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Published: April 14th 2008
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A night in Campo
Heather and I at Campo dei Fiori Here are a few more blogs I have written but never posted. I'll post another one (of more recent events) in a little bit. These are dated as of when I wrote them.
April 2, 2008
Well, we’re finished with our third day of school now. I’m quite exhausted. I didn’t think it would be quite so intense. After an 11 hour day, I’m completely wiped out. I keep trying to slow down and relax and live the “dolce far niente” (sweetness of doing nothing as they say here in Italy) life, but while the rest of the country takes their long mid-day breaks and siesta, we’re in class with a 50-60 min break. It’s crazy.
I can’t remember if I said this in my blog yesterday or not, but we made some new friends out near our school. We go to the same café every morning for our daily fix of cappuccino and the barista (it’s a guy, but this is one noun in Italian that can be masculine or feminine) is very friendly, and he seems to have taken a liking to our little foursome that goes in there every morning. We walk in
A night in Campo
Lauren with Nadine S. and Nadine Z. now and he sees us and says, “Buon giorno! Quattro cappuccini?” We confused him a bit this morning, since Jen decided she needed a double shot of espresso, haha. We have become accustomed to ordering and standing at the bar and drinking the coffee instead of taking it to a table though. You can’t complain too much about a $.90 cup of cappuccino. We have also found ways to get lunch and dinner for 2 or 3 euro. Not a bad deal. I see myself NEVER cooking in this city. Today we also discovered that McDonald’s here has “take-away” espresso and croissants. I think that will help a lot in the mornings. They don’t have coffee to-go anywhere else that we can find. That’s because, the Italians like to relax and drink their coffee at the bar and not on the run.
Lauren and I have also made friends with a couple of the waiters at the restaurant down the street. That restaurant is on the “nice” street down from our apartment. We decided that it’s much better to be harassed by the nice but very flirty waiters than the homeless men and illegal immigrants that call the street by the Termini station “home.”
Last night was interesting and fun. Lauren and I met up with a few girls from school (Heather, Nadine and Nadine - the two Nadines are from Jordan, and Heather is from Oregon). We met at the Spanish Steps and ran into the same Italian guy we met on our first night in Rome. We’ve been here for less than a week and have already seen this guy twice, and have randomly met our teacher and another classmate on the subway (twice). It seems like such a small world sometimes. Anyway, back to the story…so, we met up last night and we went to Campo dei Fiori, which during the day is an big open-air market, but turns into a huge hangout for what seems to be everyone under the age of 35 in Rome. We went to the Drunken Ship to watch the soccer game. Rome lost, and all the Italians went home depressed. What we were left with were a bunch of Americans (I think we found every American in Rome) and the few Manchester United fans that didn’t want to admit to being fans in fear for their lives. I’ll have to post the video of the weird Manchester guy we met who had a singing dancing duck. Yeah, he was a bit drunk.
On that note, I apologize for not posting pictures yet. I promise I’ll get to that soon. We are thinking about going to Venice for the night on Saturday since the weather is supposed to be nice here this weekend. I’ll keep you posted on that. I think I’m going to read (I’m going through TV withdrawal) and then head to bed. I’ll write more tomorrow. Ciao!
April 5, 2008
We’re all settling in here a little more now. I can’t believe it’s only been a week that I’ve been here so far. It seems like we’ve been here so much longer than that. Maybe it’s because we saw like 2/3 of Rome all in the first weekend J
School has been getting a little better. Actually, it’s getting harder, I think we’re just dealing with it a little better. Next week we start our teaching practice, so it’s starting to get more “real” now. I’m a little nervous about it, but I’m really excited about it too. Everyone from school has been getting along really well, and we’ve been hanging out a lot together now. We’ve also become “regulars” at some of the cafes and restaurants in the area (mostly at school, but also in our own neighborhood) and it’s actually really nice to go somewhere and have someone greet you warmly with a nice “Buon Giorno!” when you see them. Our barista at the café near school is now having us teach him a new English word or phrase every day when we go there. As he said yesterday, Monday will be another lesson. He now says, “Hello girls!” when we walk in to the café, and as we leave he responds with a “See you later!”
Last night we all went to Campo dei Fiori. It was really cool. There was an impromptu parade through the middle of the square, complete with instruments, music and dancing. I have a video of it that I will post sometime before I leave Italy in August 😉 We all had a great time. It’s a little sad that knowing a lot of these new friends will be leaving in just another one to three weeks since we’ve all become so close. We went back to that Drunken Ship bar that we were at the other night. It really is an American Bar. I don’t know how it’s possible that I keep meeting Americans everywhere I go. Jenny, Heather and I left the American boys in the square and made friends with some nice young Italian boys (Lauren and Steph had already found some nice Italian guys to talk to by this point). I say boys here because we think that may have been just old enough to drive a car (18 in Italy). It gave me a good way to practice some of my Italian skills…finally! And we were able to teach them a little English as well, haha.
I think today we are going to go out for a walk again today and meet up with Jenny and maybe a couple other people. And then tonight I think we’re all gonna go out with Heather and the guy she’s been “dating” the past couple weeks. He seems like a really nice guy, so we’re all excited to meet him and see what he’s like in person. He doesn’t speak any English, so it should be interesting to see what happens.
Oh, and we decided not to go to Venice. It’s supposed to rain all day there tomorrow, so we decided just to stay in Roma. I’m sure we’ll have plenty to do here though.
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Janelle
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Hi! (sorry I only know how to say bye in Italian - lol)
I just want you to know that I am very VERY jealous!! Sounds like you're having a great time and meeting some great people :)