Why Rome is Awesome and Everyone Should Study/ Visit

My last few posts have been about my travels through Italy. I had been traveling for the past three weekends and at the end of each trip I could not wait to get back to Rome. This place really has become my home. Following my travels I had two weekends to spend in Rome before Spring Break. These two weekends helped me to realize why Rome is the best study abroad program and I now have my top ten reasons why Rome is Awesome:

10- I have visited almost every place/ piece of art that I have learned about/ covered in my class. Beats reading about it in a book in Baltimore.

9- The language. For one of the first times it has actually been imperative that I use what I have learned.

8- The weather. While its not 80 and sunny everyday, its also not 20 and snowing. I’ll take rain over that.

7- Walking. Rome was a city made for walking. I can walk almost anywhere, anytime and its always safe.

6- The Parks. Many of the old villa estates have been converted into parks that remove you from the fast paced city. Nothing but green fields, trees and tranquil surroundings.

5- No other city has quite the same character or charm as Rome. Small cafes, tiny narrow side streets, cobblestone streets and statues everywhere.

4- Romans love being Roman, they’re all very distinct and very nice. Its rare that you will find a restaurant that is not Italian. Unlike in other countries where you find varieties of restaurants, here its Italian all the time with the occasional kebab or Chinese restaurant.

3- The Nightlife. So many other places in Italy and Europe are dead during the week, not Rome. You can find somewhere to go and have a good time every night of the week.

2- The food. If its not fresh they wont cook it. Whether you’re eating at home or at a restaurant everything is fresh… Things just taste better here.

1- The history, what did you think it would be… Rome is a modern city rooted in its antiquity, like I said, Romans love being Romans and aren’t anywhere near forgetting where they came from. Walking past ancient buildings and ruins on a daily basis, the Coliseum and the Forum on the way home after a night out… nothing comes close to that.

La Prima Settimana e Mie Classi

It’s been a while since my last post, which means that the past few weeks have been incredibly busy. A lot has happened so I'm going to try and update you all as much as possible. As I write this post I am on my way to Carnevale in Venice for the weekend.

My first week in Rome seems so far away but it was really only five weeks ago. It's funny how quickly Rome has come to feel like home and how quickly I have come to feel like a Roman. The first thing in becoming a Roman 101 was learning the public transportation system. I knew that I could walk to school but remembering what happened two days earlier I decided to take the metro. The stop was only one block from my house and then about three blocks from my Italian school, so this was the safe bet on the first day.

(The B Line, my ride home... They're all very unique metro cars)

It worked pretty well to get, but after the class I felt adventurous and wanted to figure out how to walk home. It turned out that it was only really one street to get home. I took it straight it from Italiaidea back to my house and it only a ten minute walk. It was amazing that it was so simple, but we got so lost a few days before.

The next day I tried a different way to get to school, the 117 bus. This was by far the easiest way to get there. I picked it up from the end of my block and it dropped me off right at the front door of Italiaidea, travel time- three minutes. This was the best find thus far. Effectively this means that I can roll out of bed at 9:00, take a shower, get ready, eat breakfast, show up at the bus at 9:45, get on the bus around 9:50 and arrive at school at 9:54, still having 5 minutes to spare.

Needless to say I have the most envious commute. Most people have to leave their house by 9:00, I'm usually not getting up till then. It’s been five weeks and I still haven't been able to figure out if the 117 subscribes to any type of schedule. Some days it shows up at 9:43, other days 9:57, or sometimes not at all. It's a very interesting thing; the bus is half the size of the regular buses, that should have been the first indicator that it couldn't be taken seriously. Overall it’s not that bad because if it’s late or doesn't show up (which has happened), it's only a ten-minute walk.

Italian class has been interesting; we finished our first course in the first week of February. It’s amazing that we already took 60 hours, over a semester worth of class in just four weeks, three hours a day. It started out pretty easy but definitely got a lot more difficult as it went on. The class was only 10 people, all Loyola students and focused on conversational skills. The first class was an introduction and now we are in the second level. Instead of focusing on grammar and things of that nature, it focuses on conversational proficiency. They do this so we can actually use the language and get by while we’re here. Overall the first course was helpful and not too bad, a quarter of the way in and one class down. Our second Italian class started last week and we already have a midterm coming up in a few days.

It’s amazing how confident I've become in speaking. Even if I don’t know how to say what I want to or properly structure it, I can find ways around it and still get my point across. Our new teacher doesn’t care if we talk while doing work but it has to be in Italian. So, the other day Evan and I had a whole conversation about our travel plans for Sicily in April and fully understood each other. We were thoroughly impressed with ourselves since only a month ago we were nervous saying hello to someone in Italian.

My three other classes are History of the Papacy and Catholicism, Art and Architecture of Ancient Rome and US/ British Literature about Italy. For the most part they are interesting classes but three to three and a half hours is a lot to take. I love taking three-hour business classes at Loyola, but they usually involve activities and are more interesting to me. So three hours of lecture is tough. The one upside is site visits. Its like we’ve gone back to elementary school, site visits are the grown up version of a field trip. Overall, classes aren’t that bad and its nice having two afternoons off a week.