Day 7 - 8/29/17 (ONE WEEK HERE!)

Today I had my first big day of classes! I was up and in class by 8:30 this morning where I started my day off with my history class. I'm taking a class called 20th Century Europe and the World and even after one day I think it's going to be a super interesting course. After that class, I have about an hour break in between classes, so Lea and I went to check out this bagel shop that is located between our two campuses. They have bagels with cream cheese and then you can add anything you'd like onto the bagel. It kind of reminds me a little bit of Bruegger's Bagels back home! After our little bagel trip, I had Italian so I headed back to campus for class. Italian was actually super fun. Our professor is Italian and doesn't speak to us in a lot of English and made the class really interactive while at the same time teaching us how to say different things. It was definitely my favorite class I'm in and I'm really excited to be able to learn part of a new language. Right after Italian, I had my literature class that was a class called Introduction to the Novel. Our professor started out the class by walking in and saying "I'm not trying to scare anyone off but if you're not an English major I would highly suggest dropping this course and taking a different Lit class." Turns out he assigns about 100 pages of reading a night for the course so Lea and I decided to switch to a different Literature class, Intro to Lit. After our classes were done for the day, Lea and I made a stop at the grocery store to pick up some things that we (more I than her) could cook for dinner. We found some hamburger patties and some chicken that we figured we could cook up. So, we went back and decided to have some hamburgers for dinner. I cooked them up in a frying pan and they looked pretty amazing might I add (Thanks toGrandpa Bud for teaching me how to cook burgers:). After we sat down to eat, I went to take a huge bite of it and IT WAS NOT HAMBURGER. It tasted more like sausage on a bun which I am not a huge fan of. Since everything in our grocery store is in Italian, we had to rely more on pictures to figure out what we were eating and there was a cow on the wrapping so I thought we were safe!! But it turns out that they have a lot of different kinds of ground beef from different breeds of cow and so Lea and I think we got some funky breed but were still not really 100% sure what we ate last night! Aside from that, last night was a fun night and we spent the rest of the evening planning more trips and trying to get things booked with our roommates.

P.S. Sorry, no pics from yesterday. I forgot to take a picture of my funky burger!

Days 5 & 6 - 8/27/17 & 8/28/17

Hi guys! Sorry I haven't posted anything the last couple of days, I've been super busy with finishing up orientation, starting classes and booking weekend trips! That's pretty much what I did a majority of the day Sunday. I slept in during the morning and then when I woke up I started working on trip planning. I've been trying to cook for myself more at our apartment so I made myself a scrambler with some eggs, peppers, onions and olives in it:). It was pretty delicious. Sunday night, Lea and I got dressed up and went out to an RA event that our RA was throwing, called an apertivo. It's something they do here in Italy and probably other places too but they have drinks and light appetizers at bars before everyone goes to dinner and then out afterwards. I tried this drink at the bar we went to called the London Collins and it was actually really good. I can't remember what exactly was in it but I know it had some ginger (you could taste that!) After the apertivo, we decided that we wanted to try somewhere new for dinner, so we walked around Trastevere and found a cool place that looked like it had a good menu. Over here, every street you walk down, they have people standing outside the restaurants trying to get you to come get a table at their's. It kind of makes you feel a little bit like a celebrity:). Anyways, I decided to try something different other than the typical pasta and pizza and I got some chicken and salad and it was super good. They had some really good spice on the chicken and I ate every bite of it. Once we finished dinner, both of us were super tired and had stuff to get ready for our first day of classes the next day, so we decided to walk around for a little bit before heading back to our apartment where we got our backpacks together and planned some more trip stuff before heading to bed. On Monday, I don't have class until 4:30 pm, so I woke up early to go with Lea across the river to get her some notebooks, get a fan for my room (we don't have any AC so it's SO HOT) and I also got a new, Italian sim card for my phone so that I could have data to use maps to find my way around. Because I have this new sim card, I can no longer be reached on my old number so if you would like to text/call me you can download the app WhatsApp. That's how I've been communicating with my parents and some friends. I can video call, regular call and text off this app. After our little shopping excursion, we headed to campus for our first class here. STATISTICS:/. It actually wasn't too bad and my professor seems really cool and has pretty good English so I'm not super worried about the class. Once we got out of class, we went out to dinner with our roommates to celebrate the first day of classes. I had this super good fettuccine ala bolognese. Once dinner ended, most everyone was super wiped from the first day of classes, so we headed back to the apartment and crashed. I'll try and make sure I get more posts up on a regular basis, but for now that's what's been going on with me the last couple of days!

Chicken dinner I had while out with Lea

Fettuccine alla bolognese!

AMAZING fudge cake we ordered to celebrate school starting

Roommates!

Day 4 - 8/26/17

Today was our first day without any orientation meeting so we took the day to relax and not do too much. I slept in this morning and then started the day with an RA meeting. After finishing the meeting, a group of us walked to the Pantheon and checked that out (it's so huge!) and got some super good gelato from a place called Venchi's. After that, we walked back to the apartments, where we have a grocery store right around the corner from our building, so my roommates and I all went to the grocery store to stock up on some groceries. It was really cool figuring out what everything was and where to find certain things. Everything was in Italian and we found out that they don't sell pepper or really any spices there. After the grocery store, we went back to the apartment and cooked some dinner. I made spaghetti with meat sauce for Lea and I. After dinner, we got ready to go out and decided to go check out the Trevi fountain because we had heard it was super cool at night. So, we took the tram from our apartments to the stop closest to the Trevi and then had to get off and walk through these back streets to find the Trevi fountain. We knew what general area the fountain was in but we kind of made the mistake of forgetting to look up where it was before we left wifi and didn't have a paper map, so we were pretty much walking around searching for signs and crowds of people. It ended up working out in our favor though, because after not being able to find it and walking around for awhile, we decided to ask someone for directions and ran into an older couple vacationing in Rome from Canada. They had a map and showed us that we had walked right past the Trevi fountain and were actually super super close to the Spanish steps. We figured if we were that close to them, we couldn't pass up seeing the steps, so we changed course and found the steps. They were so cool to look at and the view from the top of them was pretty amazing. You could see the big dome of a museum in the distance and if you moved slightly to the right you could see the Vatican behind it all lit up. After our time at the Spanish steps, we started back in search of the Trevi fountain. After a little reading of signs and a lot of searching, we finally found the Trevi tucked back behind a bunch of buildings. Everything that everyone had told us about the fountain was right, it was so gorgeous at night with all the lights and although there were still quite a few people, it wasn't crazy busy. After a huge photoshoot at the fountain, we decided to just walk around for awhile and explore before heading back to the apartment for the night. One side note I have to add: It is SO HOT here! Everyday it's super humid and in the 90's, plus our apartments don't have AC. Everyday it's super sticky and sweaty but it gets really nice at night because it cools a little bit and sometimes you have a nice breezewhich makes walking around not as hot.

The Pantheon

Spanish steps

View from the Spanish steps - first dome is the museum, second dome is the Vatican

Trevi fountain

My pants were soaked from sitting on the edge to take this pic!

Day 3 - 8/25/17

Today was another fun-filled, activity packed day. The university has us doing quite a few orientation programs/meetings in theses two days before we start classes. I started the morning by getting a mini tour of the city from a four-year JCU student. My person is from Rome and had so much info to share about the city and how to get around it. I finally learned how to use Rome's subway, tram and bus system all in one day! They took us on a walk around Rome and we got to see the Roman forums (old Roman ruins which once used to be the center of the city where people would gather to discuss political and social issues). We also got to see the Colosseum but I still haven't had the opportunity to actually tour it. I'm hoping to do that either this weekend or sometime soon in the upcoming weeks. We also learned about a super cool thing that the city puts on in the forums that I'm planning on attending sometime. The city takes you into the forums and they do a little show of what life was like back when the forums truly were the center of the whole city. I'm really looking forward to this excursion as it sounds like a lot of fun. After we walked to the Colosseum (it's not a super long walk, maybe like 20-25 min from campus), we took the subway back to the main train station to learn how to book train tickets and navigate the huge Termini train station in Rome. From there, we learned how to take the bus, and took that about halfway to our apartment complex before we got off and took the tram system the rest of the way, learning how to use all of Rome's public transportation. After our city tour, I had to go through step 2 of my immigration process. In order to obtain my permit to stay, I had to go to the local post office and sign some documents as well as verify my identity with my passport. It was actually a super cool experience, because not many of the post office workers spoke English, so we really got immersed into Italian life, even if it was only for a few minutes. From there, we were done with all of our "mandatory" meetings for the day, but my friends and I had signed up to participate in a special tour around the city that specialized in discussing the ancient monuments throughout Rome. This tour was definitely one of my favorite things that I have done so far since being here. I got to learn so much about all these monuments and why they're there and it was just altogether super super interesting. We got to learn even more about the forums and got to see them more up close, got to see the balcony where Mussolini used to give his speeches to the public, got to see the steps and courtyard that were designed by Michelangelo and got to see the theatre that the Colosseum was kind of designed after. The best part was that seeing all of these things came with such amazing fun facts about these historical pieces. After the tour finished, Lea and I went back to our apartment and we cooked our first meal! We haven't had a ton of time to do grocery shopping and stuff yet, so we just made a simple spaghetti and marinara sauce with homemade garlic bread. It was a quick and easy dinner but it was really good and I look forward to making a bunch more meals in our apartment kitchen. Today was definitely a super fun day and I'm looking forward to a weekend full of organizing, planning trips and getting ready for school to begin! Missing everyone back home<3

Kind of hard to see, but the Colosseum seen down the middle of the road

Roman forums - so cool!!

Steps and courtyard designed by Michelangelo (steps are so wide so horses could come up them)

A little hard to see, but the balcony on the building is where Mussolini used to give speeches 

The first "single theater" - Colosseum is a double theater but is designed similar to this one

Day 2 - 8/24/17

Ah I had a super busy day yesterday and completely forgot to post! Yesterday was full of a bunch of orientation meetings, permit to stay appointments and exploring the new city. I started off my morning yesterday with a welcome breakfast and a meeting with the US Embassy here in Rome and followed it with an appointment to submit my permit to stay to the Italian government. After that, we got a tour of our campuses (theres two different buildings not too far from one another that have classrooms in them - called the Tiber campus and the Guarini campus). The property is so pretty and I'm actually pretty excited to start my classes there on Monday! We had one other workshop of the night after that about health and wellbeing while living in Rome and then after that, Lea and I went to dinner at a nice pizzeria (I had margherita pizza) and hung out with some friends there and talked. It's so cool how over here they really don't rush you out of the restaurant; we sat there and talked at our table for two hours and no one came over and handed us the check or rushed us along. After dinner, we decided to just walk around and explore the the backroads of the city around one of our campuses.  We stumbled upon a stunt guy in the square doing all these crazy tricks like eating fire and balancing on bricks so we stopped to watch that for a little bit. Since it was later at night people had set up tables along the cobblestones to sell jewelry, paintings, even fidget spinners and selfie sticks! There were also tons of really cute shops along the alleyways and there were so many people out. It's so so different from the US - here it's 11 o'clock and the streets are still super crowded with people everywhere! When we finished exploring, we decided to go check out this nice little bar called G Bar that was along one of the alleyways. It was a super cool place and a big hang out for a lot of JCU students. I've met a bunch of really great people from all over the US here (a lot from Notre Dame and UW - Madison.) Ok, stay tuned for Day #3:)

Cobblestone streets leading to the Guarini campus

View from one of the study terraces in the Guarini campus

Crazy stunt guy in the square

Dinner from last night - margherita pizza and wine!

Day 1 - 8/23/2017

Day 1 in Rome is coming to a close. Lea and I had an insane day of flying filled with 2 flight delays missing our connecting flight in NYC and getting rebooked for a later flight at 10pm to Rome. We just barely made our flight in NYC after having to go through security a second time and sprinting through the airport to find our gate. We finally made it onto the plane and then storms hit, so we sat on the runway for another 2 hours. By the time we took off it was 12am and I was exhausted. I slept most of the flight and we landed in Rome at around 2pm (Rome time). From there, we got shuttled from the airport to our apartment building. (I don't have pictures of it yet but I will take some and post them!) I got unpacked a bit and then we had a safety meeting to get to so we got to walk a bit through Rome and along the river to get to campus. When the meeting finished, Lea and I walked around town a bit and found a super cute looking restaurant. We ended up eating there for dinner and had pasta and wine for dinner. (My first legal drink!) After dinner we started our walk back to campus and ran into a little gelato place where we stopped and I got the lemon and mint gelato. Super super good! We stopped and got a couple groceries and went back to our apartment. Lea and I are in an apartment with four other girls. Since then, I've just been unpacking more and getting some school stuff together. Looking forward to some more tours tomorrow and really getting settled in here in Rome! It's such a pretty place and although it's been a pretty crazy start, I'm really looking forward to the upcoming months here:)

My dinner tonight - Pasta al pesto with some Pinot Grigio

A cool building I spotted on our walk back to the apartment

t-minus 3 days!!!!

3 days away from getting on the plane and taking off for 3 months in Italy! I'm feeling pretty excited at this point but a little nervous as well. I'm all packed and set to go and just barely made the weight limit with my checked bag:) Looking forward to spending some time with family before I have to leave on Tuesday!

All my luggage!(checked bag, carry on and a backpack)