Ciao a tutti!

Ciao da Roma!

Wow, here I am, I'm actually in Rome. It was a week ago at this time I was sitting in O'Hare airport waiting to board my flight to Washington D.C. (right after Inauguration mind you- Obama swag everywhere), which would then take me to Rome. Rome, the Eternal City. All roads lead to Rome. When in Rome, use as many clichés as possible until everyone's sick of them... or something like that.

So, first blog post. A lot of pressure, right? What do I talk about? Although it's only been a week, I feel like I've been here for ages, but haven't done much. Does that make sense? Probably not. We've had a lot of orientation stuff with Arcadia University (the program I'm studying abroad through) the first couple of days and that combined with jet lag has been the worst thing ever. So that's the boring stuff I'll skip over. Let's start with the basics.

Garbatella
This is the neighborhood of Rome that I will be living in the next couple of months. I have 5 lovely roommates and our apartment is pretty baller actually. Three bedrooms, two bathrooms, big closets, a nice common area, & a cute little kitchen.
The thing about Garbatella is that it's outside of the center of the city which everyone associates with the Colosseum, the Trevi Fountain, the Pantheon, the Spanish Steps, etc. Actually all these monuments are spread out among the city itself too.  So anyway, we like to think of Garbatella as a suburb of Rome. I was a little thrown off at first because it wasn't the "Rome" I was expecting, but it's amazing. We are among Roman families and businesses. You're lucky if a shop owner knows English. Sure it's been a bit challenging, but I'm looking forward to the day I can somewhat understand when people talk to me.

View of Garbatella from Bar Foschi

Classes
So believe it or not, I am here to take classes. Weird, right? I have to keep reminding myself of that. Again, mostly we've been doing orientation stuff where the program advisors explain the city and give you the basic information. Then the professors got up and gave their shpeal, lots of exciting stuff... Right.
One thing that is pretty interesting is how seriously they take schooling here. Sure college is a big deal in the US, but here it's different. Italian students stand for their professors. Stand. There's no quad, no gym, not a lot of extra-curriculars for students. They're here for class. Of course, in America, college students are there for their classes, but when you ask someone why college was one of the best times of their life do you think they're going to respond, "I loved the papers I had to write." Ummm... no.
I registered for my classes today and I have no classes on Thursday OR Friday. Be jealous. My classes are Economics of Organized Crime and Social Innovation (where we look at the Italian mafia), From Rome to Baghdad: Change and Continuity in the Ancient Mediterranean (a history/archaeology class), an Italian language class, and At Home in Rome: Modern Life in the Eternal City, which is the "Core Class" where we basically tour the city. 

Food
What better to round up this post with the thing that literally EVERYONE talks about!? FOOD! OH MY GOD ITALIAN FOOD NOMMMMM. I'm making myself branch out and try new things (crazy, right?!?!). I mean, how can I live in Rome for four months and NOT eat pizza? I feel like I'd be arrested or something! And that was literally all I ate the first day. Not sorry. We went to a little pizza place a block away from my apartment for lunch and had a full course Italian dinner (with PIZZA as the main dish) down the street from the Colosseum in a restaurant called Li Rioni. Everything was so delicious. We started with la bruscetta, then a fried ball of rice and mozzarella called "il supreme", then la pizza, then il tiramisu, and finally l'espresso. Best part was the Arcadia staff paid for it ;)

Salut!

There are so many great little cafes and open markets around my neighborhood. I absolutely love walking by and smelling the fresh oranges (or i clementini). The grocery markets are a wonder themselves as well. There are no preservatives in Italy so things go bad fast. That means they're super fresh when you eat them. I made the joke that my brother would love the milk here because he drinks it so fast anyway. I have yet to experiment much in the realms of the kitchen (for example, once I post this I'm going to make a mean PB&J sandwich. That's right. I brought peanut butter in my suitcase.) but I did make my first homemade meal the other night! Gnocchi & some pasta sauce! Go with it, I was super proud. I'll figure it out.

Yummm. :)

To sum things up, Italy has been pretty great so far! I'm looking forward to what the next few months have in store. And to those who are interested, I'll keep you updated. A presto!