The real adventure begins

So yesterday was still pretty dull at first... We had meetings again all day and those are just way too dull.  But last night we had dinner in the neighborhood which was absolutely delicious!!!  There were at least 50 of us in this restaurant, and they had closed most of it for us.  We had a four course meal and a glass of wine.  I'm not 100% sure what everything I ate was and I didn't love all of it, but that's okay because I'm trying to expand my horizons a lot on the food front...  I think it's working (sort of)! 

                                                               Tierney and I at dinner


Today we went to the Colosseum and the Roman Forum.  It was so unbelievably gorgeous.  The history is amazing and I can't even fathom the grandeur of these buildings when they were first built, especially when they are so beautiful now. 

                                                      There was even graffiti way back then!

                                                           View from the Colosseum

                                               Starting in middle: Me, Anne, Tierney
I'll probably add a few more photos in my next post if Tierney posts the ones that she took....
We only spent about an hour at the Colosseum, and then we moved on to the Roman Forum.  It was unbelievable how much there was to see there, but it was also very difficult to know exactly what you were seeing.  We decided it would have been cooler if we had a tour guide, but the sights were beautiful regardless. We spent hours there.  Every time we hit a fork in the road we would randomly pick and always found something new, I'm sure there are so many places in the Forum that we still did not see, but it was really warm today and we were ready to go and eat some food.

 A view in the Forum

Carly and I

 This view was so cool

 Random fountain we stumbled across

 Random garden we found

               This was one of the few things that was labeled well and I thought it was really cool

 Anne creepily took a picture of Maddie and I trying to figure out what the holes in one of the buildings would have been used for

When we finally left the Forum Anne, Carly, and I decided to walk back to the piazza where we could catch the bus and try to find a pizza place along the way.  First we walked the wrong way (oops) and ended up getting a little lost but that's okay...  Getting lost can be really fun sometimes.  We ended up walking down the road where most of the monuments seem to be, so the next time that we have some spare time at least we know how to get there!!!  The great thing about getting lost in the city is that there is so much amazing architecture here that you can just walk down an alley and there is always something gorgeous to look at.  And there are all sorts of cool little shops down random alleys.  It's just so different from anything that I've ever seen in the states.  The only issue was we started walking down a main street that was heading in the direction we wanted, but it was clearly a HUGE tourist area and it was insanely crowded.  There were lots of pizza places, but they all offered free wifi which is pretty much a dead giveaway that they are a tourist trap and probably DON'T have authentic pizza.  We tried going down some alleys and side streets and we found a place that was a little bit better, but we were still really close to the Parthenon and our waiter spoke English and offered us a pizza cutter.. I'm guessing it still wasn't quite authentic.  That's alright though because we really struggled cutting our pizza... that would have been really embarrassing in the neighborhood around here, so I guess better that it happened there where they are more accustomed to people making fools of themselves.  I'll have to ask one of the SLAs (kind of like RAs around here) what the "normal" way to eat pizza is around here.  Tomorrow is a mandatory beach day and then classes start on Monday....  It will probably start feeling a little bit more real then and less like a random vacation.  I definitely cannot wait =)  

Ciao 

We made it !!!

Finally made it to Rome!!!  It was kind of a disaster trying to get here though.  Our first flight from Chicago to Charlotte was cancelled, and they had to move all of us onto another plane that left an hour and a half earlier then planned.  I feel bad for anyone that didn't get there as early as we were supposed to because I'm not even sure how they ended up getting here.  But anyways, we got here and started right in on orientation.  We had to get our phones and all sorts of paperwork before we were able to go move our things to our room, and then we moved right out to more meetings.  Orientation meetings are kind of a drag but I guess you have to do what you have to do.  The rooms are pretty nice though, lots bigger and much more storage than I expected!

Those drawers are as big as the bed and I was able to fit an entire semester's worth of clothes in mine!  Our view is pretty nice too =)   So far we've just done a lot of orientation meetings.  I passed out really early last night and didn't do anything.  Then today we got up at 10:30 and started meetings for the day.  After our buffet dinner for convocation we went on a scavenger hunt.  Well, I'll use that phrase lightly... we were SUPPOSED to go on a scavenger hunt.  We thought we knew where a bakery was that would be worth 10 points, and ended up just walking two hours down the hill to the piazza we were supposed to meet in...  haha this is the only picture we ended up taking....

Left to Right: Anne, Jen, Judy, Me, Tal      Not pictured: Kaitlyn (And no, I have no idea if I spelled any of those right)
About three quarters of the way down the hill (which is just the way to get from campus closer to downtown Rome) we decided that since it was already like 8:30 and we were only just at the Vatican that we were done with the scavenger hunt.  So we stopped for gelato and talked to a couple of random Italian guys.  Well, they were Egyptian... but they only spoke Italian and some French.  That conversation lasted about 15-20 minutes even though most of it was spent with people repeating themselves because we couldn't actually converse with each other.  But they helped give us directions to the street we needed to get to the piazza where all of the teams were meeting!  So that was certainly helpful!   That's pretty much it for so far....  We have more orientation meetings tomorrow and then dinner in the neighborhood, Saturday we are going to the Colosseum, and Sunday is a mandatory beach day.  I think I'm waking up at 8am to go to the store because I'm not sure when else we're going to get full sized toiletries or school supplies before Monday =(   Though I'm going to advocate for moving that trip to Saturday night!  Haha

Ciao  =)

I leave for Rome two weeks from yesterday.  It honestly doesn't feel real yet, but I am so excited and can't wait to take off.  I spent last weekend in Chicago saying goodbye to all of my friends which was so sad but exciting at the same time.  It started to make me realize just how quickly my trip is coming up... but also that I need to start getting ready!  Hopefully I'll keep this blog up and keep track of everything that I do while I'm gone.  From what I've heard it's bound to be a packed semester so there should be lots to share  =)