It's all relative...

I'm amazed by the fountains in Rome for the simple fact that the water that is presently flowing through them is coming from the mountains some miles outside of the city center and is flowing through aqueducts that are thousands of years old.
When I first arrived in the city I felt weird drinking from these fountains, for the simple reason that my obvious infatuation with them would lead to others labeling me an American seeing as how these wells were so important to my everyday life here. This bothered me, until I started to use these fountains more and more, and I noticed something. The locals here in Rome do actually use these fountains as well.
The reason I thought this weird is that for the first week I was in town I was too concerned with my own use of the fountains to notice who else was using them, but I quickly removed myself from that perspective and noticed that in fact the locals do use these, and for various reasons.
I have seen locals drink from the fountains, wash their bodies in the fountains, and even let their animals drink from them on hot, sweltering Roman afternoons. I just figured that these people have been living in Rome long enough that the novelty of these fountains has worn off, and they stopped using them, but I was obviously wrong. I compare it to a football weekend in State College where the line for The Creamery wraps around the block to the parking garage in which people wait hours for a $3.50 Peachy Paterno (just for you dad!) cone, but to us students, the novelty has worn off. I assumed it was the same for these fountains but that is not true.
This morning, May 28th, I went to fill up my water bottle at the fountain next to our class (Buddah) and an older gentleman in a suit came up behind me with the clear intention of using the fountain, so I let him go seeing as it might take a minute or two to fill my water bottle. He threw his tie behind his shoulder and bent down and took a nice long sip of the cool refreshing spring water, stood up, wiped his mouth, dropped his tie back into place, and he was on his way. He even threw in a simple "grazie" to me for letting him jump in front to get his morning refresher. I said "prego", which means thank you, and smiled. He smiled back and we parted ways.
This early morning experience showed me that in fact the modern day Romans do appreciate what we consider to be a novelty experience, and I think we could learn from this. It may sound very cliche, but we can't take anything for granted. We must not walk by the Pantheon and just go "Oh, there's the Pantheon again." We should stop inside and take it all in because who knows when these experiences will present themselves to us again.
To this, I am allowing myself the pleasure of a double scoop of Peachy Paterno ice cream when I return to State College for Arts Fest. I guess it's the simple things that make all the difference. Ciao