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...I started to write a blog entry yesterday, around the same time (noon) about how something about the shift in time, plus the energy-consuming nature of this place, has rendered me both constantly hungry and in need of daily naps.  I didn't get further than a couple of lines because...I went to take a nap before lunch! Haha.

It hasn't even been a week yet, so it still really hasn't sunk in that this is my home now.  I haven't even crossed the Tiber yet; today after lunch I'm planning to go to the Capitoline Museum to see the Michelangelo exhibit that ends on Sunday, possibly in the company of some other people (I need to learn to stop mentioning my plans aloud...), and that will be my first venture into the centro.  Afterward I need to hit the Vodafone store to finally acquire a new SIM, and then I guess I'll come back here, though I have to head back downtown for dinner.   Carla has her conservatory entrance exam today, so tonight we're going out to Alfredo e Ada's, the little hole-in-the-wall place she introduced me to last year, where the wine is all house wine, and the menu is whatever Alfredo tells you (but which always includes my favorite, matriciana!)

Living on this side of the river  kind of has that same sense of distance that Brooklyn has from Manhattan.  Getting from one to the other requires effort.  There, it's  subway rides; here, it's walking or riding the bus.  Walking back here is no joke; we may not be on one of the seven named hills of Rome, but holy shit is it steep! [Edit: that's not exactly true; our hill is named--Janiculum--it's just not one of the famous seven on the other side of the river, where the Romans actually lived] Going to the grocery store yesterday felt like traversing San Francisco: up and down, up and down.  I walked to Carla's on Thursday afternoon, which first takes you along the beautiful ridge of the Gianicolo, so you get an incredible view out over Rome, and then goes down a super-windy switchback road...then a super-steep straight road...then stairs!  I took a cab back...

I haven't taken a single picture here yet after the first batch I put up on Facebook.  Today is the first day I'm even bringing my camera.  The sense that this is a place of permanence frees me a little from the desire to obsessively capture every instance of beauty.  Even when I do take pictures, I'm going to resist the urge to post lots of them on FB. Maybe I'll get an Instagram.  (Someone here suggested creating a blog, and I was like, um, well...?)  I don't want to appear to be shoving it in people's faces, "look how great my life is, peasant!"  I remember feeling like that about Jasmine's posts, mostly out of my own feelings of dissertation-related-despair.  It wasn't her fault, but I also don't want to be that person to someone else.