What do I want to do before I leave Rome?

Have you ever watched the show on MTV called "The Buried Life"? It's a TV show about 4 guys traveling across America to complete their list of 100 things they want to do before they die. For every item that they complete on their list, they help a stranger out with something that they want to do before they die. I love the show because it combines comedy and emotion in almost every episode. Their show has inspired me to create a list of things that I'd like to do before I leave Rome/Italy/Europe. In no particular order...

1. Learn how to make 10 different sauces for pasta. (I believe I'm up to 7.)
2. Visit Prague.
3. See the Pope.
4. Give money/food to the homeless man that I see nearly everyday twice-a-day on my walk to/from studio.
5. Leave a mark and/or message on something somewhere in Rome.
6. Become Facebook friends with Simona and Raphael. They're the people that work at my gelato place.
7. Get "swept off my feet" by an authentic Italian guy.
8. Find and purchase all my Christmas gifts.
9. Visit the Catacombs.
10. People watch on the metro for an extended period of time (without having a destination to travel to).
11. Make at least one over-the-top purchase on an article of clothing.
12. Finish my projects early (aka not have an all-nighter).
13. Start to establish where I want to look for a job and what type of job.
14. See rain come through the hole of the Pantheon's ceiling.
15. Get free gelato from the Frigidarium. With all the income that they're getting from me, I think I deserve it.
16. Attend an European football/soccer game. My family will disown me if I don't.

I talk about my weekends and travel experiences a lot in my entries, so you might be wondering how is my life in Rome is actually going. I've found that I have a lot of down time. If I'm not in class, then I'm at my apartment occupying my time by finding meaningless stuff on the internet. Typically in Ames, I go from class to work to sorority activities to club activities and then do homework for x amount of hours before bed. I'm jut not used to having so much extra time.

Classes are going well. In my mixed media class I am working on an altered book. Basically it is an artistic scrapbook about our time in Italy. I made my cover to look like a really worn out book and it is pretty cool! In my studio class we are currently redesigning a current historic museum space into a lighting showroom. We just presented ideas/atmospheres to our instructors today and soon will be putting them into Revit! I'm really excited to work with my idea; it is a bit extreme (like utopia architecture) but I think it'll come together nicely in the end. I've already mentioned that I love my art history class. Seeing what is being taught about in person is 100 times better than slides. And then my fourth and last class I have is Made in Italy; it's just a typical lecture class...nothing too exciting.

My time is Europe is just about half way over. This coming Monday will mark two months of being overseas. I've become real settled here in Rome, and I feel like I've lived here for much longer. I am just now starting to discover the things that I truly love about the area that I live in. There's a gorgeous giant fountain (2-3 stories tall) in the building complex next to my apartment. Via Governo Vecchio is my favorite street to walk along. It's quaint and filled with great shops and famous tourist attractions (only the hardcore tourists, the ones that have done research, come along here). The buildings all boast a lot of lively character. As much as I hate the 74 steps that I climb up and down every time I leave my apartment, I secretly love them since it is a situation that I'll probably never encounter again after leaving Rome.

I can't believe my time here is nearly half over; it has flown by. I imagine the next half will go by just as quickly. I do already think about what life will be like when I return back to the States. So much has changed and is changing at home and in Ames; it'll be interesting to see how things pan out. Oh, and let's not forget the fact that next semester will be my last semester in college! I can't believe how quickly that is approaching. As a child and teen, graduating from college always seemed so far away. Now that it is approaching, it seems like just yesterday I was that teen thinking about how long it'd be until I was out in the "real world".

Oh life. It's always an adventure full of successes and failures. And to think, at any one moment it can be over. I've really started to notice this with all of the deaths that have been occuring at ISU. So I have to ask you... What do you want to do before you die?