Orientation/First Few Days In Rome

8/30: Officially my first day in Rome. I slept from 2pm until 10pm. Then I woke up and took a shower and watched a little bit of the movie "Despicable Me" in Italian with my host brother Adrianno. (Correction to my first blog; he is 12 years old.) Then I went back to sleep at midnight and slept until 7 in the morning. And then I wasn't jetlagged anymore. I successfully overcame it by just sleeping a ridiculous amount the first day.

Sidenote: Currently, I have a roommate (Amanda) because her host family is on vacation so she is staying with me and my host family until hers gets back later this week.

8/31: I had orientation at 9:30. We woke up and had tea from Sri Lanka and cappucino and lemon meringue pie for breakfast. Then my host mom showed us how to get to the center where we are taking our classes. We walk a few blocks and take tram and then get off the tram and catch the bus and then walk a little bit more to get there. It only takes about 20 minutes. Orientation was fairly boring. Basic "don't be stupid" information. Then we had to split up into the people who are staying in apartments and the people who are in homestays. And to my surprise there were only about 10 of us in homestays versus the rest of the 100 who are in apartments. So since we are such a small group we got to know each other and have been hanging out the past couple of days. That night we went to dinner at a pizza place that an Italian student recommended. Amanda and I split a magherita pizza and we had a bottle of red wine for the table. Very good pizza. 

9/1: Today we had this really cool guy named Alan Epstein who grew up in Philadelphia but has lived in Italy for the past 16 years come and talk to us. He has written lots of books, one of which is called "As the Romans Do" (a best selling travel book for Italy) and he has been on Oprah twice. He mostly told us stories about his life but he was interesting. Also I signed up for possibly being a teaching assistant for English classes in local Italian high schools. Then a group of us went to the Spanish Steps and after that we went to the Pantheon. We didn't stay too long at either because there were literally a bajillion people at both but we plan to go back later in the October when there aren't so many tourists around.

Tomorrow we are going to Lago di Martignano but I have no idea where that is. On Saturday we are going to Ostia Beach. I'm supposed to go sailboating so I get to wear my sperrys on a legit sailboat!

Also I gave up on taking pictures because everyone I'm with has a fancy Nikon (AKA real camera) so I'm just gonna let them take pictures and I'll steal them off facebook for y'all maybe.

Some Things I've Learned So Far:

-Italians love them some PDA
-Everything you've heard about drivers in Italy is true. They are insane.
-Hot water and AC are basically non-existent
-Whoever organized the streets and addresses for Rome was a lunatic. Getting lost is inevitable.

Lastly, this is a video they made us watch in orientation which I thought was pretty funny and I have found it to be very true so far. "Italy vs the Rest of Europe"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAJNFoHuLno

Ciao!