I am at the St John's University's Rome campus, a new venue for us since last year's school in the Aventine district of Rome was not available due to a conference. I'm composing in my room but sending this from downstairs in the computer lab, since the advertised wireless is not working and Andrea Who Knows All is not in until Domani.
There were numerous little hitches when we got in a little bleary eyed, like, some of the photo-card keys were not working (which is serious, as the security level here is DefCon 3: you swipe in, the security guard swipes, you go upstairs, you swipe, you put your card in the holster next to the door, and that action activates the electrical systems in the entire room: A/C, outlets, lights, everything. Our host Stefano was able to set people up with some temporary cards, but it's pretty futuristic--and god help you if walk around the corner to the bathroom without your card and the door closes behind you.... 
As you might imagine the ducklings are somewhat daunted by a few things about this place, but I am also perversely glad for some of their travails even as I know that some of them will redound onto me. We had our half day in Lausanne after the bus ride from Cham (sleeping through the scenery), and evidently there was Grumbling because there wasn't enough to do (there was also a weather window yesterday morning in contrast to Friday, meaning that possibly people might have been able to go paragliding instead of traveling to Lausanne, having been rained out on Friday; the lucky ones who went Thursday have been preening more than I think is seemly, but I can't make these leopards change their spots). I on the other hand had a very pleasant afternoon strolling the cobbles up to the cathedral, eating a very nice doner kebob and then walking down via the Elysee museum and then spending a nice couple of hours near the lake at the Olympic Museum (Lausanne is the headquarters of the IOC).
Besides having street names honoring Grand Tourers, this is a great town, a great chance to experience a Swiss city with all its brutally expensive but perfectly planned execution (as everyone who was in attendance nodded in agreement at the orientation, I might add, and the grumblers are virtually all people who skipped it). Once we'd reclaimed baggage and boarded the breathtakingly on-time Swiss train for Milan I was aghast at the ways the students retreated into their electronic shells on the absolutely gorgeous train ride past Montreux and into the mountains as the dusk lit the peaks, very few of them looking at the scenery and only one or two noticing the full moon rise. Note the shade pulled to enable watching a dippy movie on an iPad or something. 
Luckily I had some room around me most of the way to Milan, and from Milan after our train change I had a SINGLE couchette (that is, an entire compartment, one bed, all to myself) and didn't hear / see any more. Didn't sleep as well as I thought I would, but it wasn't for crowdedness' sake. Pondered more than I would like on the weirdness of this whole game, that you can bust your ass for however many months and then have to listen to little entitled twits kvetch about how they think their money is being spent (I got an earful from Tiffany as the kids rested in the bus before reclaiming their baggage from underneath, and buying more junk food to top off the 13-euro McDo-do that they indulged in their boredom earlier). While I know that is part of the OSC's job description, to keep an ear to the ground, I am not 100% enamored of the ways she delivers some of her lines....
Nonetheless, we all made it, and Jay Grossi, my On-Site Coordinator for Rome (and lecturer in Italian at UC Davis) was waiting with the metro passes at the unfamiliar train station (Tiburtina, not Termini), and on a Sunday morning it was just about as easy as possible to traverse the city and change at the main station (Termini) to get to St Johns.
Today was blessedly not as hot as it's going to get, and after the foomfit with Stephano (he insisted on leaving us all in the student lounge and taking every pair or trio of students up to their room room by room, showing them the swipe deal, verifying that half their cards didn't work, etc--not exactly a model of efficiency for people who'd been on a train all night (many of them watching video of all things)--this phase probably took 60 minutes instead of the 15 it would've been to say, "boys to the third floor, girls to the fourth, help each other and share the elvator and stairs, gather round and here's how the card swipe thing works or doesn't work," etc.. I gave them a little break until 11:15, when we had a very pleasant walking orientation with Jay, over from our location north of the Castel' Sant'Angelo to the Piazza del Populo (the traditional entrance of the Grand Tourers) and then the Spagna, then the Trevi Fountain and finally over to the Piazza Navona via the Pantheon.
Jay and I had a pleasant lunch in a tiny piazza and then discovered a church / cloisters he'd never seen before (always a possibility when you are just footing it through a city like this), Santa Maria della Pace, with its bit of Raphael visible through a glass window in a side room upstairs since the church itself is "chiuso" until some time that the entrance guard himself was not at liberty to divulge. I once again am pleasantly surprised by how walkable and nice this town is (in summer when there's not nearly as many people here I guess). Then I walked home, cranked out about 45 minutes cleaning up of the common kitchen on my floor (shared at the moment by 15 Florida students and the boys in my group, and unfortunately like most communal kitchens, rife with food and clutter in contempt of the impressive rule-sheets and notes from supervisors). Then I napped, then it was back to the nearby supermarket for coffee and cereal, and then I went out to run along the river in the dusk before getting blocked off; I ended up going to the Populo and then up into the Borghese park and after some false starts eventually all the way to the museum itself, where I admired the full moon and did some push ups. Felt great to stride easily and efficiently, with not much of an agenda, not really worrying about where I was, but just enjoying the not-horrible air and the not-horrible heat. Then it was back inside past three levels of swipe-a-card security to cook a simle dinner of mercy-kill penne pasta with garlic from the cupboard, and my own butter--at 11 PM. Now I have to write up the game plan for the week and figure out what I am doing in class besides listening to people complain about the lack of wireless access. Truly the home stretch. And at least these gals have found the real treasure of Roma...
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