Studio a Roma

The ceiling in one part of St. Peter's basilica

Classes started on Monday, but not for me.  Somehow, I ended up only having classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which is absolutely amazing because that means 4 day weekends every week! So classes started on Monday, but I ended up sleeping until 11 am while everyone else ran around scrambling to get to class on time and get everything done.  I leisurely went and took care of some admin things so that I could get my Permesso di Soggiorno, which will allow me to stay in Italy for more than 90 days.  A group of us ate at the cafe across the street.  The people there were really nice, and they had sandwiches, which we hadn't seen much of before then.  I got a prosciutto and provolone sandwich on white bread which was really good and only cost 2,00 euro! The rest of the day was pretty low-key.  I know we had a floor meeting for all of the students that are here for the whole semester, but other than that, nothing noteworthy happened.

Outside of St. Peters

Today, I had to wake up extra early to go to the post office for my permesso di soggiorno.  We met with Domenico at 8:45 am and walked to the post office (about 20 minutes away).  To get the permesso, we needed to copy every single page of our passports, a letter from our school, a letter from the bank, and some forms.  The permesso costs 73 euro! but since I'm a St. John's student, I didn't have to pay anything. At the post office, we went up one at a time and Domenico did all the work.  We only had to sign a form and that was it.  But we got to sit at the post office and people watch for a good two hours, which was really interesting.  

Top of St. Peter's Basilica

After the permesso meeting, we went back to campus.  Unfortunately, I had a class that started at 9:40 am.  Fortunately, I was two hours late because of the permesso, and it was excused (more than half the class was with me...).  The class was art and architecture of Rome, and it sounds pretty interesting, but also pretty intense.  It's a three hour class once a week.  We're going to be meeting on site at different architectural hot-spots for a lot of the classes, and we're responsible for getting ourselves there on time.  We're also expected to sketch things, which I'm basically in capable of, especially since I didn't even bring a pencil. The class is a lot of history and memorizing things, which I will find interesting, its the parts where I actually have to DO art that could be problematic.  We shall see.  I was supposed to have my first theology class today too, but it was cancelled because the professor doesn't return to Rome until next week (which means that class is cancelled for Thursday too!). After my single class, I retrieved my computer, which enabled me to start this blog! I'm much happier now that I can communicate with the world outside of Rome. We took another trip to the grocery store today, and I picked up some breakfast-y food.  We were going to attempt to cook tonight, but we didn't have any recipes or know how to make anything, so we decided that we're going to look up a recipe and try again tomorrow (suggestions of easy things to cook are appreciated!!).  We ended up going out to dinner again tonight, this time to Grotta Azzurra.  There was six of us, so they seated us in the back room, which was decorated like a cave/grotto.  It was really interesting, and definitely set the scene for the trip we're taking this weekend.  I ordered the ravioli, and it was pretty good.  I liked the sauce at this place much better than the sauce at the first pasta place we tried.  

Swiss Guard!

Today we also planned our first weekend excursion.  We will be visiting........... Capri!  We're leaving on the train on Friday morning, and staying at a hotel on the island.  It ended up not being overly expensive.  We plan to spend lots of time on the beach swimming, and we also want to see the Grotta Azzurra, which is one of the seven natural wonders of the world.  The train from Rome is only 10,50 euro, which is less than $15 USD.  I'm pretty excited to get to relax on the beach for a while, and I'm hoping the sunshine and fresh air will help get rid of this persistent cold I've got.  

So I'll be updating this periodically.  Every few days, or whenever I have some free time.  Don't forget to check out the rest of my pictures! The link is up top! Buona notte a tutti!

Ciao a tutti!

The Pantheon

I arrived in Rome last Thursday morning.  The first flight was to JFK and it was short and boring.  The plane only had 3 rows across and I got to sit by myself by the window.  I ended up sleeping through the entire hour long flight.  Once at JFK I had a couple hours to kill before my flight to Rome.  Mostly I ended up people watching by my gate, but I also bought a magazine which kept me entertained for the four hours I was forced to sit.  The flight to Rome was long and annoying.  The man sitting next to me was awkward and kept bumping into me once he fell asleep.  I didn't sleep very much on the plane-- probably only 2 hours out of 8.  Mostly I just sat there and waited.  The food they gave us was okay, nothing special.  Once we were flying over Europe the clouds broke and we could see everything out the plane windows.  I especially enjoyed seeing the Alps, because it looked like we weren't too far above them.  We started descending when we were over the Mediterranean Sea and I could see all the small islands off the coast and it was amazing.  That's when I started getting really excited.

Ancient Columns

Getting off the plane, I was more overwhelmed than I've been since I went to Italy alone when I was 13.  I had no idea where I was supposed to go and what I was supposed to do. The signs were in Italian and English, and I know enough Italian to understand what they said, but what they said made no sense.  I wandered around lost and confused until I found the baggage claim and someone else studying abroad with St. John's.  We attempted to navigate to the designated meeting spot together.  The directions that St. John's had given us said to meet in Terminal B, however, none of the signs used letters to label the terminals... At the passport checkpoint I was yelled at for not having some sort of form and the man angrily stamped my passport (no one else in the entire study abroad program had a similar problem; most didn't even get their passports stamped!).  I walked right through customs without doing or saying anything to anyone.  Once me and the other girl from St. John's (her name is Erin, she's my roommate) got through customs, we had to find the St. John's group, and our Student Affairs Coordinator, Domenico.  Domenico thought I was Italian! He said that I look Italian because I have dark eyes and hair (northern italians).  Thats the first time ever that anyone has thought I could be Italian!  We waited until 25 or so students arrived and then we took a bus to campus.  

Trevi Fountain

The campus here is all one building.  It's in the Prati district, which is one of the wealthy and safe parts of Rome.  The building has four floors.  The first floor has a student lounge, computer lab, miniature library and some classrooms.  The second floor has administrative offices and classrooms.  The third floor has boys dorms and I live on the fourth floor! I have one roommate, and our room is not really very exciting.  Not even much of a view; it just looks out on the courtyard.  The campus all in all is really nice though, and its a block away from a metro stop that can get me basically wherever I need to go in the city.  There is a gelateria across the street, a really good pizza place next door, and lots of other eating options nearby.  The grocery store even sells some American products.  

La Scala D'Espagna/The Spanish Steps

The first day was mostly unpacking, meeting new people and getting comfortable.  We explored the city a little but only the blocks right near campus.  I did, however, taste my first real Italian gelato - nutella flavored of course - and it was amazing. I also ate some real Italian pizza that day; also amazing. The second day (Friday) we had lots of orientation stuff, followed by a tour of the city.  We ate pasta at a nearby restaurant that wasn't as spectacular as I had anticipated, but the service was good and the waiter thought it was hilarious that we were American.  The tour of the city brought us to all the touristy places within walking distance of campus.  We went to the Pantheon, the Trevi fountain, the Spanish Steps, and some of the more well known Piazzas of the area. The tour took a couple of hours, and by the time we were finished, we were absolutely exhausted, but it had enabled me to take a lot of really good pictures, so I was pleased.  

View of St. Peter's Basilica from the bridge near campus

The next day all of the fatigue from walking so much and the time difference caught up with me and I ended up sleeping until 4 in the afternoon.  It didn't help that I was catching a cold (I didn't fall asleep until 8 am, so sleeping until 4 pm wasn't really that bad!).  My roommate slept later than that, but when she woke up, we went to the grocery store and got some food and stuff we needed.  It was an interesting experience.  I'm not comfortable using my Italian because I don't want to mess up, but I can understand a lot of what they say and I know how to speak it.  It doesn't help that most of them are totally willing to attempt to speak English because all of the people I'm with aren't willing to try to use Italian.  Needless to say, I haven't gotten much practice yet.  That night we went out to dinner at a restaurant that had horrible service and horrible food.  Nothing worthy of describing in detail.  After dinner, we went down to the Tiber River where they were having a festival of some sort.  There was a lot of people and little shops along the river.  We went to an outdoor bar on the river and had a great time.  The waiters all love us because we're American and friendly.  We took pictures with them and some of the girls have gone back to see them again.  

The main street leading into the Vatican

On Sunday, I went to the Vatican with a bunch of the girls here.  We walked over there at 11 am, and immediately got in line to go into St. Peter's Basilica.  It was well over 90 degrees and I was still really sick, so standing in line was the last thing I wanted to do.  But we waited, and it only took 20 minutes to get inside. When I walked through the doors, my jaw dropped.  I had never seen anything so beautiful in my life!  It was a gigantic room of sculptures and paintings from floor to ceiling.  Everything was so intricate and detailed.  I can't even describe what it was like.  The sculptures of people included every little detail, down to the fingernails and details on the clothes they wore.  

Me in front of St Peter's Basilica in the Vatican

We stayed at St. Peter's for an hour or so admiring every little detail.  Some of the girls attended a mass there, but me and my roommate decided to leave because I still wasn't feeling well and she was really tired.  On the way back we stopped at a farmacia, and I finally got to use my Italian to speak to the pharmacist and get some cold medicine and cough drops.  Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), she spoke English too, so it was far too easy.  We went back, got some pizza, and rested for awhile.  That evening, a group of about 11 of the girls decided to go to the Hard Rock Cafe because we wanted some protein (the diet here consists mostly of carbs and fats, no protein!).  It took us an hour to get there because we had bad directions, and then we had to wait a long long time before we got a table, but once we sat down it was worth it.  The burgers were delicious, and we had a really awesome waiter.  Without us asking him, he decided that we needed to take a picture with him as a group, and he was joking around with us the whole time.  He even made us speak a little Italian. It was a good night, but by the time we got back (after midnight), I was so tired that I passed out.  

The inside of St. Peter's Basilica

That's all for my first update.  I will add more a little later.  For now, I've got to run to the market to get something to make for dinner! Ciao a tutti!