Everyone knows saying goodbye is the hardest part of anything we ever do. It is the end, the point in which what seemed infinite becomes suddenly finite in the most horribly tangible way. This week was the end of my study abroad program and it was heart breaking to say good bye to so many things. Saying goodbye to the people I have come to know and interact on a daily basis, the sights that I see every morning on my way to school, the incredible monuments that I walk by on a usual basis, the places I frequent and all the things that have become essential components of my everyday life. ...

For the official end of the program we all had a big dinner together that was so fun but also so sad because we had to say goodbye to everyone. Luckily I will be able to see some of the people I have become friends with back in the United States but it was sad to have to say goodbye to a period in my life that was so full of adventure and new things. ...

For my Ancient Roman Civilization class we had a couple of days where we did for our site visits some of the biggest and best of Rome, the things everyone from around the world comes to Rome to see. We saw the Roman Forum, the Palatine Hill, and the Colosseum. The doors of ancient temples, the archways of triumphant emperors, the fallen columns of once grand corridors, lie all around us in the Forum Valley. ...

Some of my favorite things about my apartment in Rome are the windows that open wide to look down on the bustling street of Cola di Rienzo below. Windows, shuttered, unshuttered, glass or iron grated, dominate the facades of most buildings in Rome. Tourists photograph them, sometimes not even knowing why. I count myself among this lot. Windows in Italy in general are beautiful, and there is something magical about them in an ineffable way. I feel compelled to take pictures of beautiful windows in the same way I feel compelled to take pictures of sunsets; it isn’t just for the beauty, there is something else I am trying to capture that I simply cannot explain. A mystery surrounds it, maybe it is what lies behind the shuttered windows, maybe it is the fact that behind every closed window lies a home, a world’s center, in which countless memories, experiences, and tiny everyday moments occur that I may never know about. ...

Fingers trace the lines of the knotted wood polished, like rocks made smooth by the crashing of the waves, by the seeking hands of the needy. Desperate fingers ring the wooden front of the pew, hopeless fingers, hoping fingers, searching fingers, tired fingers, angry fingers, ecstatic fingers, but most of all, human fingers holding tight to the wooden beams of fallen trees lined up like old layers of bricks used to fortify the foundations of a building. The pews filled with people, each with a different word, or a different hole in their heart, seeking searching, for something they know not the name of, the know not the form of, nor know the true power of, yet they come with heads bent down and palms raised up for answers. ...

Rome is a city of juxtaposition. A place where two unlike things are constantly colliding with one another; sometimes resulting in a beautiful abstract work of art, and others producing nothing but a colossal disaster of a mess. The result is not always pretty, but it makes for an interesting spectacle. Eternally stuck between two extremes, Rome is a world where complete opposites sit civilly across the table from one another sipping coffee. Of the thousands of juxtaposed attributes of this city, it is the coexistence of exaggerated slowness and frantic haste that intrigues me the most. ...

Rome is a city of layers, you never know what it is you will find as you find yourself negotiating between one level and another. There is the historic city center, the amazing monuments and the tourism layered with the periferia of the countryside and rural suburban outer layers of the city. But within those two there are thousands of different layers of being, each one given a home on some street, some intersecting grid of life within the confines of a city that is so full of surprises, both good and bad. ...

As an English Literature major, and an avid lover of books, there is no paradise like that of sheltered haven of old books housed in a library with towering walls of ancient tomes and centuries old unopened pages. The other day I was in a book lover’s paradise. The name even seemed appropriate, Biblioteca Angelica, referring to the original collections owner Angelo, but to me it felt like a library of angels. ...

Travel is the one unanimously ubiquitous aspect of studying abroad. Traversing the globe, moving from one place to another, culture upon culture every moment that isn’t filled with study, homework and school. It seems a frivolous thing, to leave Rome just when we are only beginning to know and understand, to leave every weekend to go see another place when we know so little about our new home. While often times that is the case, a trip is just a frivolous vacation to another part of the world, or maybe to see a place or something you always dreamed of seeing. However, one thing that isn’t often talked about is the enhancing and enriching aspect of the extra travel study abroad students do. I don’t know about everyone, but for me traveling on the weekends, seeing something outside of Rome every week or every other week has become one of the most important parts of my study abroad experience not because it is simply amazingly fun, (which it is) but because it helps me better understand and put into perspective his place I have come to called home in reference to the worlds that go on all around it. No city stands alone, it is shaped by the many multifaceted worlds that revolve either around it or in the near vicinity of it. Even if a place is far away, or seems to have no actual connection to Rome, the way these towns or cities function helps me better understand through contrast and comparison between my new home and these different places I see. Studying abroad isn’t about living on a island without outer influence besides your new place of residence, it is the complete opposite. It is the experience of grabbing onto every single amazing moment or opportunity that comes your way to better understand the world and the people who inhabit it. ...

The victory temples of old stand a solitary vigil in the midst of a modern city that pays them little heed. Four temples, fallen to ruin and decay, walled in by tram lines, bus stops, towering shops, and a never ending flow of people. They once were celebrations of victory, temples dedicated to the gods that the Romans believed helped them gain victory, their remnants lie about the enclosure like an architecture bone yard of the ancients. ...