Thanksgiving (Rome edition)

Buongiorno (good day) from Italy. This week we celebrated Thanksgiving in Rome, and I went on a weekend trip to Sofia, Bulgaria. Monday was a typical day of class in the morning followed by lunch together at Il Pozzo. That afternoon I watched Netflix instead of doing homework. We had dinner with the Chaplains at Gustos. On Tuesday we had history class in the classroom instead of on site. We recapped our past excursions and had our weekly Benedict class. I worked on homework after class and then a group of us headed to Abbey theater where we waited in the rain to get a seat. Wednesday was art history class at the Vatican Museums. We got to see a few more rooms than we did on our private tour with president’s club and talked all about the art. We headed back to campus for pizza. After lunch a small group of us started on making pumpkin shaped buns for Thanksgiving. There was a student life program that night where we shared stories from out travels.

Woke up early on Thursday and caught the bus to the NAC to participate in the Turkey Trot. The Pontifical North American College’s Thanksgiving turkey trot is the only 5k to go around a sovereign nation (the Vatican). I got 98th place with a time of 36 minutes. After the trot we headed to Home Baked, an American restaurant in Rome, for breakfast. After eating we headed back to campus, and I took a quick shower before cinnamon rolls with the Chaplains. We had mass and at the end we surprised our resident director with a guitar for his birthday. After mass I helped in the kitchen chopping ingredients and making soup and stuffing. There was a short break before dinner where we had some nice chats over coffee, and I worked on some homework. We had dinner around 6:30 and enjoyed all the good food. There was a dance in the classroom afterwards.

Woke up early on Friday and got a taxi to the airport. We got checked in a hopped on the plane to Sofia, Bulgaria. We arrived in Sofia around noon and headed to our air bnb. After checking in we had lunch at a local pub. We then explored a church near our air bnb and went grocery shopping. That night I made dinner and we headed to bed early to catch up on some sleep. Saturday was spent exploring the city of Sofia. We first went to the Women’s market, Sofia’s oldest open-air market. We explored lots of churches and found some Roman ruins in the metro station. We found a Christmas market in one of the squares and got a few snacks and enjoyed the ambiance. We walked around town for a while longer and then headed out of the city to Bells Park. The UN declared 1979 the year of the child and the Bells Park came from the idea of having an international meeting for children from all over the world. Each country brought a bell to celebrate. We walked around Bells Park for a while ringing the different bells before heading back into the city for an early supper. After supper we headed back to the air bnb and watched a few movies before going to bed. We had a slow morning on Sunday, leaving the bnb around 11. We headed to mass at a local church and got lunch afterwards. We then went to a coffee shop to work on some homework before our flight back to Rome.

Ciao, Ann