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I spent pretty much all of last weekend writing an eight page policy paper for my Italy and the European Union class. Our topic was the conflicts in Libya, Egypt, and Tunisia and we had to write it as if we were either a country in the European Union or someone who had an office in the Europe Union. I was assigned the position of the High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy. It took me a long time to write and I had four pages of citations, but I was really happy with the result.
On Sunday night, I treated myself to dinner at my favorite restaurant in Rome – Monte Carlo. I had a plate of gnocchi in a cream sauce and water for only 9 euro!
My last week of classes was pretty uneventful (in terms of a semester in Rome), but was still pretty exciting when compared to a normal week. On Monday, I had three of classes and they went off without a hitch.
Tuesday night, after my classes, I went to apertivo with a few of my friends from my Italian class. It was delicious. A glass of wine was only six euro and I had four plates of food!
On Wednesday, we interviewed a Roma person (more commonly known as a gypsy) for our audio documentary for one of my classes. He told us about daily life in the camp and the difficulties of getting a job. The living conditions are horrible, they are not allowed to have visitors after 8:00 PM, and every movement is recorded on camera. He eventually found a job, but his employers found out he was Roma after 10 days of work and fired him.
After that, I had my Italian oral exam. It went really well and I was very proud of myself. I felt that it was a good measure of how much I have improved my Italian skills over the course of the past semester. We were supposed to have a 10 minute conversation with my professor and if we ran out of things to talk about we had the option of describing pictures. We spoke for 15 minutes and did not use the pictures at all!
On Wednesday night, we celebrated my roommate, Zach’s, birthday by going out to one of our favorite restaurants, “Da Tonino.” It was really fun and I had a great dish of penne pasta with a pesto sauce.
On Thursday, I had my Italian final written exam. It was very hard, but remain optimistic that I will get an A in the class.
On Friday, I participated in a Model EU for my Italy and the European Union class. It was the second part of our paper that I wrote earlier in the week. We held a mock summit where we discussed the same things we wrote about in our paper. As Head of Foreign and Security Policy, I was one of the more involved people in the discussion and ran most of the meeting. It was a lot of work, but I had a blast.
On Friday night, my Italian class went out to dinner with our Italian teacher. She took us to an area of Rome that some of the “artsy” Italians hang out at night called Pigneto. It was really nice to see a different side of Rome and we all had a blast!
Note: This post was originally published on May 13, 2011 in a blog entitled “Romeing Around Europe” which chronicled my study abroad experience.