One of the things that I least expected from Rome was the level and content of graffiti. Throughout the city it seems that nothing is sacred to a tagger (with the exception of the Vatican walls). It's the first impression that I got while traveling into the city on a bus from the airport - Rome is a city covered in spray paint!
Believe it or not, I actually found this to be a neat cultural discovery. One of the key differences which I noted was that the graffiti was entirely different than what we find in America. Sure, there was the standard indecipherable stuff which only makes sense to the people who write it, but you also find lots of walls market with "ti amo _____", the Italian for I love _____ (Stephanie was one of the names I remember seeing). Cultural and economic commentary can be found on street corners in Rome, with tags like "Yankees go home" and, my personal favorite, the image of a woman throwing the Nazi swastika into a garbage can. Professor Sienkewicz even took a few of us on a small side trip to see the statue which has for generations been the posting place for poems of political satire and calls to action from the fellow citizen.

Rome. Probably the most historically important cities in the world, and we're right in the middle of it. One of the most surprising parts of the whole thing is how the modern city managed to incorporate the ancient one into it. I know I didn't expect to see 30 meter Roman walls with apartments built into them. It's our first day here and we've already visited the National Museum and seen all those marble statues that you only normally see pictures of in textbooks. From Bernini's Ecstasy of St. Theresa to the famous diskus-thrower (diskabolos), nothing can compare to seeing the marble, being surrounded by the culture that still thrives, and finally understanding the reason why these objects are in every relevant text.