Yesterday, March 29th, was when I finally landed at the Rome Fuimicino airport. After getting on the wrong train I finally made it to the campo dei fiori, which is where our apartment is for the month of April. In the plaza there is a beautiful market that's open every morning, and our apartment literally looks right over it! Che bella! I'll try to remember to take pictures of the market from my window when I wake up tomorrow morning so that you can all see! For now, here are a few pictures from my window:
We're lucky too, because the UW Rome center is literally right around the corner, a 20 second walk. Today was really the first day to me, because yesterday I was mostly just exhausted and homesick. This morning we had our orientation at the Rome center with the other three UW groups studying, and then our group leaders showed us around a little and helped us get our cell phones. After that we were on our own so a group of us got lunch, got to know our surroundings, and stocked up on groceries (which we just got home from doing).
It was a beautiful morning with rain later, but unlike seattle, when it rains here it sprinkles for a few minutes two maybe twenty minutes and then goes back to sun. I could get used to this.
The area of Rome that we're in is very populated with Americans, which is comforting (especially having other blondes) but at the same time discouraging since a goal of mine is to really improve my Italian and be submersed in the culture.
We are close to the Emanuele river (which, for all you Angels & Demons fans, is the river the main character falls into out of the helicopter in the end), where you can also see the Vatican from! The boys live on the other side of the bridge and their apartment is bigger than ours! They have four boys in an apartment bigger than ours for ten girls. Not cool.
Tomorrow we learn what internship we will have, but wherever we get assigned we'll be working with other Italian students our age which I'm really looking forward to! Classes also start tomorrow which I am surprisingly looking forward to. I'll be taking italian 103 (which is supposedly hard!), italian 299 (which is a cultural class i believe. However, my teacher said one of his lesson plans includes learning an Italian recipe and cooking it at his apartment so that should just be sooooo difficult), and then I'm taking an Italian film class that I believe is focusing on the history of Rome.
I'm not quite sure what we have planned for the rest of the night, but the rest of the group is meeting at our place in a little while for dinner and drinks. I'll try to get some pictures on here soon!!
Ciao, ve Parlo a presto!
Con amore,
Julie
