi)
We did go into the Coliseum (actually the what it was originally called the Flavian Amphitheater), it was SOOOO COOL!!!! Oh my word. That thing is huge. And than we were walking down Via Cavour, the street our hotel is on, and you look down the road and THERE IT IS. It is really kinda weird to see pictures of it all the time, and than your there and you can’t believe that it is the actual thing. It is HUGE though. Than we walked through some of the ancient ruins, mostly the Forum. They had soo many ruins and everything was sooooo big. How did they build stuff that big like 2000 years ago? Its insane. One interesting thing that we saw is the former Temple of Mercury. It is now a church. In the middle ages I think they converted it into a church. They were originally going to tear down the columns, but since it was soo well built, they would not come down. So you can actually see the marks that the ropes made when they were trying to tear them down.
So when you are walking through all these ruins, you are sitting here thinking, why did they have to tear everything down (or dismantle them, as Guisi says)? Apparently, the Coliseum, after the games were cancelled when the faith of Rome became Christian, was obviously not used for anything. So beggars lived in it and prostitutes lived in it. So eventually trees and weeds started growing in and around it. So when St. Peter’s Basilica was built, they took the stone and marble to build it. And then the Christians also defaced and chopped the arms off of the statues of emperors and god’s because of the pagan religion. And with all the other buildings, when something new needed to be built, they took stones from the old structures. Kind of sad.
Tomorrow, we are going to look at the prison were Peter and Paul were held. And than we are going to the Vatican tomorrow also. But I took a lot of pictures of the Coliseum and other stuff, which I have included (hopefully) on this post.
Okay, so tonight was the Farewell Banquet. Adam and I sat a table with two Kenyan women, two groups from Texas, and one group from Chicago.
(<-Jenni and I at the Colesium)
We got these saweet necklaces from the Kenyan women, and from the other Texas people I got a “I Texas” bumper sticker, a Texan Flag poster, and a key-chain of the Texan State flower, I think. And than from the Chicago people, I got a CD from their choir, a postcard from Chicago, and a White Sox bag. So there was this group “Orpheus” from the Ukrain sang a blessing before dinner and than sang two songs at the very end of the concert. They were amazing (they were an all male octet choir). And there was this Indian male quintet group that sang these gospel songs and they were really good too. It is weird to hear these gospel songs coming from Indian people. I know this sounds weird but they sounded “gospely”. They sounded like a black male choir singing gospel songs. It was really cool. In the middle of those two groups and after dinner, we sang. We first sang “The Word was God” and they really liked it a lot. Even though we thought the room was going to not do well with acoustics, it actually was really good, and there was a mic so that helped a lot I’m sure too. And than we sang the revamped “Jing-ga-lye-ya” and the crowed LOVED it. They were laughing and enjoying it the whole time, and we got the first standing ovation of the night. Thankfully we sang with A TON of energy, so that helped the whole song as well. Than when we were talking to people after-words and they were like “Where are you from?” and when we responded that we are from a High school, they were flabbergasted. It is really cool to flabbergast people. So the dinner ended and we all left, although the majority of us could not find Adrien, our tour director, or the other like five people from madrigals. So we sat outside in front of the hotel for like ten or so minutes waiting for Adrien and the bus and it never came. Finally Adrien rushed out of the side of the hotel that we were on all confused and told us that we were supposed to have met on the other side of the hotel, which non of us knew. But it all worked out and we are back at the hotel.
Tomorrow is the first mass choir rehearsal and we are rehearsing in a space that holds 350 people, and there are like 320 of us. So it’s going to be a tight squeeze, than we have free time in the evening and than we go to the Papal audience on Wednesday.
Well Katie is hopefully buying her car tomorrow!!! I am looking forward to that ride home Katie, so you better have it!

See you soon!

P.S. Mom you should be proud, I put Adam’s and I’s shirts in the bathroom and turned the shower on cause there is not iron here, it worked like a charm. THANKS FOR THE GOOD ADVICE. Also, the calling card definently doesn’t work. Sammie’s does, and I did the exact same thing she dialed but it says that we would be charged calling internationally and it didn’t even ask for the pin. So sorry! I’ll try and call you tomorrow!

OH, I forgot to mention. So I felt like a total tourist. We wore these things called “Whispers” and it was a receiver with an ear piece and Giusi had the microphone, so here we are all thirty of us with these things…..it was nice but kind of weird.

(Aryn and the Whisper)