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Published: January 14th 2010
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Medaglio D'oro
Our Apartment Building Hey Everyone!
So I decided to take the plunge and create a travel blog to document my Rome 2010 semester adventures! After a long day of traveling our group of 34 ND students made it to Rome at about 7am here in Rome or 1am Eastern Standard Time.... needless to say we were all extremely tired and jet lagged but personally I was also pretty excited. Getting off the plane we went through all of the usuals and then when we had all gotten our bags we were told to wait while the people driving us to our apartments got things organized. Learning the lesson that Italy can be pretty inefficient, we waited about 2 hours to finally get a bus and then another hour to figure out how to fit all of our bags....as we all stood out in the rain (: While those fun experiances put a bit of damper on our first hours in Rome, it certainly did not ruin my first day.
After settling into the apartments for a few hours, one of the Notre Dame officials who works with the architecture students came and walked us to a building to fill out our immigration
St.Peter's Basilica
This is our view from where we enter on our walk to school papers. This being my first experience in Europe, everything we saw, heard, and smelled was so new and exciting for me. I of course learned some typical Italian things such as you don't expect cars to stop for you so that you can cross the street, that gelato and pizza are pretty much available every 20 feet, and Italians talk super super fast. Overall everything is much much dirtier than America but in some cases I think it gives the city some charm. All the women here wears leather boots which I am simply amazed at because in Rome you have to do sooo much walking and a lot of the roads are cobblestones that you could easily break an ankle on. However, beyond these more common/social things I also was just awe-struck by some of the architecture and buildings that we saw. On our walk to fill out the papers, we got to walk right through Vatican City and of course past St. Peter's Basilica. Words cannot do justice to what it felt like to see that for the first time. Its so much bigger and powerful in a way than I ever imagined it to be. Right now
they have the creches up outside and inside. The one outside is life-size and the one inside has many cool features like lights and moving characters. Later on the evening, some of my roommates and I went inside the Basilica because right now there are pretty much no lines for anything. Immediately when you walk in the Pieta is right in front of you which I was blown away by. That statue is something I've seen in pictures all my life but to see it in person is truly a divine experience. The altars are absolutely magnificent and the statues are simply larger than life. I'm sure I'll be visiting many more times during this semester!!!
Today we woke up early to walk to our new school called John Cabot University. It is in a neighborhood called Trasteverre which we discovered is pretty far from where we live (which is about a 20 minute walk from behind the Vatican). Overall the walk was about an hour but it was such beautiful scenery along the way it didn't matter to me. To get there each day, we will walk through the Vatican to the Tiber river, which we walk along
for a long time until we reach the school. When we got there we filled out some papers and then I got a cellphone to use while in Europe.
Unfortunately it is a little too pricy to call back home unless it is an emergency so if anyone wants to get in contact with me please either e-mail me at awitt@nd.edu or add me on skype (domer2011).
Finally, we went up to the activities table where I signed up for a really fun wine tasting night on Wednesday which I am really really looking forward to! It will be right after my class ends so I'm going to have to make sure to get something to eat so I don't, as my Mom would say, make a spectacle of myself drinking all that wine(:
Then when we got back, my roommates left to take their shift at the Post Office to file their papers (I go tomorrow) so I headed off by myself to the supermarket. It was actually kind of a fun experience. I just bought a few really random things that I know in the future I will be using like mayo and jam, some
Creche
Life-Size Creche in front of the Vatican things to eat for lunch, and then some cleaning things we needed for the apartment. The only thing I really had trouble with was figuring out what was shower gel or bath soap. I found where they had shampoo and then found the lotion but for the life of me could not figure out what was the soap. Hopefully I'll figure that out soon.... Overall I only spent $16 so I was pretty proud of myself. It was a little difficult working with the cashier but hopefully the next time around I'll be a little more confident with my Italian.
Well that is about all my updates for now! I'm going to post some of the pictures I've taken so far and will hopefully be putting up more in the future. Missing everyone back home!
Love,
Anne
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Nana
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Thrilled!
This is a terrific way for all of us to share this experience with you! Thank you! I will look forward to future chapters. Don't pass ALL the gelato places too quickly. It is sooo good! Love, Nana