Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells...

It's not Christmas, you say? Tell that to the Italian man singing Jingle Bells to us as we trudged past him in the snow today. It's only snowed in Italy two times in the last 20 years, or so I've been told. So of course it's going to snow when I'm here.
On Thursday night it was rainy and cold so we decided to stay in and and play card games instead of going out, thinking we would just go out Friday night instead. Ha. Instead we played some very intense card games and then mafia, Roman version, with the Praetorian Guard, Cicero, and Minerva's divine intervension instead of the normal roles. Again, I love classics majors.
Today (Friday), I decided to do laundry. This plan took a wrong turn when I realized I purchased hand-wash only detergent (That's why it was so cheap!). So I thought, hey, I'll just hand-wash all my clothes, what could be so bad? Everything. I will leave it at that, and let you know that for the next 2 weeks I will be wearing ever so slightly soapy clothes.
After the laundry adventure and homework, a few of us walked over to the American Academy in Rome (about a 5-10 minute walk) for an orientation meeting about an internship they are offering to Centro students. This internship is basically what I want to do with my life. The meeting was basically, "here are about 5,000 ancient Roman artifacts. You will be in charge of them. When can you touch them? Why, whenever you so please! Oh, by the way, there may also be 6,000 more of them buried in our garden, so if we find those your internship will just be the most epic thing ever. And before you go, here is a flash drive containing 6 GB of professional photos of these objects. When should you give it back? Never!" No, ladies and gentlemen, it's not Disney World, it's the American Academy in Rome.
On the walk to the academy I took some pictures of Mediterranean things that should not have snow on them, including palm trees and the Villa Aurelia, one of the AAR's buildings.

When we got back from the meeting (which half the group didn't even make it to because of the snow), we had a wine symposium so we can learn about wine and hopefully how to drink without getting drunk. It was quite a pretentious event, as we were constantly told how painful it is to watch people who 'don't respect their wine' and buy those 1 euro bottles in the supermarket (because who would EVER do that? cough cough). The wine was quite good though, and the guy they brought in to talk at us for an hour was, as was agreed by almost everyone afterwards, one of the most attractive men in Italy.
After an exciting day, I spent this evening playing a rousing game of Monopoly at which I was not the first to lose, so that is an accomplishment.
That is all for now.