Buonasera! Yesterday we had our first official site visits. In the morning, we visited Largo Argentina, an area with 4 ancient temple remains. Today, it seems to be cat sanctuary rather than anything else. Apparently Roman people just boot their cats out when they go on summer vacation, not considering that stray cats have to end up somewhere. Largo Argentina was an ideal place to begin learning the process of identifying and differentiating the type and age of structures via building materials and style. In antiquity, two primary materials used were tufa and travertine. Recent additions and renovations are identifiable because they typically involve smaller, more uniform bricks. After the cat haven, we stopped at a few places on the palatine hill and eventually ended up on tiber island. Here, we talked about the celebration of Venus (I'm forgetting the name), which occurs on April 1st in Rome. Guess Roman goddesses take precedence over April Fools pranks. In ancient times, April 1 was a day for women..moms, daughters, prostitutes, whoever..to cleanse themselves; a kind of ritualistic and symbolic process of honoring and emulating Venus. Last stop, we took a bus up this winding hill (that's actually right across the street from our apartment on Via Mammeli) to (I'm told) the best vista in Rome. Unfortunately it started raining right when we got there, so the view wasn't anything impressive. The rain was a not so nice touch of home, and it continued to downpour the rest of the day.