Week Two

Week 2 marked the official beginning of classes. We were all starting to get settled in, figuring out where to get groceries, school supplies, etc. I've been making pretty decent meals since being in Rome. Cooking with Dan all the time at home got me into the habit of cooking well-rounded homemade meals. It's funny though because we all just eat tons of pasta basically. I have been trying to change things up though and got different kinds of meat and sauces. I have had to alter my way of cooking in some ways though. For instance, I almost always use ground turkey for meatballs and stuff like that, but they don't sell it here, although I did find ground turkey patties. So I just used those to make meatballs. I finally found bread crumbs too! Thankfully I don't have to make my own from stale bread, because I was under the impression I'd have to!

Going to the supermarket is an interesting experience. I have gotten better at it over time but mostly try to stick to buying stuff that I know. One thing that is really different is that you have to weigh your own produce and print out a sticker to mark it with its price. They don't have much for sliced bread because they buy fresh rolls all the time, but I can't eat the fresh bread fast enough and it gets stale after one day! You have to pay 5 cents at some of the grocery stores for each plastic bag you use, and the check out ladies are always soooo mean.

Along the same lines, we have discovered just how much the people here hate having to make change. The other day, 5 of us got lunch together and it came to €46 and change. The waiter made it €40 so that we could just give him 4 10s. It was so weird that he would want to lost €6 just to not have to make change. And it happens all the time! If all you have is a 50 dollar bill many places will refuse to take it. It is soooooooooo weird to me.

The 2nd week we started Studio too. It is already sooo different here then it is at home and I would say most everyone agrees. We have a lot more work here but all the teachers are far more understanding. They look out for us personally and understand that we want to be travelling and experiencing Rome and Europe. We were bummed when we found out that studio is Tues/Fri until 5:30, which really means until whenever we're done with class (often 7 or 8pm at home!). We were able to get 2 Fridays switched to Thursday so we can travel. I booked to go to Barcelona with a group of girls for the first long weekend, which is really exciting!

Our studio project is on a really odd site. It seems like studio teachers love giving us sites that are either in a really bad area, or are extremely complicated. This one is both! It is located on Via Portuense which is right across the Tiber from Testaccio in the southern end of Trastevere. It is a really sketchy place, and we were told not to go there alone or at night ever. Umm... great. I just love designing on sites in areas that are unsafe. The site itself is this really long and skinny strip of land along the river that has a bunch of really run down old buildings among basically a whole lot of shanties. There are mostly craftsmen there selling building materials and stone, and then little stands that serve as shops with mopeds and the like. It is really dirty and we've seen tons of homeless people living there. Anyway, it should be an interesting semester using that site.

The weather has still been off and on. It definitely rains here a ton more then it does at home. Rome is absolutely beautiful though when it's sunny out. I cannot wait until it is sunny a lot more often. I really like it here but the days when it is cloudless and sunny are by far my happiest. I think that I am definitely someone who is heavily effected by the weather, even though I love living in New England, but I also LOVE the snow, so when it's snowing I don't consider that bad weather at all.

Anyway, better get to working on some homework! The reason why I'm so bad at keeping up with the blog is because I am sooooo busy with other things! Once I'm caught up though hopefully I'll be able to stay with it.

Week 1

So I fell a little bit behind with the blog and am going to write the first few entries in retrospect.

So here I am in Rome, we got here at about 10am after a long night of flying over the Atlantic. I am usually an avid plane-sleeper but the timing was off for me and I wasn't tired enough to fall asleep in the seat I was in. I finally got some shuteye on the short flight from Frankfurt to Rome but it definitely wasn't enough.

We took a shuttle bus from the airport and Scott, our director, encouraged us to look out the window at the country-side before we arrived in the city. To be honest I was pretty taken aback. The "countryside" looked to me like they had built up a bunch of industrial buildings and high rise apartment buildings out side the city in the 60s or 70s and then completely abandoned the area. It was gloomy out, so that didn't help, but the whole place was barren, there was graffiti on everything, it was a little disheartening. As we arrived into the city, it was more of the same. Was I in Rome? This wasn't the Rome I was expecting. We quietly made comments amongst ourselves, it was dirty!

When we finally got to the apartments we chose rooms. Assia and I got a triple room for just us 2 which worked out nicely for us. Our room is really big and with my stuff all unpacked is pretty homey, aside from the cold tile floor. Speaking of cold, the heat is only on for 6 hours a day in 2 hour increments that we don't control. This is a sign of one of the differences from home, they are a lot more conscious of their energy consumption it looks like. There is a lot less hot water, the washing machine is TINY, etc.

At 3pm on the first day we had orientation. Most of us slept through the entire thing. I really tried to stay awake but it was so difficult....what do they expect when we flew all night?!

For the rest of the week we had lectures and walking tours, and the city began to grow on me. To give the city a break, we drove in by the worst part. We live close to the nice part of the city and most of our walking tours have enlightened me to the beauty that is Rome.

The second day when I went to pay my rent as the housing office which is in Piazza Navona was when I really started to be happy about being there. We walked around a building and there it was, the first really beautiful thing I saw in Rome. I was truly excited.

We also started Italian class the first week which I love. I decided after the first day to take the upper level class. I was nervous at first but it was a good choice and the teacher is the sweetest little lady in the whole world and encouraged me to switch even though I didn't take the placement test.

Friday night we had a dinner with the whole group. Now that was an experience. The whole dinner was crazy seafood dishes. The whole time everyone was timidly poking what they were about to put in their mouths, it was funny, and I felt adventurous. We went out afterwards, and had a lot of fun. We found a lot of good places to go out at night and made some new friends. Saturday we walked around and explored Trastevere (where our apartment is). We found these stairs to go up the hill and found a look-out point that I would guess is the best view of Rome. It was amazing, I was so impressed and took tons of pictures. I went back the next day to do a sketching assignment, I loved it so much. That is probably one of my favorites places in Rome so far, and we found it by mistake. For the sketching assignment we also found Bramante's Tempietto by mistake! That was an awesome discovery, and no one told us it was sooo close to our apartment!!

Anyway, that's all for week one!