"Hey Farva, what's the name of that restaurant you like? You know the one with all the goofy crap on the walls?"
"Shenannigans? are you talking about shenannigans?"
Shennanigans indeed. That's what this afternoon was. An explanation you say? So be it.
So for my Mythology class there are three required field trips for the semester, the first one was to a museum near the Pyramid (yeah that's right Rome's got one of those things too). We are on the second one now, at the Roman Forum. Now I knew that the field trip was scheduled to leave from Piazza Venezia at 12 noon so I figured why not take the morning easy. When 11 rolled around I called Brian's apartment (he's in my class, I figured we would go together) only to discover from his roomate, Doug that he had left 30 min prior to my call. Intrigued, I looked down at Joanne's computer clock only to discover that it was already 11:55 am. So...i'm supposed to be 30 min away in 5. The conversation I had with Doug at that point was:
"wait what time is...ugh...I.oh..crap...jesus....noon.. crap.crapp.CRAP..."
*click*
Turns out while the rest of the world's satalite-linked electronic devices re-set their time when the hours changed my cell phone did not. awesome. So then I jumped the hell out of my apartment and started double-timing towards the Forum, with no specific plan on how to find my class but only the vague notion that they would be somewhere in the Forum.
Who should be on stike today? Transportation. All of it. There was only one tram running, going the oppostite direction I needed. So I moved up to triple time. I arrived at Piazza Venezia at 12:35 to be greeted by an entire mob of people marching down Via del Corso. All wearing the exact same burgandy and orange jumpsuits. I think that's where the transporation workers got to.
Eventually I got to the Forum and scouted out from the Tabularium where the class might be. I saw a group of 20 kids wearing backpacks and thought my troubles were over...false. After running down the cobblestones to reach what I thought was them, it turned out to be a pack of japanese teenagers. After this I started huffing all over the Forum for my class. I discovered that my professor looks like maybe...20 different German people. pfft...blondes.
As it turns out one of my classmates Josh was at the Forum that day with his parents. We talked for a few and I told them of my troubles, they told me good luck, and I pressed on. After about 30 min of trying to get up higher to see people and getting nowhere I was beginning to become disheartened. At this point I just sat next to something that looked important (which turned out to be the Temple of Vesta) and waited.
I learned more about the Temple of Vesta that day then I thought I could ever learn, that can happen when about 5 different tour groups come where you choose to sit. Most of them not in english. As a side note, I should probably start working on my conversational Cantonese.
After about 30 min of waiting, I had pretty much given up hope and decided to make my way back to my apartment to call my mom and frump. I was about to leave through the steps when who should walk by but my Professor , engrosed in a map and the rest of the class in his wake. Shocked and seizing an opportunity, I hid behind a collumn and jumped in the back. Andy noticed I had arrived late and I muttered my numerous mistakes. He laughed and shared his hand-out.
The first moral of the story:
It's not very educational to show up and hour and a half late to a 2 hour lecture.
The second moral:
You'd think it was "never give up" but I only found them after I had given up...so maybe...I don't know. Keep fighting? Had I given up earlier I never would have found them. yeah. I think "Keep Fighting" works.
On the side note of "keep fighting" my brother Tim is a bad-ass.
http://philau.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=30816008&id=53100493
No comments:
Post a Comment