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!
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