My name is Baladine Pierce and I’m so thrilled to be writing my first words of this semester on the Cornell in Rome Blog! I hope that over the next 4 months, I will be able to capture, and convey to you the vibrant, shifting sensations of life in the Eternal City.
I would like to begin my semester long dream-career as a Cornell in Rome blogger by reflecting for a moment on the blog itself, as it has played a central role in my introduction to the program. In the months before this semester’s start, I spent a lot of time winding through the hundreds of entries from past years. I found the annals of this blog to be delightful reading, as well as an important window into an awaited world.
In a break from past Cornell in Rome bloggers, I am not an Architecture or Urban Planning student, not a “Cornellian” at all, but a history major from Williams College. The words and images that have been recorded here thus provided my first sense of the AAP school and the students and staff who make it up. I found myself captivated by the narrative voices of past students, and excited by the portraits of life they illustrated.
(The Tiber by day and night, Credit: author)
And since my arrival two weeks ago, I have been immersed in the some of the very experiences their words conveyed. I’ve made the voyage from Newark airport to Fiumicino, and from Palazzo Santa Croce to Via di Sant’Anna, where I met my flatmates and settled into a new pace of life. I have galloped from the Turtle Fountain to the Spanish Steps on Jeffrey Blanchard’s monumental tour of the city, and I’ve laughed at the unique gruff wit of Jan Gadeyne, who teaches architectural history.
On each Roman day I walk endlessly, and each Roman evening finds me both exhausted and exhilarated. The streets seem to tug at my gaze, leading me on and making my mind spin in wonder. In the moments that I am not wandering and wondering, I am touring new sectors of the city during class, trying to eavesdrop on peoples’ Italian conversations, sketching for my studio art class and going absolutely wild at local food markets. All the while I find it grounding to know that so many students before me have taken similar footsteps. This blog is an immense archive of the many ways that this semester abroad has been lived by Urban Planning, Architecture and now “Liberal Studies” students, and I hope that it will be as eternal as Rome itself.
A presto!
Baladine