sticks and stones

I know I've been a really deplorable blogger lately. I've completely glossed over my trip to Italy, which was fabulous. Colin and I spent six days in sunny Rome visiting all the major tourist attractions on a student budget, meaning we decided not to pay to see anything. As a result, we settled for seeing the Colosseum from the outside and didn't visit the Vatican Museum (this is still something I would like to do someday, with the right tour guide). We did, however, make a mandatory one euro "donation" to Santa Maria della Concezione, a church whose crypt was decorated with the bones of over 4000 monks. Talk about macabre interior design! Chandelieurs constructed from rib cages, walls stacked with femurs and skulls, and a few monks who were completely whole and mummified from the dry air. Some had skin on their faces, still, and bits of their beards. Gew. It was unbelievably creepy and cool, simultaneously. It looks like this:




(We weren't allowed to take pictures, so photo credit goes to http://www3.sympatico.ca/tapholov/pages/bones.html)

In other news, Michela just spent five days in France with me. We started with a couple of days in Paris and finished back in Bordeaux. It was just what I needed after I've been feeling so homesick lately. More on that (and pictures) to come.

I'm sick. I think I may have the flu. Body aches, sore/achy throat, pain in my ears, and a headache that comes and goes. And on my way to the grocery store with Colin this morning, I tripped when I was jumping over a barrier at knee height and fell flat on my face. Most of the damage seems to be on my knees and the heel of my hands.

An inscription in Santa Maria della Concezione reads, in several languages, "What you are now, we once were; what we are now, you shall be." No kidding! I feel like I'm falling apart.