Eleonora's mother's cousin's family from Colorado were in town last week. Eleonora's mother is an Italian American from New York, but currently lives in Contursi in Salerno province. They are therefore also related to the Rosapepe family, a cousin of Eleonora's mother also lives in Rome. Since they don't know English and the Rosapep family from America doesn't know Italian, Eleonora was asked to translate and I got to tag along.
Enyo Augenti, husband to Maria Luisa (Rosapepe), is something of an aficionado for ancient Rome. He has written several books, two of which on the Colosseum and Roman women are very famous and used in classrooms all over the world. He was very kind to take us all over Rome and show us sites while telling us stories and exciting explanations.
This is the remains of the first wall of the Republic of Rome (before Octavian made it into an Empire). You can imagine it is very, very, very old. It was discovered by a man who had been contracted to build streets in this area. He found the wall but continued his blasting anyway, so he was jailed.
We walked around a lot of places, and at one point we passed a large shop that sold pope clothes. I got pretty excited even though I probably will never get to wear them. In fact I think it's more like definitely instead of probably. And each one costs about 400 euro.
Enyo (on the very right in the picture) told us that the morning gladiatorial fights were mostly for people who had received the death penalty. They got to fight against animals. Or, two were pitted against each other but only one had a sword. When one died, he was replaced with a newcomer, who now had the only sword. In the afternoons were the fights for the "real" gladiators. Slaves had to constantly provoke the gladiators to fight against each other because they were usually very good friends. Gladiators could ask for grace if they were about to be killed, and the crowd/emperor could decide with their thumbs. In the Colosseum there is an entrance just for the emperor, and also a service entrance, like when someone needed to bring in elephants or tigers.
There is another metro stop being built right next to the Colosseum, perhaps for another metro line. The progress is very slow because...ho hum each centimeter they dig up includes archeological finds!
Enyo and Maria Luisa have a really nice apartment near Via Veneto, which is the Roman equivalent of Rodeo Drive. They have a study full of books, and on the wall is a picture of Enyo's father shaking hands with Mussolini. There are also three different family crests on the wall. It must be so amazing to have so much family history.
Enyo and Maria Luisa also had Eleonora and I over for dinner one night with the Rosapep family as well as another family. It was delicious, as most meals are, and I really enjoyed the dinner. The other family was half British, so we had plenty of English-Italian dialogue as well as translators for the meal.
In my lab, we finally got to start on the surgeries on Thursday (even though they were slotted to start on Monday). They took three whole days but now 36 rats have either a single or a double catheter. Only one rat died of a reaction to the anesthetic. It was hard for me because I was always scared that the rats were not completely anesthetized and could feel pain. I was always asking Michele C to give more anesthetic (not to the one that died bc it was the first one of the day) if I felt like they were reacting to the movements. But he reassured me that they were mostly reflexes and the rats were very heavily anesthetized.
I watched a lot of surgeries over the three days, and I finally got to do my own this morning. It was fantastic enough, though I really applaude Daniele for having the patience to teach me. He refused to do anything for me and would only show me the motions so I could learn. I had a lot of issues mount the rat on the stereotaxy thing, because the head must be immobile during surgery to create minimal tearing of tissue. The eyes start blinking as a reflex if you hit the sweet spot in the ear, which I initially mistook for a sign of wakefulness.
The complete surgery, which I did by myself this morning, consists of first shaving the animal's hear and right chest. Then the rat's head is mounted and an incision made on the cranium. Four holes in a small rectangle are poked in the cranium just deep enough not to puncture the meninges and a screw is inserted in each one. Then the rat is laid on its back and another incision is made above his right breastbone or maybe collarbone, and a clamp is used to pick out a section of flesh. After making sure there are no other branches between that section of the vein and the heart, the vein is isolated from surrounding flesh, slightly nicked, and then inserted with the catheter. This is all very hard because the vein is very tiny, and since I was taking so long my vein was collapsed. After the catheter is fixed to the vein with some knots, a hole in the fasciae is made by by tunneling a blunt stick under the rats skin to the hole at the top of the cranium. The catheter is threaded through and reconnected, the chest incision stitched up, and the rat again mounted on the stereotaxy. After arranging the position of the catheter on top of the head, dental molding gum is prepared and used to glue the position of the catheter between the four screws. Finally two more stitches close up skin of the head around the catheter. The rat is then placed in cage with a little warming device underneath until it wakes up from the anesthetic.
This weekend Adriana and I went out to a great place in an area called Trastevere, known for its nightlife. At one point in the night, we had an "Aha!" moment. You see, the Tiber River is actually called the Tevere, and this place was "beyond the Tiber" since it was on the opposite bank of the rest of Rome and on the same side as the Vatican. We met a lot of really nice people, including this British girl named Jen who lived really close to me, so we got to walk home together.
Sunday afternoon we went to walk around and see some sights such as the Ara Pacis. Before we got caught in torrential rain, we actually ran into a lot of popular places by accident. We ran into Piazza Navonna, the Pantheon, the Trevi Fountain, Hadrian's Temple, the first wall of the Republic, and at one point saw St. Peter's in the near distance. However toward the end of the night we were soaking wet and worried about our mobile electronic devices, so everything was not so fun. Finally the rain stopped and we managed to get home safely, without the help of public transportation.
Until next time...arriverderci! And I am very glad to see that I now have some blogging competitors.
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