The trip over here was pretty uneventful, there
was a huge group on the flight that I got to know before we boarded,
I had an excellent seat to Frankfurt, first row of economy in an exit
row, (Thank god there were no emergencies, I lied to the flight
attendant, I really don't think I'd be that helpful)
We had three hours to kill in the Frankfurt airport, so me and my
newfound JFRC buddies took over an empty gate and BS'ed while we were
all slap happy tired as it neared 2 am at home. I PASSED OUT on the
flight from Frankfurt, only to wake up for like 5 minutes cruising
over the Alps. IT WAS GORGEOUS
Got here, split a cab with one of the people I met to get here, was
exhausted, started orientation, slept, and then started our first
comedy of errors of trying to find a bar thats a 10 minute walk away.
Needless to say it took us over an hour to get there, but it was great
when we did, it was after 1am, I had 1 drink and was falling asleep so
I walked back up my new friend monte mario and went to sleep.
Yesterday was my first real day in Rome. Mitch, Matt (mitch's roomate)
and I went to find the local Piazza Balduino, bought some stuff,
spoke in Italian, and felt super Euro. We found the supermarket, I
bought alcohol for the first time (CRAZY), I love il VIno, I also love
that here it is separated out by region. Then we went back to campus
for more orientation festivities.
We has convocation, as this is another university I will soon be a
"graduate" of, and learned that this semester marks the 50th year of
the centers existence. Cool stuff, they introduced all of the staff
and everyone seems AMAZING, the stuff they have for us to do here is
CRAZY.
Then last night is when stuff really got crazy, before dinner Mitch,
Matt, Olivia and I decided we could walk to the vatican, only like a
30 minute walk (according to a priest on campus, so we believed
him)and then get on the metro and go to the trevi fountain. We ran in
to the head of res life on our way out and he gave us a recommendation
for a Gelateria and a restaurant near the vatican.
It was not a bad walk at all, tempered with some AMAZING gelato that
we found to be much better than the second Gelato we had last night.
The vatican and il piazza di san pietro were awesome, there were still
Christmas decorations up everywhere, which was cool (facebook pictures
to follow shortly)
Then we went to this small restaurant in some weird alley looking
place near the Vatican whose name escapes me and we had amazing food
we all ended up loving, paired with vino rose della casa! We also made
a point not to speak ANY English to the waiter, which wasn't bad, but
it was an interesting challenge not to even fill in with random words
we didn't know. When the waiter brought the bill he said in hilarious
broken English "Thank you for a a using a my a language" it was really
cool and we were all pretty proud of ourselves, obviously.
We decided to keep walking to the Trevi, since it's a very pretty
walk, which was a great idea, it was amazing to be walking around Rome
at night, it was super quiet and awesome. We went to the spanish
steps, met by some persistent rose peddlers which were super hilarious
after a while.
Ending up at the Trevi fountain at night was great, more than I
expected, and just like everyone told me, you're just like chilling
walking through some alley like street, you turn right, and theres
this amazing fountain. A bride and groom were there taking pictures,
it was just all so perfectly Roman.
Then we went to the metro, tried to take it home, but got off about 4
stops to early due to some language barrier issues and lack of good
map with some very nice metro workers. We were lost but we figured it
out and got home like 40 minutes later. We did stop and ask some guy
where we were. His face when I said "sono perso" was hilarious, turns
out we were one block west of where we needed to be, aren't you happy
I am being so detailed?
So we got back at like 12:30, after having walked for over 6 hours,
naturally we decided to go out again and meet up with some more people
at the bar we now knew was only 10 minutes away since we got lost the
last time.
Woke up awhile ago, got lunch, and am headed to a speech about all of
my study trip options!
Woop woop, also got the confirmations for the hotels for rome and
paris with my mom and sisters, cannot wait.
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