More Rome catchup

So in Rome, most of the weekdays consisted of a quick breakfast followed by an immense walking tour with our teacher Michele who had an incredible knowledge of the town, and a way of telling it to us that we could relate to, and understand the underlying principles.  We would walk from building to building drawing quick sketches and measuring our plans and sections the whole time.  We are training our eyes to see proportions and measure spaces as we walk through them to truly understand how everything is working together to allow people to use them, and be successful as an urban element.  It is a frantic day of listening to all he says, writing down the important parts, and then drawing the spaces to relate the notes to it.  This keeps us all at attention the whole morning, until its time to break for lunch when we say goodbye to Michele, and head off for some amazing food.  The majority of days are full of paninos, which are the lunch food of choice in all of Rome and pasta and other things thrown in at random.  Then post lunch, we split off to do what we like, going back to certain buildings to finish up our drawings and such as well as exploring wherever we feel like we need to go.  The whole day is taken up by this series of events with some dinner and drinking to finish up the day, and just a little bit of sleep. 

The Eternal City is a truly layered place in many ways.  Physically, the city is made up of so many layers, that to dig down 30 feet would reveal a floor of the medieval Rome of years before buried with river overflows and building over.  This is a big problem in the fact that no new construction can be undertaken without excavation and examination of all the ruins of the land before the insertion of footings and such.  In terms of socially, it is also very stratified with the typical tourist mixing with the fashion elite of Italy meandering through the Prada and Versace stores and the street vendors selling their various products to all that come down the street.  Some Italians remain unchanged by the propagation of tourists in their cities and continue their lives as if we weren’t here, and they are the ones I like.  To observe them go about their routines gives me a glimpse into the real lives here, whereas others have completely based their lives around tourism.  These are the people I avoid.  Eating in any of the major piazzas brings only a mix of English speaking tourists and rude waiters, whereas if you wander into the backstreets of the cities, you can find small places that only locals go to usually, and will be treated as such.  The food also follows in taste with Americanized overpriced food in the hotspots and local food indigenous to the people of the area waiting for those who will search for it.