Soup Kitchen and seeing Emily!

This week we got to volunteer at a soup kitchen in the center of Rome. When we arrived we learned that it is actually a homeless shelter as well. They divided us up into three different areas. Some got to refill water for dinner, others cleaned out the rooms, and a few of us divided up clothing donations. In theory it sounds easy enough to do, keep the better quality clothing and throw out the crummy clothing. It makes it significantly more difficult when you are working with two old Italian women who don't speak any English and have very different opinions of what garbage is. Not to mention European fashion is quite a bit harder to decipher whether clothes are for "Donna" (women) or for "Uomo" (men). Purple velvet pants with a satin stripe can go either way here, in case you were wondering. We did increase our clothing vocabulary at the end of the day and I'd say it was an excellent way to spend our time here. Everyone there was so grateful for our help. Seeing a place like that truly makes you appreciate how lucky you are. I would say it was even more so than usual volunteering because of the experiences I've been privileged with through studying abroad.


Last night I was able to finally meet up with my good friend Emily who goes to Loyola in Chicago. She's studying here in Rome too, but for the entire semester. She brought me to the most modern looking bar I'd ever seen called Fluid. The walls were glowing and the floor squished with lava when you walked over the tile. There were trendy white couches everywhere and heat censored artwork even. It reminded me of something you'd see in Sex in the City.



There were over 200 different kinds of girly mixed drinks there so it took me about 20 min to pick something out. I chose a Mango Frozen Daiquiri, which was HUGE but so delicious. Then with your drink purchase you got free appetizers which we had for dinner. They had all sorts of fancy foods in a buffet style. I had no idea what I was eating, but they were phenomenal as well. I'll definitely be going back there with my group. We even grabbed chocolate dipped gelato afterward, which was a first for me. One of the most fun nights I've had in Rome!

It was great catching up with her and comparing our experiences abroad. It was so fun to see another familiar face in this foreign city. Hopefully I'll get to see her again before I leave for Greece!

Pizza and Gelato Crawl + ROMA football? Yes please!

This week we went on a Pizza and Gelato crawl with our guides from CEA. They brought us to two of the best pizza places in the city. We started out with what they called a snack pizza you could choose blanca (white crust) or rosa (crust and sauce). Naturally I chose rosa and proceeded to spill sauce onto my white tank top on the first stop haha. But we moved on to a real pizza place where I had one slice of potato pizza and another with tomatoes and spices. Next they brought us to a famous coffee shop in Rome where we had what's called granita di caffe con panna, which was an iced coffee treat with whipped cream essentially. That was amazing, I will most definitely be going back. Then the last stop was to a gelateria where I got two flavors: Bueno (The candy bar) and Foresta Nera (Black Forest). Both of which are officially my two new favorite flavors. So overall I'd say it was a success!

The next night a bunch of us went to the Roma football game, which ended up being a lot of fun. Everyone got really into the game with their flags, scarves and chants. It was kinda funny because tickets for women were 6 euro but men's tickets were 13 euro. I think they have had issues with having rowdy crowds in the past so this is their way of deterring this. So that was nice perk getting a discount. Unfortunately the game tied 1 to 1 and everyone went home. I'm so used to always having a clear winner and loser so this seemed strange to me when they just left it at that. We got pretty lost trying to find our way back home and it ended up taking almost two hours to get back. But we got to see a lot more of the city along the way so no one was really that bent out of shape about it.

Just Volcanos and such...

We just got back from our weekend trip to Pestum, Sorrento, and Pompeii! Pestum is the best preserved Greek city in the world (located in Italy). So there were several temples to Greek gods and other remains of the city. We had quite possibly the most awkward tour guide possible who informed us that he would also join us in Pompeii (woo!).

Afterward we piled onto the massive coach bus again to Sorrento. Our drive was right along the coast of Italy and went right up into the mountains. We stayed at The Grand Hotel, which had free live music at night (where we may or may not have started a conga line with the elderly staying there).

We left in the morning for Pompeii which is an ancient Roman city that was preserved as a result of a volcanic eruption. It was a HUGE historical site. There were lots of vendors outside, one of which thought I was Australian and gave me a free postcard!

So I'd say it was a successful weekend overall! Miss you all!

Another day in Roma

 So I'm learning quickly that studying in Rome definitely has its perks. Yesterday we went to St. Peter's Basilica to climb over 350 steps to get to the highest point in Rome. I wish I could tell you I looked out over the edge, but that would be a lie. I somehow made it all the way to the top though, so I consider that an accomplishment in itself. I did however buy a postcard at the souvenir shop to see what I was missing. There's photographic evidence after Kate backed me up to the edge (for ONE shot) against my will. Afterwards the school treated us to one of the best gelato places in Italy where we got to pick out THREE flavors. 

A-mazing. That's all I have to say.

Today for my Art history course we took a trip down to the Colleseum, Roman Forum, Piazza Venezia, and several other historical sites. We studied the architecture of the arches and columns while trying to scribble notes as we walked. My professor shared his thoughts about Mussolini and the Pope. Surprisingly the Popes are not too popular around here (and neither is Mussolini, not so surprisingly). Then we ended our trip purchasing our Italian workbooks and grabbing some lunch at a little place under our apartment.

                                                     

 

"I will kill you. Just kidding! It's a joke!"-Mario

So classes started this week here in Roma and it’s a whole new kind of learning. I only have one class each day Mon-Wed and then Thurs I have three. We always get Fridays off so we can take weekend trips too (yay!).

This is a picture of campus: CEA Rome!

The professors here are definitely what you would call “fun characters". I’ll give a quick run down of each one:

Paulo- Art History

He’s a very flamboyant man who wears yellow tinted hipster glasses and vibrant colored paisley shirts. We spent the three-hour class period going through a slide show of various pieces of art while he circled the nudity with a laser pointer. Overall he’s a lot of fun to listen to and time goes pretty quick with him.

Mario- Italian Language

He’s absolutely hilarious to put it simply. He’s a short, very tan man with a goatee and a thick Italian accent. He frequently tells us “I will kill you. Just kidding! It’s a joke!” then continues with the lesson.  Kate is convinced he’s on drugs or something, but I just think he’s funny.

Carmela- Roman Literature

She literally wore a long white nightgown to class on the first day with big chunky necklaces and completed the outfit with socks and sandals. Her frizzy hair is partially orange and brown, mixed with grey and white (we’re not sure how much is natural).  She is scatterbrained most of the time and will often jump around in her lectures. She’s easily distracted and will go off on random tangents about life.

Jean- Study Abroad Seminar

She’s the professor that came along with us on the trip from St. Bens. She’s a lot of fun, I’m looking forward to more of her class.

That’s all I have to say for now! More updates to come!

Tour of Roma!

Yesterday we went on a tour of the city of Roma! We saw everything just like it looks in the movies (well kinda). We saw everything you think of when someone says Rome, including the Pantheon, the Trevi Fountian, the Coliseum and several sites of old Roman ruins. It was a walking tour with headsets so we could hear the tour guide (as if we didn’t stand out enough already). It’s so fascinating to learn about the stories behind each of the sites we saw.  For example the reason why there are so many beautiful fountains everywhere is because that was a campaign strategy if you were running for office. They didn’t have posters, TV, or the Internet so they would just build giant fountains or sculptures to get people’s attention.

I love everything about this city so far. I feel like I’m in the movie Roman Holiday (the Audrey Hepburn classic). We’ve passed so much merchandise for that movie I’ve been trying to budget out what I can bring home. I hope to find more sites from the movie before I go! 

Orientation!

Orientation has been great so far, we’ve seen so much in these past few days. Today we had our first class in Italian (which meets once a week for the rest of the semester). I feel like it’s pretty similar to Spanish, except with a strange accent. Our professor is awesome; his name is Mario (pronounced exactly like the video game of course). Some of the professors gave us tours around campus and our neighborhood so we knew where things were. The school even treated us all to giant cones of gelato, which were fantastic (three flavors even!).  We got pizza for dinner tonight because the grocery stores close pretty early and we were kinda sick of pasta already.

Tomorrow we just have a meeting/tour at 10 in the morning then we are free for the weekend! There has been talk of heading to the coast to find a beach because it’s so hot here in the city. It’s been over 90 degrees every day and no one has air conditioning. So it will be nice to escape for a little while and read some more of The Godfather.

Getting the hang of Roma

Pretty sure I’m already adjusted to living here and we’ve only been here a few days. Rome is incredible; there really aren’t words to express how much I love it here. Everything from the food, to the people, to the language, not to mention Italian children are probably the cutest things EVER.  Something about foreign children just makes them a thousand times more adorable. They could be screaming and making a scene and they somehow still manage to look just as sweet.

As for what I’ve been up to, thought I’d give a quick update. Last night we met up with some more Johnnies from the London trip at an Irish pub called Scholars. It happened to be karaoke night, which was a lot of fun.

This morning CEA staff took us on a tour of our neighborhood to all the shops and important places around our apartment. We went to a grocery store and they explained how everything works. We got our first round of food and it finally feels a little homier. We’ve been having family style dinners so far and they’ve been delicious. Then CEA provided us with a lunch of random assortment of traditional foods. Then we had meetings for a while going over logistics of how things work around campus. Later that night we just had more of our own group bonding out on the terrace in the gorgeous weather. It’s supposed to be high 90s all week, so we were thinking of spending our first weekend on the beach. More hopefully sooner rather than later!

Our new place!

So we are officially moved in now to our beautiful apartment! Everyone’s apartments here are amazing. One has a terrace on the 5^th floor where we’ve been hanging out most nights because it’s so hot outside. It has a view of the mountains and they even have their own gardener for all the plants they have outside. 

I love ours too though; it’s HUGE. We are in a placed called ‘Nomentana 225 Labrinth’ and we learned that ‘labrinth’ translates to GIANT apartment. We have a wrap around balcony and long windy hallways. It surpassed all of my expectations of a place for 7 girls. We have two bathrooms and a spacious kitchen. Seriously, it is the nicest apartment I will ever live in I’m pretty sure. It’s all painted this happy yellow color and everything is brand new. This is great because they bought us all new things, but also not so good because it means people haven’t left things behind for us. Other apartments have kitchen supplies, cooking ingredients and decorations that were left. We unfortunately have to buy all these things, but CEA has been super helpful and offered to pay for most of it.

We still are the only ones without wifi though because it’s new. We have what they call “emergency wifi”, meaning only one person can use it at a time because it’s essentially a jump drive you plug in to one computer. Fingers crossed we’ll get a router sometime next week! 

Arriving in Rome!

Late last night we finally arrived in Roma! We somehow made all FIVE of our train connections (barely, with a little help of an Australian man traveling amidst a midlife crisis who happened to be on ALL our trains). Our train went right along the coast of France, which was beautiful. We were right on the water most of the way and I’m so glad we got to see all the pretty mountain beach towns.

We slept in until 11:30 today trying to catch up on some sleep. After finally dragging ourselves out of bed we walked to a grocery store and had picnic in the park (with wifi!).  Then we walked to a little shop I tried my first ever gelato, which was a-mazing (chocolate of course).  Then went and got a slice of cheap authentic Italian Pizza for dinner. We had plenty of time to just chill and re-pack for the first time all trip. It was so nice to not have to worry about catching any trains, or seeing any sights, we could just relax. We get to move into our apartments tomorrow! Ciao!