Leisure

I mentioned before that this is Rome's "Culture Week" (Settimana dei beni culturi, in italiano), so I decided to try to take advantage of it. Today I went to the Campidoglio (Capitoline Hill) Museum, which is one of Rome's biggest and best. They have several famous pieces there, like the Dying Gaul,

a gigantic statue of Constantine (the head alone is probably 8 feet tall)

a larger-than-lifesize bronze Marcus Aurelius on a horse,

and Rome's legendary she-wolf, who supposedly nursed/raised Romulus (founder of Rome in 753 B.C.) and his twin brother, Remus.

I get "museumed-out" after a few hours, so I decided not to go to any more museums in the afternoon. Instead, I went to lunch with some friends, and then we went to the movie theater (only my second time in a Roman cinema) to see "Il Grande Silenzio" (The Great Silence). It's a movie (yes, mostly silent) about Carthusian monks. It was really good -- much better than I had expected. I don't know if it's playing in the States or not. It's worth seeing, though, if you get the chance. Warning: it's kind of artsy, not in its subject matter, but simply the way the film is done.

Tomorrow is Palm Sunday, and we have the Papal Theologian (Fr. Wojciech Giertych, O.P.) coming to the seminary in the evening to give some sort of talk. It should be good -- I had him as a professor in my first year over here.

I think I'll try catching up on e-mails while I'm not as school this week. I've gotten way behind (as most of you know), so I've got a good bit of writing to do.

Happy Holy Week to all!