Sugar, love, happiness

Today has been a day of sugar love and happiness. oh yeah and now that all of these people are reading this im pretty sure its gonna be boring cuz im all aware....sorry mateys
Last night was grand, i sat in bed for two hours and eventually woke up and yelled at my roomates :/ ha they were such good sports though and when i woke up i had the cutest note under my floor saying "you are so great thanks for letting us know how you felt in a great way without getting mean" bahahahah i was like shoot im pretty sure i yelled but they were so nice about it i love it.

ok so today was marvy. this morning we went on a church tour and saw these crazy churches that were so ornate and beautiful and freaking old. So we went into one that is from the 1st century A.D and this volunteer church keeper started talking to us and got soo excited that we were students from America and here in Rome for so long and getting the real experience and he was like "ok, here what i do, where your professor?" so we got Holzopfal and the guy like got out this key and took us to the back part of the chapel and we got to walk around the back stairs and see the mosaic up close, the oldest mosaic in Rome. Freaking Awesome, THEN he was like "ok you come back next weeks in group of five and I take you down to the basement and show you the house where Paul stayed with the church in Roma" freak saweet! it was awesome he was all excited to take us to the secret places! ugh im pumped.

k so then me and my friend marie just kind of snuck off and went on our own little adventure through Rome! We sat on this beautiful street full of cafes and shops and ate lunch under a little umbrella...dont worry we totally took pics because the moment was perfect and delicious. so then the rest of the day we just walked around and shopped and looked in stores and just had nowhere to go and nowhere to be. twas awesome. Then we ended up at the Trevi Fountain and just hung out and ate gelato (hazelnut and nutella...) and wrote some stuff and just sat and people watched for a while. yeah thats right, i just hung out at the Trevi fountain today, what up.

then we went to the Pantheon and met up with the boys and a couple other girls and took the 360 tour. for real that was the biggest dome ive ever seen in my life. The place is BC! The columns that hold it up alone are ginormous then you get inside and everyone you see just kind of stopd abrouptly and slowly enter. Its massive! If i could fill up that huge space with anything it would be nutella (I asked marie that question and she gave the perfect witty answer of "dancing, just one huge ball" ugh love her) anyway so this place has been there before Christ and its in awesome condition becuase the Romans ended up turning it into a catholic church so it was saved while the rest of the ruins over in Palantine hill were stripped for everything they were worth and used other places. It was so massive I cant even explain it, and the occulum shined down on us like a big giant eye watching us. We snuck into a little english tour and the guy said that at first they had trouble with rain coming in so they just put 6 little holes at the bottom of the Occulum and drained the water out. Shoot the Romans knew how to work their water.Every day i am even more thankful for free fountains in random streets, i wash everything, arms legs, face, and fill up my water bottle, fantastically convenient.

so when we were done being in awe, the boys basically dragged us ot the metro to get to some other church to meet the whole group and we squished in like sardines in a sweltering can, grand. We made it to the church where the popes used to be crowned or coronated or ordained or whatever and looked around that a little.

side note-- i never really realized how much we owe the catholic church. We have this idea that they are the devil apostate church but really they just had a fallen church and tried to pick up the pieces and put it back together, they just missed the light sadly. But without them we wouldn't have the bible, Joseph smith never would have read james, we would all be speaking arabic and reading the Quaran and Id be stuck wearing those awful veils over my head and crying secretly about my sweaty sarong...just overall a bad plan ya know? anyway I know we are mormon and we come from a protestant background, but we've got to cut the cat-lickers some slack! oh shoot can i say that? eh its my blog. but i really do have more respect for them being here, plus they saved a lot of the history that the Romans left behind, of course they destroyed an awful lot too...but im trying to be positive here!

annyywayy, so then we went to the sacred steps; the stairs where apparently Christ walked up Pilots house and was tried. Some queen and Constantine brought the marble back from Jerusalem and it is now covered by wooden planks to perserve...load of crap? I think so, but still it was heart breaking to see like 20 people on their knees going up the stairs one by one saying the same prayer every step and just knowing that it was totally worthless and nothing would come of it except sore knees and a pagan prayer stuck in your head…sad story.
Another thing that’s sad are confessionals, holy cows who’s idea was that? Way sad and kinda creepy. One of my roommates sat down in one (shes wild and will try anything) she was like “ok so ive never done confessional before how do we do this? And the priest was like, well you have to be a catholic, and she said “ohhh well Im atheist! But I still want to try!” and he was like, oh youre not ready youre not ready, and totally left the stall after her! Ha poor old guy.
Ok so anyway great night we then played some game outside the church and got to know each other a little better, then hopped on the metro and laughed loudly like Americans do talking about fuzzy peaches and their relation to small gerbils or rodents and how we enjoy the taste of nutella on English muffins. We ate dinner at this tiny pizzeria next to our apartment (I totally ate mushrooms everyone, way good here) then went to the bakery across the street for nutella filled cookies, ugh I love that bakery place. Then the fruit man opened his store for us and some woman told us that he wanted to ask us to go out with him tonight…we declined claiming our program you too vigorous…sad day, I love that fruit man. Oh well my Italian Lover is out there somewhere!!! Bahahaha ok im so tired I can barely stand it. This week we are going to Florence and Venice to I better get some rest! Love and miss you all
Ciao, ti amo!