I am now making an ongoing list of food in America now ruined forever because Italy does it better. Pasta was first to bite the dust. Coffee was next. Didn’t even need to put cream in it.
A few of us began the day in the outdoor seating area of the hostel finally understanding that coffee and pastries is all you really need to have for breakfast.
After some free time spent brushing up on Duolingo, because dear Lord I’ll take all the help I can get, the International Media class gathered to go to a lecture at the American University of Rome.
It was leg day for all 30 of us. The walk was steep and uphill. Stairs upon stairs upon stairs.
As the jet lag slowly wore off, we listened to Dr. Andrea Bini talk to us about the history and current state of Italian mass media. Apparently early newspapers in Italy were used as propaganda, mainly for fascism, and today politicians continue to own media giants, constantly at the whim of influence.
We wondered if Italians are aware of this and take it into account when consuming their news, but then we thought about how much of America fails to be media literate as well pointing fingers at fake news left and right and sharing completely fabricated stories on Facebook.
We took a bus to the Colosseum, and found it to be one of those things you can’t fully process. It was the same feeling I got seeing the Statue of Liberty a little over a year ago, or when you see a celebrity in person: you see that the thing is a real thing and find it hard, if at all possible to believe that it actually exists.
Also, it rained, but your friendly local commuter here came prepared and brought an umbrella, so it wasn’t so bad.
Thanks to our incredible tour guide, I can return to America with a healthy arsenal of fun facts about Ancient Rome. For example, we learned that the Nike logo dates back to Ancient Greece and Rome and was styled after wings carved into an arch dedicated to the emperor Titus, so someone deserves compensation for that. Also, the term “downtown” comes from the heart of Rome where the paths leading to the center of the Roman Forum all slope downward. Do whatever you want with that information.
A group of us finished the day experiencing authentic Italian pizza for the first time– that is the third thing that is now ruined in America. Although, for anyone from the North Hills reading this, Monte Cellos can be a close second I suppose.
It’s hard to believe that we still have so much of the country left to see when we’ve already encountered so much. The best is yet to come.