Mon­day, August 31^st, 2009.

The first day of class! We had a two hour ses­sion with Pro­fes­sor Walsh of the UW Law School and his course on civil rights and pro­tec­tions within the EU. After this we had an hour of Ital­ian before being released for the day.

Rumurs were fly­ing around that Julia Roberts was going to be out­side the Rome Cen­ter film­ing a scene for her new film, and it seemed those rumors were true as a bunch of secu­rity guards, film equip­ment, and black walled vans showed up in the after­noon and began set­ting up light­ing, cam­eras, and other such equip­ment. Some indi­vid­u­als went to the Rome Cen­ter (which had a direct over­head view of the scene) and were actu­ally trapped in there for a brief period when they were film­ing. Indi­vid­u­als also claimed they saw Julia herself.

After this excite­ment, most of us went back to our apart­ment and retired at around midnight.

Tues­day, Sep­tem­ber 1^st, 2009

Sec­ond day of class, and this was EU/Italian/US com­par­a­tive Law with Pro­fes­sor McCann. Fol­low­ing the usual two hours of sem­i­nar we had another hour of Ital­ian. Tak­ing the usual siesta from the Roman heat in the Library of the Rome Cen­ter, Rachel and I acted like Amer­i­cans and cel­e­brated being in Rome my hid­ing in the liv­ing room and watch­ing Flight of the Con­chords for a few hours. We then cel­e­brated Kevin’s birth­day and made him some Pesto Gnoc­chi that was quite amaz­ing. After­wards, Rain, Dominique, Kevin, Rachel and I went to the Trevi foun­tain at night and had some gelato along the way at the place where most agree has the best in town. The foun­tain was still fairly crowded at night, but still no less impres­sive. After get­ting back at 1am, there was another episode of the Con­chords watched before retiring.

A few pic­tures have been uploaded to flickr.