The end of the Roman Empire

Oh hasn’t the last week or so been hilarious.
Wow im not even sure where to start. This week has been the funniest, most horrible gosh awful marvelous week of my life. I’ve probably learned more about life and what I want my future to be like and who I want to be with and how I need to change and what not to wear on a night ferry than I have in any other place and any other time in my life. Sooo pretty much life is fulfilled.

I know its been a super long time since ive written so im not even sure what ive missed but ill give a brief overview of the past couple of weeks.

So the last week in Rome was quite wild. Firstly I was pretty much dying in bed so sick with some horrid flu thing and could not go on all the cool field trips :( I was pretty bummed because I heard It was a great day, but that’s ok that gives me an excuse to come back for sure right? Anyway I watched pride and prejudice and ate nutella all day…so then the boys called to check on me and ended up giving the coolest blessing ever. There was a whole one liner about getting better which was weird since it was for that. But then the rest was all about how the Lord knows my situation and knows what I need right now and loves me and how I need to be ready for the next couple of years because much will be expected and a lot about service and being prepared to serve those around me and being aware of my roommates and loving them and just all this good stuff that was really what I needed to hear at the time. Anyway it was just awesome and I needed it. So then I ended up going back home with the boys because my roommates had invited half the world over for dinner (turns out only one guy came from the ward ha!) so we went over and they took care of me : ) mark even made me cereal, what a gent. And Tj let me use his own bathroom, and Heston provided entertainment. And matt was matt as always hanging with the girls. Ahahah love them all. So after a while of being taken care of marky had to take me home so we braved the dark streets of Rome back to my apt. which turns out is a really long way away. So we chatted! It was a really good talk and nice to talk to a guy about it instead of a girl that always says “aww cuuteee” ha, not that I don’t like that, it was just good to talk to someone different. So turns out that on the way home mark totally got chased down by some teen kids on their way to graffiti something or other (classy kids they got here) and then also got chased by a white van and ran all the way home…I pretty much endangered his life…but I didn’t want to walk home alone! Anyway the story is much better than that but ill have to tell y’all in person (oh gosh my friend Kelsey days y’all and I want to say it all the time now..bad)

So I forgot about the day before. We went to the catacombs out on Via Appia (the street where paul came into Rome to preach to the Romans) and they were amazing. The end.

Just kidding. We got to this wide open space where I’d seen the most trees in Rome ever and met up with our little priest guide who just happened to be from Australia. For some reason he thought I was hilarious and immediately picked me out to pick on. Therefore I got a flashlight before we even got down the first flight of stairs. Ah loved it. I definitely acted as the intermediate guide and led the people behind me on a fake tour of the tombs of several small children, house hold pets and family crypts. Marvy. I loved it. We went down these ancient stairs and entered a long hallway that smelled like wet dirt and maybe dead people? Pretty good smelling all in all. On both sides of the hall, small rectangular holes were hollowed out of the stone. They used to put the body of the dead inside the hole then cover it with brick and write the name and date and the occupation of the person over the tomb. Most of the holes were super tiny, barely big enough for a small baby. Infanticide was popular among the ancient Greeks, since each family wanted a male heir to the family name and girls were only burdens to their families. Gosh Im glad we don’t practice that anymore, the Hancock girls would not exist! And what would the world be without us anyway? So we went throughout the tour, seeing where Christian symbols covered the walls and ancient frescos marked tombs of popes and priests. The feeling was sad but somehow comical since I was a little sick and had a flashlight in hand pointing out the creepiest of tombs to people and continually freaking people out with my awesome lit up face. There were also several walls to hide behind and jump out at people but we decided that would be irreverent. But in all honesty it was a truly amazing place down there. There were marks in the holes where I can only imagine the people digging the hole chipped away carefully to preserve their loved ones. Actually I lied, they weren’t to preserve them, they were to help break down the bodies. Gross… so we finally exited the catacombs, where priests still hold mass sometimes, and walked back into the scorching sun. Under the earth was nice and cool and damp, a wonderful change from the dead heat.

So then we were to our second to last day in Italy and we went to Pisa with a big group of girls. The train arrived 30 min. late, then we got on and were told that we had another hour to wait. A few of the girls got off right away and guess what! The train man lied. As soon as the girls got off the doors shut behind them and we were off! So we arrived in pisa after a terrible encounter with the ticket lady that included a 50 euro fine for a completely horrid charge and a very confused moment where jenny called the girl in our compartments coach a man…she was a woman…you could not tell this. Anyway she was on her way to an archery competition and was fixing up her arrows getting ready for the day! What an awesome hobby! She spoke awesome English and was an archer…pretty much a stud. So we got to pisa…pretttyyy much worthless lol. We walked down the one main road (totally ditching half of the group because they were slow and quite annoying…we later got criticized for that…) and turned a corner and BOOM headshot, there it was! The leaning tower of pisa!! Its about the size of the BYU bell tower and leans at about a 30 degree angle. So basically it’s a short tower that is barely leaning ahahhaha. It was so funny though! Such a silly thing and there were tons of people just milling around the square and taking a bajillion pics of themselves pushing over, kicking over, holding up and whatever you can to the tower.of course I partook and have a grand one of trying to keep it from falling on top of me. When in pisa right? Also in pisa we ate pizza! And dang it was good! Probably one of my favorite pizzas. It was massive and cheesy and delicious. Ahh perfect. So then our plan was to get on another train and go up to Sienna, but it turns out we were all so pooped and I wasn’t all the way better and was felling tired, so we sprinted (no joke) to the train station to catch the long train back to Rome. Ahh, gotta love four hour train rides through the Italian countryside. I drew a cute pic and this random African guy next to me was like “oh cool! I give you five euro for that!” bahahahahha so I kept drawing and was like ok, here ya go! Ahahah turns out he didn’t give me five euro, so I took it back. Random! Truly, train rides are so funny every single time; you never get what you expect. That night we went on a journey through rome and got the best gelato in Rome at a place called Giolittis. Holy shnikes the guy there was so excited to have four blondes in his store that he made our cones huge, covered them in nuts and gave us each a huge dallop of whip cream on top. Once again, it’s good to be a blonde American girl. We also went to Piazza Novona, one of the hoppinest nioght spots in Rome and checked out the artists in the square. Every guy has tons of art they or some other artist have done, mostly original works, but im guessing a lot of second handers too. So I got some art!! Whohooo!! Totally got an awesome deal when I told the guy “pleaseee you’ll make my whole night!” ahh, good life. So then we watched this amazing man draw a portrait of this beautiful little girl in less than ten minutes, no joke it looked like one of those sketches you get in the photo booth places where they take your picture and make it look like a sketch. Pretty much he was fantastic and it was the spitting image of the girl and he used one pencil and even the curl in her hair looked real. Wow beautiful.

The next day was grand. And it involved shopping in Rome, Fruit salad from the awesome fruit man, and walking around the entire city at 11 at night trying to get home on foot after the metro had closed. Ah I love bartering with old Indian men and crazy Italians! Also I love getting more gelato and having the guy put a surprise flavor on top, getting Whiskey flavor and making him make a whole new cone. Poor guy! He was so nice too! He gave me both cones and as the old one dripped down my hand and all over my arm I ran outside telling every person I saw that this was a free cone and they could have it! Surprisingly no one wanted it for a while! I asked a guard nearby, some guy, a whole family, and finally some mom took it! It was pretty hilarious and mostly everyone in the store and outside it was cracking up at me. Then I proceeded to eat my own cone and got it everywhere. Good pics let me tell ya. So after we were drenched in ice cream we continued our stroll through Rome and visited all the main places that we fell in love with. The Colosseum of course then the Victor Emmanuel building with the guards on the steps, then an Italian Restaurant where the head waiter claimed that we were making the other waiters fight over who got to serve our “beautiful table” bahaha right. Then we found the Pantheon piazza full of spectators watching a group of University girls from Portugal who were paying for their trip by singing and dancing and playing every sort of instrument in the square! They were adorable! It was so fun to watch them in their little uniforms singing away some Portuguese song and swaying to the music of the guitar, uke, and all sorts of percussion. All the people there were enthralled by their charm. The Trevi Fountain with it’s packed piazza and the usual singing crowd of foreign bachelors was next, this time was a rowdy bunch from Spain singing some home song at the top of their lungs. Then it was the Spanish steps for the last time. The steps are marble and white and so grand cascading down to end at a beautiful little fountain where you can walk right in and clean off your feet in some creatures mouth that opens up for you to walk into. The steps were crowded as they usually are on a weekend night. An older group of 4 or 5 pulled out their bottle of wine and plastic cups right there on the steps and started taking pictures of each other like college students, as college students ourselves we watched and chuckled and passed right through them sober and naturally high on life. After that we started the long walk home because the metro had inconveniently closed down for the night. The walk lasted about an hour in the dark streets of Rome, but amazingly I didn’t feel super nervous, I felt like I was walking the streets of St.Joe or Provo, I felt like I was walking through the streets of home. Of course it was a little scary because it was nighttime and we were just a group of girls, but it was like we’d been there so long that if anything were to happen we’d just laugh and keep walking in the ancient back streets of Rome. Finally we got home and I started getting ready for bed.

Here I must interject a story of terror and horrible..ness. So earlier one of the girls in my apt. had texted me asking if she should meet us on our walk, long story short she never showed up at the meeting place so we left thinking she wasn’t coming. After 40 min. you usually assume these things. So I get home and she is’nt coming home with any of my other roommates. Turns out she had left to find us and went to our meeting spot but we had been long gone by that time. Of course she had no phone (she’d texted on another girls) and was all alone in the dark in Rome on our last night. Great. So we started calling other apts. To see if she was with anyone and sure enough she wasn’t. Time passed and soon it was 1:30 in the morning and I was freaking out that Id left this girl and she was probably stolen and half way to Albania by now. We call our Professor to let him know that we have a missing girl and he takes down all the information we can tell him (which is little) and just sit and wait. Of course Im thinking this is all my fault I should have just waited longer, shes dead meat, we are gonna have to all go home tomorrow instead of to Greece blah blah. We of course say a prayer and I actually felt a lot better after that, Heavenly Father has got to know that Im not good with the whole missing persons freak out thing. Two o’clock rolls around, not a time you’d want to be alone outside in any city, and we hear the buzzer. We sprint to the door and there she is, smile on her face, rose in her hand and perfectly safe. Freak out over! “ I got to the place and you were all gone so I went and finished up some shopping then met this guy and he’s been taking me around Rome on his scooter taking pictures all night!”….of course he has. What else would you do with a strange man in a strange city? Needless to say I felt I had worried all that time in vain and was pretty upset so I went to bed and fell asleep within minutes ha. But I was really glad she wasn’t dead or a slave or stolen. Halleluja! Crisis averted.

The next day was a rough one and a great one all rolled up. We got ready to go in the morning in the strangest way. First of all it was our last morning in Rome and in our precious apartment, so we all took videos of the place and documented our time there, then we cooked all of our food that was left over and set it out in big pots and everyone just had a feast! Ahahah it was awesome! There was pasta everywhere! So that was fun but then we actually had to pack. When a few of us were ready to go we set out to drag our over-stuffed suitcases out and to the metro (for the last time : () Which im guessing was quite a site to see. In fact, as we exited the metro my giant purple bag definitely did not fit through the flippy gate and I definitely had to push it through and hurdle the bar in front of everyone, very athletically of course… we found our group after heaving the heavy pieces of junk up several flights of stairs, escalators and metro trains and sat for the hour wait to get on the train. Now, when we get together in a group of 45 American Girls and families and boys with over 50 pieces of luggage and backpacks we are somewhat of a road block, and a spectacle. People just kind of stare at us like we are morons and then small collisions happen which are quite funny. Haha not really but I imagine it did happen a few times. Finally the train came and the ordeal of getting all of our luggage onto the train started. If only we had known the true terror before we started. The luggage definitely did not fit on this tiny train and neither did we all. Turns out some of the girls had gotten tickets for the day before and there really wasn’t room on the train for them. Not good. After we had all got on the train (luggage sitting in our seats and most of us perched on top until the train started so we could use the aisles) one apt. of girls realized that someone else had their seats and had to climb over everyone and their luggage and jump off the train before they were fined enormously, luggage was being chucked off the train and words instructions to text and get info on the next rain were screamed hastily. We really didn’t know what happened until we drove away and saw a group of our girls standing on the plat form in shock waving us goodbye…

Thankfully a man at the station had seen what had happened and helped the girl get a later train that day to Brindhisi so it all worked out, but wow talk about a moment of panic!

So the train started and we were off on our five hour journey with a train SO packed of luggage and people it was literally overflowing, there was luggage in the racks, under chairs, between seats, on tables between seats, and clogging the aisle. We clapped for every person who hurdled over them to get to the bathroom, it was quite an accomplishment really. After a while and some passenger exchanges, a couple of Italian guys sat down by us and started chatting with us. They were amazed that almost all the Italian we knew was learned from the Metro station “did you spend two weeks in the metro!?!” our answer was actually yes ahahaha. But we had a great time trying to understand them and they loved talking to us and teaching us a little more Italian. Then we learned this awesome game called scopa ! Totally sweet game from Napoli that im in love with and will try to find so I can bring it to the U.S. so that was utterly hilarious and turns out im a pro, but also an extreme blonde because they thought I was hilarious and also the youngest of our group…22 they said, when actually I was the oldest and am 20, grand haha, at least I got a couple years up right! So that was fun, then the exiting off the train started and that was yet another grand operation that involved a little bit of yelling and pushing and shoving and chucking off of the train. Finally we were in Brindhisi Italy, the heel of the boot. The town was truly just like a little beach town in Florida or even a town in Hawaii. There were palm trees lining the little streets and families strolling down the street. After settling in our hotel we found a great restaurant that made us the hugest, longest pizza ive ever seen and laid it out in front of us, it spanned the entire table and there were about ten of us girls around the table. Dang it was great. We savored the good meal and the free breakfast the next morning as well as we knew that the next couple days we would be living on the crackers, cookies and fruit and nutella we had brought along from Rome. And sure enough that journey started out in hysterics as well.

Let me tell you a story about the night Ferry. I would suggest it if you needed some time to yourself or needed a good slap in the face to make you thankful for land, hotels, and friends. The night ferry was amazing. We clambered on (we were the first ones on of course, because Holzapfel insists that we are the first ones to almost everything, he is incredibly efficient) and found that BYU had mixed up our seats and we didn’t actually have the cramped air plane seats inside the boat, oh no, we had the deck seats (plasic and metal chairs strewn across the upper deck under a makesfhift roof. Pretttyyy much the coolest thing ever. We all scrounged up chairs and made little circles around tables and piled our luggage on the life jacket bins to reserve “beds” for that night. The wind on the ferry was so cool and fresh it was a great change from our usual underground travel on the metro, or longwinded train rides. We sat around and played for a while, mash mostly decided all of our futures for us then just as the sun started setting we were off! The deck was full of random families and groups travelling and one unusually enthusiastic older group that arrived in bathing suits and started tanning on the deck, it was like we were on a cruise that you had to sit outside the whole time for! I dragged my little chair over to the railing and turned on a little explosions in the sky and started writing in my journal and thinking about my trip the past few weeks. I had a wonderful discussion with myself and realized that I really have learned so much this trip and changed my mind on several occasions about what I want. Im pretty sure that I now know, at least what to do this year and that makes me very happy. As I thought, the sun started falling in the sky and the bright pink and orange sunset streaked across the huge sky and spilled over onto the blue water and right up to our ship. The wind whipped around us still a little warm and salty. Dinner consisted of crackers and nutella and a wonderful peach from my favorite Fruit man. As we ate I felt like old women laughing about life and our current circumstances in a little circle on some magnificent cruise ship we’d booked for our last hurrah. Unfortunately this was a ferry and we were sitting in lawn chairs on the deck. Holzapfel and Hatch were incredibly concerned that we were angry about the deck, but we assured them that this was actually way cool and we were loving the fresh air and the night life on the boat. As the night wore on the water turned black and sucked all the bright colors out of the sky and pulled them so far away that the sky too seemed like it melded right into the black of the water. Big bright stars were strewn across the sky, or maybe the water I don’t know and we rushed past the coasts of Italy in a hurry towards Greece. Oh gosh it was just so random and fresh and pretty and relaxing and life changing a night. After reading plenty of homework and talking to myself some more I decided that my attempt at being brave and staying up all night was hopeless. I made my way to our little haven and scooted a couple bags over and curled up in a little ball to fall asleep. After a couple of hours of listening to music and trying to find sleep someone wok us all up with a jerk exclaiming that we were there! What!??! It was only 3 AM and we weren’t due until 6!! Blah!!! Panic and confusion and a fit of giggles at the looks of our hair, faces and clothing (we all looked a little haggard and crazed by then)

-Did I mention that me and marie definitely brushed our teeth and washed our faces over the edge of the boat? Probably one of the highlights of the night.

Anyway, turns out we had been confused and Greece wasn’t the last stop ha! So we got off, a group of delirious young adults and had to wait in the station for another three hours till our tour guide came to get us! Ahh funny.

Ok, now this is already long so ill start another about Greece. Ciao Italy!