Bongiorno!

I am now in Italy, so here is a rundown of my past two days.

After my extra-long flight due to volcanic ash, everyone’s stuff arrive (woohoo!), and this is when I determined the first rule of traveling: if you cannot transport your stuff, you do not deserve to have it. This includes, rolling, lifting, carrying, and the like. You look like a fool otherwise. Embarrassing, really. On a side note, I think everyone should fly out of the State College airport, just for the experience. Take earplugs. And Dramamine.

My first impression of Italy: it is very green and very empty. I feel like for a country like Italy, with all the amazing food and hubbub of everyday life, it would be completely metropolitan and busier in general. I assumed Rome would be busy like New York City, and it’s not. In fact, there is NOTHING busy about Italy. It’s not as bad as Mississippi, or Haiti for that matter, but still. Being from Northeast USA and going anywhere else in the world really has its disadvantages.

We, being 18 other nutrition students and myself, live in a convent that was built in the 15^th century. That’s right, the place I’m living is older than COLUMBUS and the USA. The church that this was built around was built in the 11^th century. Now that is old. We live in one of the oldest parts of Rome, and that’s saying a lot considering everything is Rome was around when Jesus was. The convent consists of 3 buildings with a courtyard, which looks like something straight out of “The Secret Garden”. Two buildings belong to the Pantheon Institute, which we are studying with, and the third is an old folks home- what a contrast! It is about a 20 minute walk from the dead center of Rome.

So we check in, 14 of us in one apartment, 4 in another, and go on a preliminary tour. We all figured we wouldn’t retain anything due to traveling, but we really tried. We walked to see where our classrooms were going to be, past the Pantheon (which is getting a facelift… doesn’t look so hot with all the scaffolding), and a bajillion restaurants that operate outdoors. Our tour guide, who is faculty at the Pantheon Institute (PI), then kindly informed us he was leaving, and we had to get back all by ourselves.

To make a long story short, it took awhile. There was 13 of us, hungry, tired, wet, and grumpy, wanting food. After meandering and no one making any decisions, we decided the next restaurant we saw we were going to eat at. First restaurant: Expensive as anything. No. Second restaurant: Irish. No- we’re in Italy. Third restaurant: pizza and pasta- hallelujah! Oh wait! It was closed. Fourth restaurant: Chinese. Really? I’m in Italy. We finally stumbled upon a cute little restaurant, cheap, delicious, and warm.

After, we walked around in circles for about 2 hours, trying to ask Italians how to find the river, which is close to where we live, when we didn’t even know what the name was. Thank goodness for police officers, who carry some intense over-the-shoulder guns by the way. I found it interesting that the priority of this group was to buy alcohol over finding our way back home. I guess it doesn’t matter where you go, Penn Staters just want to get wasted L

We finally made it back, showered and flooded the bathroom, and then crashed. Note about the toilets: There is very little water in the bowl. We had no toilet paper for about 24 hours…ew. The back of the toilet is about 5 feet above the bowl hanging on the wall. The handle to flush it is a button on the wall. I have never been anywhere that I could flush the toilet paper and drink the water, so this is very new to me.

This morning we had more orientation, and took a very fast paced walk around the city. My teacher finally gave us a syllabus, and I’m finally excited to be here (after crying myself to sleep last night, this is great news!). We went to a pizzeria for lunch, which was better than American pizza because the sauce was homemade and there wasn’t a layer of grease on the top. We then went to Piazza Navona, Campo dei Fiuri, saw the Vatican from afar, and a million other things with amazing pictures (coming soon).

Since this is, after all, a STUDY abroad, I'm off to do work. More coming soon!

A couple notes about Rome:

It is almost all cobblestone, that gets really slippery when wet.

The streets are all handmade and curve, so there are no straight lines- a street is about 100 yards long and then it ends.

Enter every door- there might be a goldmine back there! There are a lot of doors that I would never think about entering back in the States, but here they hold libraries, student centers, banks, restaurants and cafes. (There is also an underground grocery store disguised as a clothing store…)

As for clothes: Americans look like idiots (not to mention that they feel the need to shout and be really obnoxious and obvious and travel in groups of 15 at all times…) because we wear color. Italians wear a ton of black and look sleek at all times. Needless to say, we stuck out.

Roman water is very pure. They don’t have water fountains- they have fountains with flowing water from the ground- already cold, pure, and delicious. No Giardia here! Thank goodness.