Day 7

First day of school! First day of school! (ßMy Nemo impression).

My goal for the morning on my first day of school in Rome was to do my laundry. This task was not completed without struggle.

For one, the laundry room is quite a walk from my room. I’m pretty sure it’s technically like twenty feet away from my room, but that path is blocked. Instead, I have to go all the way around the entire fourth floor just to reach the three washers and three dryers. Next, for some reason I was dumb and didn’t realize these machines are coin operated. They kept telling us we had to buy our own detergent, and I did bring my own detergent sheets (s/o to Mackie for the idea!), but you apparently also need to pay 2€ for each machine. AND you can only use 1€ and .50€ coins, which are already precious commodities as it is. It’s so funny how at home a $1 bill is nothing special, and a .50¢ coin is basically useless, but here it’s the total opposite. So for one, I didn’t bring any money with me when I first went to the laundry room (which now I’m starting to remember being told about paying for laundry here back at some initial information sessions), so I had to go alllllll the way back to my room for my wallet. I had to borrow a 50-cent coin from Katie to have enough to wash my clothes, and then I had to go to the vending machines and use my two 2€ coins to obtain the correct change for drying. WHAT A HASSLE. But it’s okay. Now I know to collect and save those coins!

So I wash my clothes, and of course the machine takes longer than it says it will, but that’s how it is back at the Queens campus anyway so no big deal. But THEN, I take my clothes out and find that they are covered in what appears to be a million pieces of wet cardboard. I still for the life of me cannot remember having anything like that in my pockets, or seeing it in the washer before I loaded my clothes, but needless to say, I was not pleased. However, I was able to get all the stuff off, both by shaking out my clothes and with the help of the dryer. The dryer performed pretty well considering, so that made me a little happier. The clothes that are currently hang drying kind of have a wet cardboard smell to them, but they’re definitely clean. 

My first class of the semester was at 1:30. It's called The City of Rome, and we evidently will learn all about the history of Rome through lecture, art, cinema, literature, tours, and more! Basically, it's maybe my favorite class ever. Today we discussed the foundation of Rome and the Roman Republic (my favorite historical topic ever by far), which I found to be quite enjoyable. Actually, before that, the professor handed out a little questionnaire just to see how much we already knew about the history of Rome. I'm pretty sure I spent the most time on it, especially considering question #2 was "Who was Julius Caesar?" which I had to answer in a million different ways. (Later I even complained to Katie about some things I remembered about him that I had forgotten to write down). I hope/suspect I'll become the teacher's pet in this class, too.

We spent the later part of our afternoon at the Palazzo/Galleria Doria Pamphilj, which was this really cool interactive palace/art gallery. It was ridiculously hot in there, but it was a really unique experience. It featured several paintings by Caravaggio, and many busts and portraits of Pope Innocent X (a member of the Pamphilj family).

For dinner, we went to a nice little restaurant near the Palazza di Spagna, all because I was dying to finally go to Valentino's Gelato by the Trevi Fountain (introduced to me by my EF tour guide from last summer, Mike "Dad" Sineni). I'm telling you, it was 1000% worth the walk. Having Valentino's definitely made up for the fact that I couldn't have Blue Bell like everyone else today. 

Overall, week 1 = TOTAL SUCCESS!!

Day 6

Sometimes, there’s nothing better than a lazy Sunday morning.

I was delighted to wake up at 10 am today; I feel like I really earned it. It was nice not to have to get up and immediately get dressed and ready for whatever had been planned for me. But of course, I didn’t let the whole day go to waste—why would I even be here if all I wanted to do was sit around??

We set out a little before noon for the Ara Pacis museum. It houses, of course, the Ara Pacis, which is basically an altar Augustus built to himself. Way back whenever, it had sunk into the ground and been forgotten, but after many centuries it was rediscovered and excavated. Weirdly enough, Benito Mussolini was responsible for having the Ara Pacis reassembled and put on display. You would think a fascist wouldn’t do such a thing, but it turns out he believed himself to be a descendant of Augustus.

This one's not part of the Ara Pacis...just some cool mosaic in the museum.

On the lower floor of the museum, there’s currently a really neat exhibit about food in the Roman Empire. We got to see burnt peas, lentils, and nuts from Pompeii, all kinds of old glasses and plates and things, and much more. It was surprisingly big and very informational.

After the museum, we had lunch at a cute little place in a cute little part of town. Actually, all of Rome is pretty cute on Saturday and Sunday afternoons. There are plenty of people out, but not too many cars, so it’s really quite quiet.

We saw several other sights today, including Tiber Island (which feels ridiculously small when you’re on it), the ruins/cat sanctuary again (got to pet a cat!), the Colosseum, and the Circus Maximus.

Me and Julius Caesar (probably the first of many similar pictures)

Following a long, hot, exhausting walk all the way back to campus, I finally got to do some Skyping. I talked to Will and Mackie first, and then my mom (both calls were short. I guess they hate me). Something is very wrong with the Wi-Fi around here, so hopefully once that’s fixed (aka it better be ASAP), we can do some group Skyping and whatnot. We attempted that, and almost had it working, but I was only on my phone so video wouldn’t work. I’m actually currently kind of happy that my phone is on a different Wi-Fi than everyone else because I’m still able to communicate with the world.

At 8 pm, we attended student mass. It was really cute! Normally it’s in a church right around the corner from our building, but for whatever reason it was in one of the classrooms this time. I really like the priest, and I love that we get free pizza afterward. There were some awkward moments during mass, due to the fact that there was no music, no kneeling, or really any organization at all. But again, I really enjoyed it anyway. It was also fun to get to socialize some more with some of the other people in my program. Turns out some of them might also be coming on the Amalfi Coast trip with us!

And with that, my summer is officially over. But it really doesn’t feel like it!

Day 5

Orientation is finally over! Day 5 began with the last of our sessions: a crash course in basic Italian. I’ve always loved learning new languages, so it was actually really fun for me. And already knowing some Latin and Spanish proved to be quite helpful. The prof seemed to like me, too (once a teacher’s pet, always a teacher’s pet). So now I know the Italian alphabet, numbers, and some basic phrases. Well, it was kind of a lot, so I’ve probably also forgotten a lot of it, but I’ll just have to keep practicing.

So that took up the whole morning, and then we decided to have lunch right across the street where they have really good sandwiches and fruit cups. After, Katie and I booked our trips to the Amalfi Coast and Florence—or, I should say, attempted to book. By the end of the day we were successful, but we hit a lot of road bumps along the way. Katie’s card got declined by a Swiss website, I thought my card got declined on hostelbookers.com, but it turned out that the website just sucks, so then I had to book that through a different website, etc. I keep saying, though, we live and we learn. That is constantly happening on this adventure so far.

We spent the later part of the afternoon exploring the area along and around the Via del Corso, the street with all the shops. We saw and climbed the Spanish steps, tried to enter the Pantheon but were stopped by 5 o’clock mass, browsed in the Disney Store, and looked at the Trevi Fountain through glass since it’s STILL under renovation. It’s had scaffolding now for at least 14 months, and that is not okay. It better be done before we head to Seville!

Sad because Fendi is under renovation (yes, I'm actually in front of the store).

But anywho, we saw lots of pretty buildings and things and had a very pleasant afternoon. On our way back to campus for a rest/rehydration, we saw a big boat docked along the Tiber at Ponte Cavour called Lian Club that advertised live music and food. Naturally, we decided to go there for dinner and to listen to the live music later.

I think it was probably the least touristy thing we’ve done so far. I’m pretty confident we were the only non-Italians there. The menu was super small and not at all in English, but we somehow figured it out and got some extremely delicious food. Mine was eggplant AND zucchini parmesan. YUM!

In typical American fashion, we thought the band might start at 9:30 or so. We quickly realized that wasn’t going to happen, but were enjoying the beautiful night and the same 10 disco songs they kept playing over and over. Finally, sometime after 11, we got our live music. And it was great! Lyrics were 100% Italian, but it really didn’t matter. They were so talented and I think even wrote their own songs. Actually, I should say the lyrics were 97% Italian…they ended one song with the ending of “Happiness is a Warm Gun,” which was super bizarre, but appreciated by us. Our waiter was cool, too. We spoke mostly English to him, he spoke mostly Italian back, but we made it work and really had a wonderful experience.

I feel like I understand the locals so much better now! Yet I know there’s so much left to learn…

Day 4

Day 4 = TIVOLI!!!!! I cannot even describe how much I loved spending the day in Tivoli.

After a somewhat sleepless night (I think because I ate dinner so late yesterday, just like a real Italian), we set off for the town of Tivoli at 9 am. Lots of us from both the DTW and the Rome semester programs came, and we were led by two of the in charge people (again, I don’t know their technical roles) and an RA. We had been told that Tivoli houses old villas of popes, cardinals, and even Emperor Hadrian, and also that part of the Lizzie McGuire movie was filmed there, but I really don’t think I was expecting it to be as truly amazing as it was. I’m not even going to attempt to describe the sights I saw; I’ll let the pics do the talking. 

Well, I suppose I'll caption some of them.

On our way!

 Villa d'Este

Foliage pictures are specifically for my mom.

The Rome area has the weirdest and most delicious drinking fountains ever! There's a picture of me doing this too, but uploading pictures is annoying. It'll eventually be posted probably on Facebook or something.

From the Lizzie McGuire movie!!!!

So sassy, I know.

Rainbows!

Hard to see, but there's ruins underneath the current villa.

Villa Gregoriana

More rainbows!

I will share some of the funny/kind of embarrassing anecdotes of the day, though. For one, I'm ready for the weather to cool down some so that I can start wearing shoes other than my sandals. Cheap Target sandals with no traction + slippery stone steps and curbs everywhere = lots of losing my balance. I normally just lose my footing a little and then recover, but when stepping onto a median today in Tivoli after crossing the road, I straight up fell down. It was such a weird moment! I kind of like did the splits a little bit I think? It just happened so quickly and then I got up as quickly as I could, so my memory of it is kind of foggy. I didn't bleed or anything, but my right knee and toes did hurt for a while after.

While at Villa d'Este, Katie and I got scolded for entering a restricted area of the garden. They only had like one sign, and it was in Italian, so how were we supposed to know?! We also saw people from our group leaving that area, so it didn't seem like it was restricted. They could at least put up tape or cones! And then after that, on the inside of the villa, I got in trouble for taking a picture of the costumes on display for some random opera exhibit that was there. There was no sign at all! Well, there was, but only on the main entrance to the exhibit. It was also easily entered through another passage, though, where we came in, and I had absolutely no warning that photography was prohibited. Rule-follower that I am, though, I quickly deleted the picture. (Nerd alert).

We also struggled to find a restaurant to have dinner at tonight back in Rome that would accept our food voucher ticket things. Some places were not actually where the map claimed they were, some were not open because it's still August, and some just didn't look appealing. We eventually found a little restaurant right by the Vatican museum, which ended up being a great place for eavesdropping on other English-speaking patrons. Right after, we turned the corner and went to the famous Old Bridge gelateria, which has absolutely delicious gelato, and always has a line (or, more like a mob of people. Italians don't do lines). The funny thing about tonight, though, was that the majority of the mob waiting to order gelato were nuns! And they all got HUGE cones of gelato! Some guy walked past us loudly humming "I Will Follow Him" just like in Sister Act. I'm still laughing about that. My guess is that Pope Francis guilt-tripped one of the rich cardinals into buying all those nuns big scoops of gelato. Then again, even a big cone only costs 4-5€. 

I'm getting kind of out-of-order here, but I'm tired so I don't care. We also got to experience the Italian version of Big Thunder Mountain today...aka a regular Italian train. We saw some really beautiful views from the train overlooking the cliffs both when we went to and left Tivoli, but man did it feel like we were going to fly off the edge of the mountain. My mom would've DIED being by the window on that train. I am 100% not afraid of heights, but I was pretty freaked out on that train. However, it was kind of fun whipping around the curves and going in and out of caves on that thing. Like I said, it was the Italian Big Thunder Mountain. (Cred goes to Katie for making that analogy).

I am totally exhausted right now, but I regret nothing. Day 4 was maybe the best day yet! (...which also might have to do with the fact that we didn't have any orientation sessions today).