Ciao! So here I am…..in Rome…..I
still cannot believe that this is all real. It has officially been 2 weeks
since I have arrived in Rome, and I have finally started to settle in. I still
don’t really know how to get to a lot of places around town yet though because:
A) There are so many small, somewhat hidden stores and restaurants so I walk
passed them without even realizing it, and B) I have a terrible sense of
direction and the small, winding streets here certainly do not help. What also
doesn’t help is that I am constantly dodging cars and vespas. I find myself
looking at the ground a lot around here because you have to watch out for the
dog poop along the roads since apparently many of the dog owners here don’t
pick up after their dogs. Yuck. Anyways, classes started last week, and I found
all of my classes without any problems. There are two campuses that we go to for
classes, and luckily the walk to my classes from my apartment is about a 5
minute walk to one campus (Guarini Campus) and about a 10 minute walk to the
other (Tiber Campus). I only have one class on Mondays and Wednesdays but I
have 4 on Tuesdays and Thursdays with basically no breaks in between (aka I
have 6 and 1/2 hour days on Tuesdays and Thursdays so I make myself a lunch in the
mornings to ensure that I don’t die from starvation during my classes).
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| My roommates and I (Starting from the top left: Lauren, Laura, Danielle, Bria) (Starting from the Bottom Left: Emma, Megan, and Me) |
The first week of being here I spent
settling into my apartment, going to orientation, and of course exploring Rome. I live in the Gionicolo Residence, which is in the Trastevere part of Rome, and
I share an apartment with 6 other girls. My roommates are all from different
schools, and they are all very nice. In our apartment we have a kitchen, a
living room, a dining room, and 2 bathrooms (I'll post pictures of my apartment in my next blog post). I’m not even going to write about
orientation because it was pretty non-eventful except for going on the
Navigation 101 tour where we were shown and told how to get around via bus,
tram, and train. The whole time while we were taking public transportation I
was clenching my bag because pickpocketers here are crazy good at stealing
foreigners’ stuff. We also took a small little tour around Rome during this
Navigation session as well. I have already seen a decent amount of landmarks,
including the Trevi Fountain, the Colosseum, and the Pantheon.
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| The Colosseum |
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| The Pantheon |
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| The Trevi Fountain |
Not only are the landmarks here amazing,
but so is the food! I have already gotten pizza, pasta, sandwiches, gelato, a
chocolate croissant, and my first ever cannoli while I have been here. I also
have made gnocchi a few times at my apartment, and not to toot my own horn or
anything, but I have to say that I did a job well done! Also, although I have
only been here for 7 days, I have already made three trips to the grocery store!
This is because the grocery store is sort of far from our apartment, and since
we carry all of our groceries back, you can’t exactly get a lot of items unless
you want to be in pain the whole time walking back or enjoy the feeling of
having your arms about to fall off (which is how I felt after my first grocery
store trip). My diet here mostly consists of pasta, pizza, and paninis because that
is basically all that Italians eat. Thankfully, I do a lot of stair climbing (we live on the 4th floor so I go up 8 flights of stairs each day/several times a day) and walking around here so hopefully that will
keep me from gaining 20 lbs.
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| My first real Italian Pasta dish here: Penne al Salmone (It was delicious!) |
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| Snickers and Stracciatella Gelato |
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| My first slice of pizza in Rome (they cut it in half because it was so big) |
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| More Pizza! |
Let’s see, what else have I been up
to….Oh yeah, I spent some nights out on the town. On the first night out, most
of my roommates and I went to a bar called The Drunken Ship with some other
students who also go to John Cabot University. It was pretty fun and we liked
it a lot because it had a pretty chill, laid-back atmosphere. The second night
out a few of my roommates and I went to a place called G bar and to two other
small bars near G bar. That night we met a lot of local Italians who were all
nice, and they gave us advice on places where we should go in Rome so that was
kind of helpful. On the third night, all of my roommates and I went to Scholars
Irish Pub where we watched the Seattle Seahawks vs. New Orleans Saints football
game. Naturally I rooted for the Seahawks because Russell Wilson is their
quarterback and he was just playing for our team at Wisconsin last year
(#BadgerPride!), so I’m happy that the Seahawks won. The last night, we all
went to a bar called the Abbey and then we went to a place called Sloppy Sam’s
after we got tired of the Abbey. All four nights that I have been out were
really fun, and the nightlife here seems to be pretty great!
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| Scholars Pub |
My final update is that three of my
roommates (Bria, Laura, and Megan) and I took a day trip this past Saturday to
Tuscany to do some wine tasting! I had such a blast and seeing all the
vineyards and wine cellars was really cool. We went to two different wineries,
Montalcino and Montepulciano. Some of the wines that I tasted were pretty good
and some were not exactly my cup of tea. All of the wines that they provided
were red wines, and my favorite out of all of them was the Rosso Di Montalcino.
I do wish that they would have had white wine to taste since I tend to like
white wine better but I can’t complain since some of the wines we tasted were
some of the top wines in the world!
Okay, that’s all for now, and sorry that
this is such a long (and late) post. I’ll try to update my blog once every week
but it might be more like once every two weeks sometimes since I’m new to this
whole blogging thing, and I might forget. Ciao for now!
XOXO
Jaden Ellesse
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