Buon Giorno!

Sunday, January 4

I'm officially in Rome! I can't believe it came so soon. I was very sad to leave Boston; I had so much fun with all the fam and my parents and Michelle's wedding was fabulous, but I am thrilled to be here. The plane ride over was long and uneventful, but overall the travel from Boston to the UW Rome Center was smooth: I navigated the airport, picked up my bags, and rode into Rome in a cute little Fiat taxi.

I arrived at the UWRC around 9:00 a.m. local time and I wasn't able to go directly to my apartment as I had hoped. I ended up having to stay an extra night in Massachusetts because of plane malfunctions, so I arrived a day late and our Professore had things planned for us. We picked up our course readers, went over the syllabus, and got a tour of the Campo de'Fiori where the school is located. I finally got to see my apartment around 3:30 and I am very pleased with its condition and location. I am sharing the apartment with my roommate from Seattle, Sammie, and two other girls named MacKenzie and Ashley Rose. We are staying in one of Rome's oldest and most traditional neighborhoods called Trastevere. We are within 50 feet of three pizzarias and a handful of bakeries and coffee bars. Just down the street is one of the biggest supermarkets in Rome and we are a short walk from a great Sunday flea market.

After I arrived at the apartment I had little time to relax. I cleaned up and changed, and the girls and I headed out to run some errands. We met up with the whole group around 7 p.m. for our first group dinner. We went to a place close to the Campo and had an amazing meal of bruschetta, salumi, fried veggies (zucchini, eggplant, red peppers, artichokes...delicious) for starters, and then rigatoni in a spicy tomato sauce and wide penne with a sweet tomato sauce with figs. We all split a few liters of red wine and had a great first meal together.


After dinner, Professore took us on an after-dinner walk to the Pantheon and the Trevi Fountain, which were both incredible. I can't wait to see them during the daytime! I got back to my apartment around 10 or 11, and spent the next few hours unpacking and getting settled. At that point I must have been on my 6th or 7th wind because I had been up for almost 40 hours and wasn't very tired anymore. Sammie and I are sharing a room and we both finished unpacking and getting settled and finally retired around 2:30 a.m. What a long day!

me hugging a column at the Pantheon!

We woke up around 7:30 a.m. Sunday and met the whole group outside our apartment for a tour of the Sunday flea market. This place was incredible. Table after table of almost everything you could think of...clothes/shoes/accessories, food, kitchenware, books, electronics, and sometimes just plain junk. This place is HUGE. Professore told us that it spans an area larger than the Fremont district in Seattle!! Sam, MacKenzie and I spent around an hour and a half exploring, but soon grew tired and cold and decided to walk back towards our apartment and get groceries. The supermarket was one of the best experiences I've had so far. One of Rome's "largest" supermarkets is actually about half of the size of what we consider normal in America, but it has absolutely everything you could need. They even had a full deli, American cereal, some junk food, a wine and liquor section, and a frozen food section, housewares, cleaning supplies and toiletries. Being at the Supermercati made me realize how much space is taken up in American supermarkets with really useless things. In my local Safeway in Seattle, and in most every other supermarket I've ever been in, there is a whole aisle devoted to 6784 brands of toilet paper and paper towels, a whole aisle for all the different (but truthfully very similar) kinds of cereal. There is loads of processed junk foods full of preservatives and fat and calories. We are even used to two aisles of frozen foods. But the Supermercati was small and space efficient and I got lots of delicious things. I bought a baguette, lemons, tomatoes, fresh bufala mozzarella, pepato cheese, parmesean, salami, spicy dijon mustard, As Do Mar tuna (!!!!!), olive oil, red wine and balsamic vinegars, bottled water, a bag of greens, olives, and a bottle of wine. When we got home I had a small lunch of bread, cheese, and salami and felt very satisfied.

Sammie and I spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing and preparing for our first day of class on Monday the 4th. We walked up the street to the tobacco shop to buy bus tickets for the week (we will need them for our site visits) and spent the evening getting through our assigned readings. I had a small salad for dinner with a piece of bread and I feel very light and satisfied. Our hot water heater in the apartment is very small, so I showered and dried my hair afterwards and sat in bed and finished my reading before retiring, thankfully, earlier than the night before. On our first day of class tomorrow, we will be visiting the Palatine hill, the Circus Maximus, Temple of Portunus, Temple of Hercules, and the Cloaca Maxima as part of our week 1 study of ancient Rome. I can't wait to see it all!


Monday, January 5

Today we got up fairly early and walked to the UWRC for class at 9 a.m. We will have class Monday-Wednesday starting at 9, talk for an hour on the week's readings, and then do specific site visits for the rest of the morning/afternoon. In today's class, we talked about ancient Rome as a historical site as well as the creation and rise of the Roman state as one of the most powerful and influential societies of its time. So many of our modern institutions remain from Roman society that existed thousands of years ago. Rome is one of the oldest, continuously inhabited sites of the world and has been that way for 3,000 years. That is so incredible! This place is truly the cradle of modern Western civilization, and I really think this was a great place for me to study abroad.

After our hour in the classroom, we took the bus and the underground tram to the Palatine hill. This was the site where it all started. We saw 2nd and 3rd Century marble busts and statues that were just beautiful. It is so amazing to me that someone can carve these statues out of marble and make them look so realistic. Even the way their clothing drapes looks so realistic! We also saw the site of the huts of Romulus and Remus, the original founders of Rome, dating back to before 700 BCE!

[[I took a lot of pictures at the Palatine hill today, but didn't bring my camera transfer cord with me, so I will edit this post later and add lots of pictures! Check in soon!]]

ciao!