God decides vespas aren't a good idea....

thursday i walked to another country. i like saying that. well we walked to the vatican and went to saint peter's basillica. when we arrived in the piazza there were thousands of germans (i swear), all wearing the same shirts and chanting together. then they decided to all go into the basillica at once and push their way through all the people. we were stepped on, yelled at, and pushed by this group. our professor, casper, warned us to be careful because "it's never safe when you get a group of germans together who are raising their hands and cheering together."



Once in, casper was interrupted by a worker telling him he couldn't talk to us or congregate in a group, although there were TONS of other tourists groups inside. so casper silently pointed at things as we walked through and he still got yelled at more by the worker. HILARIOUS. this is when casper's frustration was escalating at the italian worker and alec silently ponders all they have to say.



we had to leave saint peters and have lecture outside but it was really pretty. i want to go back again and just walk around on my own time.

the rest of the week went by fast. thursday night was our first late night finishing a project. here's some pics of my final sketchbook we turned in. This is what i have been working on for trajan's market.





Friday night was our usual family dinner. Adrianna and her boyfriend came over and we had lasagna and played cards. Saturday we planned to ride vespas. the first place didn't have their bikes returned from the previous day, second shop were all reserved, third the last two had just been rented and fourth wouldn't rent to us because we were american!! it seemed pretty evident we wren't supposed to rent vespas. maybe God's trying to keep us safe. we'll see what happens. since we had the day free, Linds and I explored parts of Rome we'd never been to before. It made me really enjoy this place a lot more. the city center is tiring, dirty and not that great when you're in it every day, but outside of the center it's a lot more calm and beautiful. it made me happy to be enjoying this city and to see new things. yay.

Our day ended in piazza navona watching this crazy finger puppet performance of michael jackson. he even had smoke coming off his little table stage. this is the guy with the crazy fingers.