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.

Getting Lost in Rome Isn't That Bad

It's been a few days since my last post, I have some time before dinner and so much has been going on that I need to write it down before I forget.

We're now at our first real day being in Rome. The day we flew in, although arriving in the morning, really doesn't count, I mean it blended together with the day before and we were all too tired to do anything substantial.

We walked from our hotel to the St. Johns building.

We had the general orientation, "this is where you will be living", "remember you're representing your school", "this is how to be safe", talk. I'm not knocking it, as an orientation leader I can appreciate its importance, it was just a lot to take in at 9:00 in the morning.

During the lunch break a bunch of the guys and I wandered around looking for a place to eat. We wandered a few blocks away and found this restaurant called San Marco. This was the first time that any of us were by ourselves, really knowing little to no italian. We were able to order, which wasn't that difficult and again the food was amazing. Being typical americans we forgot that there was no need to tip the waiter... thats the last time we'll be making that mistake.

Next came the fun part of the day. We all knew the address of our host family already but didn't exactly know how to get there. We were provided with a map of the city, a map of the public transportation and a little guidance on how to get around. We all split up into groups based on who would be living in the same neighborhood and then about 30 loyola students dispersed into the city. My roommate Adam and I had it pretty easy. Our house is one block away from a metro station and the St. John's and Italiaidea buildings are also only one block from a metro station. We took the metro from St. Johns, after five stops changed at the Termini station and then proceeded to get onto the blue line for one stop. We quickly were able to find our house, down a really short and narrow street in the oldest part of the city. The best part is that is only about 20 minutes door-to-door.

This is where the adventure gets interesting. We had heard from past students that our house was close, really close, within walking distance to Italiaidea. Since we already knew how to get to St. Johns we figured that we would learn how to get to Italiaidea. We walked to the end of our block and back towards the main street. When we got to the main street, we were amazed, all we could see was the Coliseum at the end of the street. It spread past the width of the street and rose above all the building tops. I really wish there was another word other than amazing because I feel like I'm over using that, but it is the best descriptor. We headed towards the Coliseum, thinking that we could take the main street toward Italiaidea or at least get us headed in the right direction. This couldn't have been more wrong. We spent the next hour and a half lost in the city.

We were told by Dr. Dawson (the site director), the only way to really go out and get to know the city was to get lost in it and thats exactly what we were doing day one. I could always find exactly where we were on the map, but could never really get a handle on how to get from there to where we were trying to go. Thats the great this about the old side of the city, roads just popped up over time, the whole road system wasn't planned, so there are small alley ways and side streets everywhere. While this is all really interesting it makes getting from point-a to point-b a little more difficult. Overall, our travels took us on what could only be explained as a zig-zag throughout the city. We started to head east, then we would take another road because maybe thats how we were going to get to our language school... it wasn't so we kept bouncing back and forth while continually making our way north.

It was totally worth it though, we saw the roman forum again, the monument to Vittorio Emmanuele II (my favorite site here, don't know if I mentioned that earlier), the entrance to the Vatican and tons of really interesting sites. This is when it started to hit me, I'm living and going to be surrounded by some of the most historic sites in the world for four months.

By the end of hour one of being semi-lost, but always knowing where we were I started to get the hang of this map business. We made it to the river. Along the river we past an ice rink which looks like it was just set up for the winter season along, and it was blasting Usher. It seems that they are really into music from the early 2000's over here. Once we got past there we made it to familiar surroundings and back to the hotel. We were one of the earlier groups to get back and one of a select group to actually find our house easily. Our reward an hour and a half nap before dinner.

La Cita Eterna

We had finally arrived in Rome and the only initial reaction that I can explain is a mix of sheer amazement and awe. This was unlike anything most of us had ever seen, especially me since this was my first time to Europe. We dropped our bags off at the St. Johns University building, where Catholic University rents space. After this we went to the hotel, checked-in to our room and were free till 4 pm. The guys who I was rooming with for the night and I decided to get something to eat. I got a salami and cheese panino with a water for only 3 euro, not too bad. After we headed back to the hotel to take a nap till 4. Waking up at 4 pm was incredibly, incredibly hard but we made our way to the lobby.

As soon as we walked outside it started to downpour, of course. After a little while it turned into drizzle, but by that time our walking tour turned into our first public transportation adventure on one of the rome buses. Packing 50 students onto a bus in just a few seconds was interesting experience. We saw a good amount of the city and then began to walk again. We saw the Trevi Fountain, made our way to our Italian language school (Italiaidea) and the Spanish Sqaure. About a block from our italian school are the spanish steps, we got a little history on that and then headed for our second public transportation experiment, getting the entire group onto the metro (Rome's subway system). We took the metro from the spanish steps, learned where and how to cross over from the A line to the B line and then continued on. When we exited the metro station the first thing we saw was this.

The Coliseum.

It was amazing, we got out of the metro station and it was all that you could see. It took all of us by surprise. From there we headed up to the Roman forum and the monument to Victor Emmanuel II, the first king of Unified Italy. It has been one of the most amazing sites that I have seen so far, just the sheer size and construction is mind blowing.

Finally, we reached the restaurant where the group was going to have dinner. It was a little early by Italian standards but, it was our first authentic Italian meal. I don't remember the name of it, or where it was really, but the food was amazing. We had 3 courses, the antipasto, which consisted of italian meats and different fried italian vegetables. Then the primo, which was pasta with two different sauces and finally the dolce, which was tiramisu and of course wine. It was one of the best and freshest meals I have ever had. We walked back to the hotel and basically passed out. By that time it had felt like I had been up for two days.

With that, my first day in Rome was over...

Flying to Rome, an experience in itself

My trip to Rome began last thursday, Jan. 7th. We got to the airport around 1:45pm. Luckily I check in and checked my bags downstairs, which no else in the airport apparently knew about because it took less than five minutes. After that I headed up to security. I said goodbye to mom and dad and then got on line to go through security. After about a half hour I was through and at the gate. I was one of the only students to be there that early, but at least I was there. Slowly everyone started to show up and before we knew it we were boarding.

I boarded and found my seat. Being that I was the beginning of the alphabet I was one of the only people who wasn't surrounded by Loyola people. I had a very nice, but also large gentleman who slept very loudly throughout the flight. My seat was the center of the center section, easily the most uncomfortable seat possible. Earlier in the week I read a post by a friend who left for Ireland had tried the beef on the plane and it wasn't exactly the best. When dinner rolled around I figured that I would be daring and try the beef for myself to see what all the hype was about... He was right, it was awful, mushy, grey, but at least there was rice. Other than that the flight was pretty uneventful, I fell in and out of consciousness a few times, definitely no substantial sleep.

After eight and a half hours we arrived at Rome's Fiumicino/ Leonardo da Vinci airport. After being caged for almost nine hours we were all ready to go although none of us knew how to get where we were going. Luckily there was a tram, that took us from the terminal to passport control. Once we got there we were forced into four lines for not only our plane but probably about two other ones, easily a few hundred people. After about 20 minutes and a little line jumping we made it through. We picked up our bags met with Dr. Dawson (our program director who was flying in from Atlanta) and headed out to customs. I'm not completely sure what customs is, but here it was just a sliding door that separated baggage claim from the outside. We then met Aurora, our program's cultural assistant. She took us to the bus and before we knew it we were in Italy on our way to Rome.