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!!