In the Evening I've Got to Roam

First of all, I want to send a big Happy 17th Birthday to my sister, Melanie!!!

I wish that I could start out this entry telling you all that all of these exciting things have been happening in Rome over the past few days since my last blog post, but to be honest life has been kind of boring. But boring in a good way, in a way that says that I am comfortable and settled and this is starting to be home. A reason for this might be the fact that I have a killer cold that has essentially kicked the crap out of my sinuses and upper respiratory system – but I guess it is better having a cold in Rome over something like the flu.

Friday morning the apartment woke up around 10 in order to head to school and be some of the first people in line to change our schedules. I had gotten a few classes that I just wasn’t all that keen on, so my schedule is now as follows:

Mon/Wed 3:30-4:55 ~ Italian Media and Pop Culture
Mon 9:00-11:55 ~ Art of Rome
Tue/Thurs 10:30-11:55 ~ Introduction to Italian Language and Culture
Tue/Thurs 12:30-1:55 ~ New Media

The schedule isn’t exactly how I would have liked it, but I guess at the end of the day I have classes that I am interested in. I just have to suck it up and deal with the fact that I have classes 4 days a week, and the only day that I have to stick around school most of the day is Wed, but I can just make that my “get stuff done day” and do homework during my off time.

We all came back to the apartment and hung out for a bit, then we all got ready to go out to dinner for Colleen’s birthday. We decided to go have dinner at one of the restaurants on the Tiber River because they will only be open for another week or so. We went to a restaurant called Tucci. I couldn’t taste anything, so I decided to have pasta with red sauce and water. So exciting, I know. But everyone else really enjoyed their meal, and regardless of anything it was so nice to have a relaxing dinner by the water. While having dinner I discovered that many Italians are just as embarrassed by the fact that they can’t speak English, as we are by the fact that we can’t speak Italian. We all could tell that our waitress felt so bad that she couldn’t communicate with us very well. Throughout the meal there was a lot of hand gesturing and pointing in order to get our points across.

From there, we tried to get to a place where there were supposed to be a bunch of AUR kids (we are having a hard time meeting people because classes haven’t started yet, and we are all living in different areas of town). Yet, we took a bus too far after finally figuring out which one to get onto with the help of some nice Ukranian guys, and then had to wait forever to get back from the wrong place to the original place that we were. Once we got back to the original place we were in Trastevre, I decided to head back home with Molly and Ali so we could go to bed. By this point I was feeling like crap, and I knew that it would serve me better in the long run to sleep rather than be out until 2 AM or so.

The next day the 6 of us headed up to school for their welcome BBQ. I learned pretty quickly that the Romans don’t know how to have a BBQ like the Amerians. I was so disappointed with my burger. I had been looking forward to that hunk of meat for a number of days, so imagine how disappointed I was when I bit into it and realized that it kinda tasted like cardboard. Besides that, there was only 1 bottle of mustard out, 2 bottles of ketchup, and about 7 bottles of mayonnaise – and most of them were empty. That is just not right. How can anyone have a BBQ without condiments? Are they crazy?

We ditched the BBQ pretty quickly with 2 girls from G-Dubs and decided to head to Trastevre (which is about a 10 minute walk from school) on a search for gelato. We all got some of it and then sat on the fountain in the middle of Santa Maria Piazza and watched people gather outside of Santa Maria Church (the oldest church in Rome) for a wedding. The way the ladies were walking in their heels was just amazing to me. I barely can walk on the cobblestones in flats without killing myself – and they can walk in stilettos with no problems at all? I just don’t get it!

After watching the beautiful bride go into the church, we decided to wander around the area. We happened upon this store that had fun clothes in the window and in the basement there was a real live regular grocery store! I know, this doesn’t sound all that exciting, but for me it was just about a miracle that in the future I would be able to find everything that I need in one place. Essentially the 5 of us have spent a good portion of the week going to every grocery store in our neighborhood looking for the essentials – aka I couldn’t find salt for days, and it was starting to get really frustrating. But yay, this place has been found and I can do my shopping there. Now, if only I could find chocolate chips so I can bake…

Ali’s birthday was yesterday (2 birthdays in 2 days!!), so we let her choose where we went for dinner. She chose this pizza place down the street from us that we had noticed on our first or second day here. The kicker is, the place is called Disney Pizza. We were all hoping that the pizza would be in the shape of Mickey’s head or something, but alas, no. The only thing really Disney-esque about the place was the “mural” thing on one of the windows. But the pizza was really good, so we decided the place was a keeper.

From Disney Pizza we got on the tram to go out for Notte Bianca. Notte Bianca takes place once a year in September and it means “White Night,” or night without sleep. The city stays open – all the museums, the streets were closed off to cars and motor bikes, everyone was out. It was crazy and busy and claustrophobic, but it was like one big Roman party. Although we didn’t make it into any museums, we took in the culture of the people by wandering around - from the Tomb of the Unknown to the Spanish Steps, to the Pantheon and back again, we saw so much. Although I was incredibly claustrophobic for most of the night and we didn’t get home until 4 AM, I was happy that I went out, because it is something that I will probably never have the opportunity to do again.

Today, we just hung out and spent time in the apartment chilling. Most things aren’t even open on Sunday, so it was far from a big deal. Last night right before we left, the wireless was installed in our apartment, so I spent a good portion of the day on Skype talking to people. It was good to finally have an internet connection that I can use when I want to versus having one computer that we are all trying to share. The other thing that we did today was figure out our plans for going to Venice next weekend. We booked a hostel and figured out what train passes we are getting. I am really getting excited for that, I think it is going to be a good time.

If you got to this point in the post, thank you for bearing with me and if not, I understand that I can write a lot. And, on that note, I am off to bed, considering the first day of school is tomorrow!