Still in Baltimore, but I thought I would post a little update and some interesting facts for the day.

Update 1:  I cannot move my head to the left.  The beds in our dorm are so terrible that I honestly am not able to fully move my head!  So I'm now that awkward girl who walks around with her head tilted to the right all day long.

Update 2:  I have taken 15 pages of typed notes and 4 pages of hand-written notes since I've gotten here.  We're had 3 full days now of lectures, and it's been weird being the student.  I won't bore you with all of the details, but I've learned some pretty cool things:

• Julius Caesar never wanted to be king.  While he's often blamed for being this super ambitious man, he never seems to want to be a monarch.  He just wanted to be more powerful than anyone else and to do things his way.  Oopps.
• hostis is the Latin word for "enemy," and we get 2 very different English words from it: hostile and host.  I was always confused about this, but here's why:  originally hostis meant "guest," then it came to mean "foreigner," and then it came to mean "enemy" in Latin.  This shows an interesting cultural attitude change for the Romans, who originally would treat all foreigners as their "guests," but as they became more powerful they thought of them in a more negative way.
• During his reign, the emperor Nero (now known for playing the lyre while Rome built and killing lots of Christians) built a massive bronze statue of himself that was called the "Colossus of Nero." When it was moved later to build the Flavian Amphitheater in its spot, it took 24 elephants (!) to move it.  Now the Flavian Amphitheater is known to us at the "Colosseum" as a reminder of the statue whose spot it stole.

Now go impress your boss at your next cocktail party with those fun facts.

The Flavian Amphitheater, aka "Colosseum"