Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Capitoline Museum

Sorry, no soccer photos or videos. I did have the highlights posted to my Facebook wall, assuming the video has not been blocked for copyright infringement. I'll see what I can get from my compatriots at who also attended.

The following is a  post of pictures from the Capitoline Museum in the forum of Rome. It is now housed in the old Campidoglio by Michelangelo (the old Senate building). Featured here are many statues of mythic figures, emperors and contributors to the Roman Republic. It is a very cool museum that contains hundreds of statues in peak condition! Gorgeous!

















Monday, April 18, 2011

Final Movies for Class

The videos below are our neighborhood final videos (at least the ones posted on Youtube). So this is more of what we have been working on...

The Corviale Video

The Trastevere Video (my group)

Roma Tre Dinner

This last week my apartment played host to a dinner with our Roma Tre counterparts we met during the workshop we did. They made us a delicious meal of Spaghetti Carbonara and a wonderful cookie dessert thing. It was quite a mess to clean up, but it was totally worth it to spend time with our friends here in Rome, whether they are from ISU or Italy. I also happened to be visited by one of my fraternity brothers Dylan Gove. He was in Rome on Spring break so we spent some time hanging out here, as we are both studying abroad this semester. We also have a little construction project going on outside of our building this week. They have put scaffolding up on our side of the building and they are doing... something with it. Mainly the workers just make noise from 7 am, and we have to keep our door locked to prevent people from getting in via our balcony.

Cory enjoying the "sun" on our balcony.

Mike was too...

The kind ladies who cooked on dinner for us last week. 

Carbonara!

Dylan (in mid-blink)

Final Drawings

Hello all, we have been very busy here in Rome. Only two weeks left until we are done with our program, and Brad and I will travel to Spain for a week after that. Our reviews were held for our drawing class, so here is the results!

One of many in Cory's case...


Peter McDermitt

Matt Gaul

RJ Jia

Adam Aalgaard


Andrew Dickman

Andrew Holcombe

Mitch Hartig


Alex Michl

Alex Korby

Sam Mulholland

Me

Me again.

Monday, April 11, 2011

Oh Neglected Audience!

I am truly sorry that you have become so neglected these past couple of weeks. We have gotten immensely busy these last couple of weeks and are turning in projects at a rapid pace. We have drawings due Wednesday, otherwise there is little left to discuss except for my studio project, which is farther ahead than expected at this point in time. The video at the bottom is footage that is being added to our movie about the Trastevere neighborhood.

On a more interesting note, we had our workshop with Roma Tre architecture students Friday and Saturday. It was a very interesting time and included many language barriers and time constraints. Getting an entire project done planned and drawn up in around 12 hours is just incredibly frenetic. I really learned a lot of Italian words and became fairly good at understanding what was going on through listening and the drawings we were making. I happened to be grouped with 3 Italian students; Francesca, Giulia, and Alessandro. It was a very good learning experience, and I made some friends doing it too. I do regret that this did not happen at the beginning of the semester because we then would have had better practice at learning Italian as well as meeting new people outside of our program in design.

I am not looking at the right camera here. Drew had my camera and took the picture while another student took one for my group members... Yeah... Otherwise on the left is Francesca and in the middle is Giulia. Alessandro left before we took the picture so unfortunately he is not included here.

Our project. 


Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Getting Up, Getting Out, and Getting Stuff Done!!!

Lots going on here. We just turned in a Project, even though we have many more due in the coming weeks. Right now I am taking a break from my drawing project to type some stuff up on the this guy. The weather is beautiful and people are out on the streets... Protesting!!! Today the Via di Trastevere was shutdown completely for several hours while people protested things about the government. Lots of people out protesting the cuts that are being made in Italy. The same thing happened in London over budget cuts and rises in tuition costs at Universities. There over 1 million people marched to protest. Not quite that many here, but America has done the same things and almost no one (except Wisconsinites) really seemed to do anything about it. That is maddening complacency! Iowa State may riot next week, but that is just because it is VEISHEA, not really for any other reasons.

Otherwise things are going well, and I am looking forward to the Roma Tre workshops on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Working with Italian students will be... Interesting to say the least... Here are some images from the last week in Rome, enjoy!!!

Pia's dog Lilly chilling in studio. She just hangs out and gets loved by students while Pia is working in studio.

Paul's masterpiece of American cooking... Chicken fried porkchops!

Protest in the street in front of the Education building

The fire show in Trastevere

Sunset on the Janiculum Hill

This street would be bustling if not for the protest in the way... It is nice to see green trees everywhere!

Venus statue in the Capitoline

The Gaul statue in Capitoline

Statue in the courtyard of the Capitoline 

The Forum from the Capitoline museum

Constantine's Colossus

This statue was kind of expensive due to the colored marble... The faun does look epic though.

Centaur the younger statue

Gorgeous day... Sam and I got nice photos of the thunderheads over the nearby Theater of Marcellus

Castor and Pollux at the Campidoglio

Rome in bloom