Somehow, I always manage to find a school on a hill: my high school was built into the side of a mountain, my college is sitting pretty at the top of a hill in Clinton, New York, and now I've found a study abroad program at the peak of the Aventine Hill. I don't know why I do this to myself. I hate hills. Maybe my subconscious is trying to tell me that I really don't.
Anyway, life atop the Aventine was superb. I was talking about it these last couple days with my friends, and we decided that there is really no better place we could have lived. We could see the ruins of the imperial palace from the window, had the best food available to us right across the river in Trastevere, and we knew about a bunch of unconventional places like the Parco Savello orange grove, the Rose Garden and the keyhole view. Really, I considered taking the veil if it meant I could live in this convent. It was just the most amazing place to live, and all the better for being a little bit on the outside of things: I explored more because it took just as much effort to go to the unconventional places as the top 10 tourist sites.
Speaking of nuns, living with them was awesome. One of my favorite parts of the day was meeting for dinner in the lobby and watching a few minutes of some Italian game show with the nuns as they chatted and knitted away. Even those that spoke English forced us to struggle through our elementary Italian to talk to them. They rocked. Seriously, a nunnery might be in my future.
Ciao,
J
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