Rome Week Seven (GL 350)

Week seven, how crazy is that?  It seems like only yesterday that we were anxiously arriving at Fiumicino Airport, ready to begin our hectic but amazing two months in Italy. 

Well, on Monday Katie Dodds and I had our student led tour of Esquiline Hill.  It went really well and we luckily didn’t get lost or anything!  That night we were taught how to make Tiramisu by Danilo.  It was so much fun.  He made the first cake and then we got to the second one and he told us that we had to make it. 

Tuesday was a free day for everyone except the education students!  Since Katie, Brandon, Gabby and I are the only education students; we got to go on an observation of a school in Albano.  It was so much fun, we got to teach them about Thanksgiving, a tradition that they don’t have here.  After that they sang us every song they knew in English and then asked us a bunch of questions.  The teacher also asked us how our education system works, since the US is different in the grades and ages of those in the grade than Italy.  Overall it was a pretty amazing experience.

Wednesday we woke up at the crack of dawn to make the 6:36 train into Rome.  We raced to the metro, and went all the way to the Vatican.  We waited in a very long line and finally we entered the very large conference room.   After waiting for two hours, at almost exactly 10:30 His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI came out.  He spoke in probably 7 or 8 different languages and addressed each of us.  Then he blessed any religious articles that we brought with us.  I got my Kairos cross blessed, which means so much to me.  Kairos was one of the best experiences of my whole life.

Thursday we visited the American Cemetery in Nettuno.  It was pretty cool to say that we were on American soil, while still in Italy.  Some people even found relatives that were buried there, I didn’t have any though. 

This weekend I am staying in Rome, working on my final papers for my classes and celebrating the last weekend we have in Italy.  It’s crazy to think that seven weeks ago we were excitedly arriving to Italy and now we’re preparing to leave.  I think that a lot of us are excited to go back to America Friday, but we’re also sad to be leaving the place we’ve called home for the last seven weeks. 

It kind of reminds me of our first group travel to Venice.  We traveled by plane, bus and boat to get to Venice and our hotel rooms weren’t what we were expecting.  While we had the best gelato and in my opinion the best pizza in Venice all we could talk about on the last day was getting back “home”.  Tom Ripley in The Talented Mr. Ripley travels to Venice as an escape from everything he was dealing with in his life at that moment.  To me Venice was a kind of escape, maybe not the city of Venice but where we stayed in Lido, it felt like an escape.  It was slower than Rome, homier in a way.  I can see why Tom went to Venice of all places to get away from everything but, unlike Tom, I was glad to get “home”.  And I’m also glad to be getting home to America this coming Friday.  

Our visit to the school in Albano.

Seeing the Pope walk in the the Audience.

American Cemetery in Nettuno.

Me in Venice, an old picture but a great memory!

Looking forward to America.

Week Six (SOC 490)

To start this off I’m going to talk about the interviews we did at a market near Termini station.  We were given the task of interviewing ten people each, in Italian, about their healthcare system.  We all went into it nervous because we were unsure of how people would react to the questions, whether or not they would even understand what we were trying to do.  Once we got there the first woman that Katie D., Henna, Emily and I went up to was really nice and gladly took the survey.  This put us at ease, until people were getting finished really quickly and we only had about four surveys each.  We didn’t let it get us down and we trudged on!  We found the university nearby and a lot of the students were sympathetic to our efforts and filled them out.  We were done in no time and ready to leave.  Our final interviews were really nice and they left us on a high note.  The survey results were kind of surprising.  There were a lot of people who didn’t really care for the universal healthcare and then there were people who loved it and said that they got excellent care.  So, it’s a little hard to judge what the actual feeling of country is. 

While the feeling on universal healthcare is somewhat unknown in Italy, or at least it’s unknown to me based upon my research thus far, America is still in a struggling battle on the same front.  But is universal healthcare the cure-all?  Is that going to prevent disease, illness and dying?  Or are there other ways that people believe cure their loved ones?  Johnathon S. Ross, from Universal Healthcare says “An improved and expanded Medicare for all is the proven cure and the only way to restore America’s health.”  But that isn’t everyone’s belief, is it?  When I was 9 years old my grandpa lost his battle with cancer.  I wasn’t very old but I do know one thing that my family did was pray.  We prayed for his health, we prayed that God would have mercy on him and save his life, and we prayed that we could keep him.  While the prayers didn’t cure him, neither did the medicine.  The cancer was just too strong but it is the belief in my family that the prayers helped him hold on for just a little bit longer, so that we were all prepared and able to say goodbye to him.  In another example, my best friend in seventh grade was in a life-threatening car accident.  She was induced into a coma and was that way for about a month.  When the swelling in her brain went down a little they inserted a shunt.  It was to drain the fluid from her brain so that it didn’t swell anymore.  She wasn’t even supposed to live.  My whole school rallied together and prayed for her; for the entire time she was in the coma that she would be okay.  That girl who wasn’t supposed to make it is now a sophomore in college and continues to play volleyball, a game that she loved even before the accident, and she’s playing at college level.  When the doctors are all telling you that your best friend is going to die because there isn’t anything else they can do, and she makes a full, miraculous recovery, what do you call that?  I call it a miracle.  So, I do believe that pray works and national healthcare, might not be the cure-all that everyone is looking for.  Maybe it can help, but it might not be the whole answer.     

Rome Week 6 (GL 350)

The first chapter of The Talented Mr. Ripley is filled, in my mind, with apprehension.  Tom Ripley doesn’t know if he wants to go to Italy for Mr. Greenleaf to retrieve Richard.  On top of that Tom doesn’t really know who he is as a person, a theme that plays out further into the book.  With that, I think back to the day we left for Italy.  We all gathered in the David Center at Walsh and sat in apprehension, fear and excitement.  We didn’t know what to expect from this country, we only knew about what others’ had told us and what we’ve learned from books.  Now, we’re in week seven of our eight week journey and reflecting on what we were expecting from Italy and realizing that some things we heard of were spot on and others still, were completely unexpected or not what we were told and still more we find new things that we get to create our own opinions of. 

The other thing that Tom Ripley makes me think of is our series of firsts here in Italy.  The book describes Tom’s first time seeing the leaning tower of Pisa.  It was a time of awe-inspiring and mesmerizing glory that he saw this landmark that he’d only ever heard of.  Our first time into Rome we were going to see the Colosseum, we literally walked off the metro and out of the station and there it was.  I remember my mouth literally dropping open.  It was a moment that I’ll never forget and a feeling that I couldn’t forget even if it tried.  Katie and I had another moment like that in London, England.  We got off the Tube at the stop where Big Ben was supposed to be and we walked off the train and to the bottom of a set of stairs to exit.  We both stopped and looked at each other and said in unison, “This is going to be a Colosseum moment…” and we took out our cameras and it was.  It was amazing and perfect in all its glory.  We soaked it in and just stared, mouths open for a long time.  And even after we passed it we kept turning around to make sure it was still there. 

The Talented Mr. Ripley also describes Tom’s first time on the train and the bus.  On the bus Tom was surrounded by a man who smelled and a gaggle of girls who smelled worse.  I can attest to that.  Our first time on the 64 bus wasn’t a pleasant or forgetful moment.  We were all crammed in like sardines.  My face was very close to some man’s armpit and I don’t think he used deodorant that day or any day and he definitely hadn’t showered recently.  Our first time on the trains wasn’t quite as scarring as the bus.  Nonetheless, we were still apprehensive.  We didn’t know if we had to keep our “antennas” up or not.  We were all wide-eyed as we travelled by railway into Rome; something that I won’t ever forget.  Everyone stared at us as we stared out the window.  Now, no one really notices us on the train anymore and we all sleep the whole way there and back usually.  We’ve become so accustomed to it that it’s just normal to us. 

This entire trip has made me look at things differently.  I try to find the beauty in everything, to look and find the good in each situation and mostly patients, to go with the flow.  It’s hard to believe that in ten days I’ll be on a flight back to America, just thinking about the time I had in Italy, and everywhere I travelled.  And it’s hard to imagine, a month from now that all of this will just be a fond memory.  And in ten or so years, it will turn into a “when I was in college…” story.  All I know is for these last ten days I’m going to try an experience everything that Rome has to offer.  

My first view of Big Ben

My first view of the Colosseum

          

Week Four and Five (SOC 490)

Do we have control over our health?  Well, yes and no.  When you grow up in a family that can only afford to buy you McDonald’s over something healthier, then no you really don’t have the choice.  Someone else ie: your parents are making the decision for you.  Other things fall into that category too, like secondhand smoke.  Can you control the person standing next you at the train station who wants to smoke a cigarette?  No, but your health suffers if you have to stand at that train station everyday by the same person who smokes.  On the flip side, if you’re the one that is smoking, then of course you have control over that.  You can quit and make everyone around you healthier and yourself.  By quitting, within I believe a week or two, your risk of lung cancer goes down significantly.  With the McDonald’s example, when you grow up and are no longer under the care of your parents or even if you are, you can make a conscious effort to eat healthier, exercise and improve your lifestyle.

However, with each argument in mind, a lot of it comes down to cost.  You could be the healthiest person on the planet and come down with a chronic disease and because of your job, you don’t have the health insurance to cover medicine or hospital visits.  Cowen argues that “Health insurance is linked too tightly to employment, and too many people cannot afford insurance.”  So you don’t have the job to get the insurance that you need so then you suffer.  Even if you’re not taking care of yourself for whatever reason, be it that you can only afford McDonald’s, then it’s hard to get help if you can’t afford insurance.   

But then people say that if we give out free universal healthcare then people will abuse the system.  Gladwell says that “Making you responsible for a share of the costs, the argument runs, will reduce moral hazard”.  People don’t want to be sick and checked into a hospital but if people are worried about the amount of people who are now going to seek out medical attention, making them have copays and deductibles will help drive down the abusers.  

Rome Week Five (GL 350)

“Few decisions are allowed to be influenced by sentiments, tastes, hazards or hopes, but usually by a careful valuation of the relative strength of the contending parties.”  Barzini says this in The Italians when talking about how Italians make decisions.  It kind of seems like the opposite of America, we’re told to go with our gut or to do whichever makes us happy, when making decisions.  But Italians seem to go about it by calculating how much they could lose if they’re decision is incorrect and another’s is correct.  I’d have to disagree and say that this isn’t how one should go about deciding things.  Going with my gut has made this trip everything I have imagined it to be and more. 

On Monday we went to the Museum of Medical Arts.  You’ve read about it in my SOC 490 blog but it was as interesting as old medical equipment is to someone who is SO not into the medical scene!  Then Katie and Brandon needed to visit the Vatican for their upcoming walking tour so Katie, Brandon, Dave and I went around the corner to see it!  St. Peter’s Basilica was amazing, it’s so big and just beautiful. 

Tuesday we had Aubree and Gabby’s tour of Borghese Gardens.  It was really pretty although it was more of a park than a garden but it was pretty nonetheless.  The museum that was also on the grounds was really pretty but it wasn’t as big as we were expecting and with no audio guide, we finished pretty fast.

Wednesday we had a free day which Katie and I used to complete laundry and our Education papers, which we tricked ourselves into doing early.  Since they aren’t due until the 29^th of November. 

Thursday was Thanksgiving!!  We went to Saint Susannah church which is an American Church located right in Rome.  Everything was in English which was a welcomed change.  Amy and I got to bring up the gifts during mass which was pretty cool.  Afterward we went home and put on sweats and t-shirts to prepare ourselves for the coming feast.  Thanksgiving dinner was amazing! We had squash soup, mashed potatoes, the best green bean casserole on the planet, mashed sweet potatoes, turkey, stuffing, corn casserole, cranberries, and any dessert you could want.  We had cake, ice cream, pumpkin pie, apple pie, pecan pie, and cookies.

On Friday morning, Katie, Emily, Amy and I were picked up by Julio and headed to the airport.  We took a three hour flight to Dublin, Ireland.  We stayed at a really cool hostel in Temple Bar.  We had some really cool Australian roommates who gave us some tips about the city, since they’d been there for about a week.  That night Katie and I went to our traditional Hard Rock dinner and then we experienced our first pub, complete with traditional Irish music.  We went on a hop on, hop off tour Saturday morning and then that night we went to dinner and then went on a pub crawl.  At the second bar, Emily wasn’t feeling it so she went back to the hostel.  Amy, Katie and I pushed on!  It was so much fun!  We went to six bars and a night club.  One of the bars we went to was the one featured in the movie, P.S. I Love You.  It was such a fun night; afterwards we didn’t want to leave.  I would definitely go back, for sure!

So, going with my gut throughout this week has made each of my experiences so much better.  I didn’t think about anything I just went with what I wanted to do in the moment and it was amazing!  This was probably the best week/weekend on this trip so far!  Until next time…

Shell to fill up water bottles on Gabby and Aubree's tour!

Temple Bar, down the street from where we stayed in Dublin!

The Dublin Zoo!

Week Three (SOC 490)

“…the United States as a whole is performing well below the standards of health, efficiency and care that are realistic and have been achieved in the most successful U.S. states and other developed nations.” – Universal Healthcare

Startling as it is the U.S. isn’t the top nation when it comes to healthcare. It actually ranks 15^th overall in the best national healthcare systems.  The top two are France and Italy, is that because they have universal healthcare, who knows? However, whatever Italy is doing, sitting at #2, we should mirror.  They have a lower infant mortality rate than the U.S., among other aspects. 

What are the Italians doing more of that the Americans need to start doing?  I’ve only been here for four and a half weeks but already I can tell that Italians walk far more than Americans do.  They use a lot of public transportation which cuts down on carbon dioxide emissions which makes for cleaner air.  In Rome they drink water from the aquifer, which probably cuts down on the amount of chemicals in their water supply.  They tend to eat healthier overall too.  Their mean is leaner, their cheese and dairy products are fresh daily, and their snacks tend to be less greasy.  All of these things cause a healthier nation.  Not only that, but everyone has access to healthcare.  Even the homeless people, who sleep on the benches in Termini Station, can go down to the hospital and get help if they need it.  Maybe that’s the secret…  

We visited the Museum of the Mind last week and the Museum of Medical Art this week and each of them show the past of medicine in this nation.  The Museum of the Mind was an old psychiatric hospital, one that tried to help those with “diseases” of the mind.  Things that everyone thought were incurable or untreatable.  The only issue with this hospital was the fact that they sometimes found people they thought to be ill, who weren’t.  After spending so much time in close proximity to these people, the ones that were well, developed paranoia, and even some other diseases.  The Museum of Medical Art was cool too, it was all the old instruments and aides that they used in hospitals back in the day.  It showed things like preserved babies and other medical discoveries that were interesting.  It was cool to see the progression of the medicine of Italy.  

A child scratched this on a wall while in the psychiatric hospital.

Old gynecological stir-ups.

Rome Week Four (GL 350)

“The unexpectedness of life, waiting round every corner, catches even wise women unawares…to avoid corners altogether is, after all, to refuse to live.”

Alice Steinbach referred to this quote in her excerpt in the Smiles book, and it caught my attention.  Around every corner, around every bend we run into something new.  Whether it was exiting the metro at the Colosseo stop on the first day and being in awe that the Colosseum was right there, or to finding a cute little café with the most amazingly delicious food, there is something to discover around every corner of Rome. 

On Monday, we were given a student lead tour of Aventine Hill.  It was beautiful, everything we saw was amazing and at the end was my favorite part.  We went into the gardens of this church and there was a breathtaking view of Rome.  We could see everything in one glance, some things we could point out and others were just incredible in all of their mystery.  Something we all weren’t expecting to see in that church garden.

On Tuesday we went on a walking tour Piazza Della Rotonda and Piazza Navona.  And as the quote said there’s unexpectedness around every corner.  Aimee and Rachel led the tour and showed us this little hole-in-the-wall bakery that had the best cannoli’s we’ve had in Italy so far.  Amazing!

Wednesday was our free day spent writing our 490 midterm paper, doing laundry and studying up for our Italian midterm that night.  All went well in case you were wondering!

On Thursday we went through another unexpected turn and found ourselves at the Museum of the Mind.  It was an old psychiatric hospital turned museum.  Even though everything was in Italian, we had our guide and Danilo, helping to translate our way through the exhibits. 

Friday we all boarded the train with our luggage and headed off to Florence.  It was so beautiful and even though it was small I felt like I kept finding new places around each corner.  I finally found balsamic vinegar for my parents, something they requested long before I left for Italy, and have completed my shopping list as far as Christmas presents go.  Katie and I climbed 463 stairs to the top of the duomo, which had a spectacular view of all of Florence.  You can check out Facebook for pictures!  All in all a good weekend!

We are now half way done with our trip here and it feels like the time is slipping away from us!  With surprising turns still to come and the path we’ve already woven, Rome is turning out to be a pretty impressive place.  I cannot wait to see what week five has in store…Stay Tuned!

Lunch after Aimee and Rachel's Tour

The class being studious!

The Museum of the Mind 

Rome Week Three (GL 350)

“Love each other as much as brothers should, and have profound respect for each other.”  St. Paul said these words and I think that we learning to do that with everyone we live with here.  We’re starting to break our ties and get to know other people.  I think it’s a good thing; we’re mixing it up at dinner and hanging out doing game nights with the whole group.

On Monday we had Emily and Dave’s tour which was amazing.  San Giovanni was probably my favorite church that we went in.  It was so big and beautiful and awe-inspiring.  After we went on their tour we toured the Catacombs.  My favorite walking tour yet.  We had an amazing tour guide and the catacombs were cold and amazing.

Tuesday and Wednesday were free days after we had class of course and they were spent sleeping, doing laundry and preparing for our trip to London.  On Thursday we got a tour of the aqueducts, which was a little boring but still cool to see how the water was brought to Rome back in the day.

Friday we flew out from Rome to go to London.  When we arrived in London we hung out at the hostel and then went in search of a Chipotle.  After like five miles of walking we finally found the Chipotle and it was delicious.  The next day Katie and I went to the tattoo parlor to get piercings for my 20^th birthday! After that we saw Big Ben, the London Eye, and Buckingham Palace.  It was an amazing weekend and I’m so grateful I got to go!

Until next week! 

A guy in a turkey suit at Buckingham Palace.

Week Two (SOC 490)

While taking SOC 490, I’ve come to realize that there are two sides to every argument.  Within those two sides are also varied opinions.  But with all that complicated opinion is your own.  Everyone is entitled to their opinion, just as I am entitled to mine.  But do you know all the facts?  If you aren’t taking the other side of the argument into consideration, you sadly do not.  This is a challenge I have accepted this week; try to look at and understand the other sides’ opinion. 

Universal Healthcare is a book of opposing viewpoints.  You get to see the artfully crafted argument of universal healthcare from varied points of view.  Helen Redmond, one of the contributing authors of this book, believes that universal healthcare should be a right.  She brings up the point of those addicted to drugs.  People who are addicted to drugs should be able to have healthcare in order to get help for their persisting problems.  Without this healthcare system in place there are long lines for doctors who have to rush patients through treatment processes, not giving them enough time to heal completely.  These people need and deserve to have healthcare as a right for all people. 

Take into consideration also, everyone affected by the lack of universal healthcare.  If there is a child of say, 12 whose parents do not have a job or do not have a job that provides healthcare, the child is in turn not covered.  If this child were to come down with something even as minor as an hear infection, the parents would have to pay completely out of pocket for the doctor, the medicine and any additional visits to the doctor’s office.  But should the child be punished for something he/she has no control over?  Gary Dorrien, another contributing author, says that no one should have it held against them that they cannot afford healthcare.  The child is helpless, not of working age, and relies solely on his parents. 

With all of this information however, I still believe that healthcare is a privilege, something that must be worked for and earned.   

Week Two in Rome (GL 350)

On the first day that we arrived in Italy we were forced to stay awake and go to orientation.  Right as this orientation began we heard a song playing throughout the hallway, “Home” by Phillip Phillips.  “The trouble it might drag you down. If you get lost, you can always be found. Just know you’re not alone, cause I’m going to make this place your home.”  We were told that Rome was going to be our home for the next two months, that we would grow attached to our place here in our little bubble of perfect Italy. 

Attachment, an idea that is heavily discussed in the book, Smiles.  Attachment to Rome to be specific.  There’s a sense of never wanting to leave.  In one of the stories Ovid, an author, is being exiled from Rome to the Black Sea, back in his day, the edge of earth.  As he rode the wagon out of Rome he discussed his attachment to the beauty and the grace and the history that Rome possesses.  He speaks, as they leave the gates of Rome, of trying to put Rome in his pocket.  He wants to take this captivating city with him wherever he goes.  Something I think referred to as the “fatal charm” in The Italians.  Something we have all fallen victim of. 

I think that each and every one of us has felt that attachment.  “Rome Home” is a coined phrase around the dorms; we’ve all begun to think of this as our home.  On Monday Katie and I went shopping at the Spanish Steps for things we forgot in our prior shopping trips or things we found later on.  As we grew tired and weary we kept saying I just want to go home and sleep.  Of course we meant the dorms, but it just felt natural to say home.  

Tuesday and Wednesday we pretty much just bummed around campus and did laundry preparing for our first weekend group trip.  There was a big rainstorm that passed through Rome and Castel Gandolfo those days and so we were not feeling very up for exploring the city.

Thursday, though it was supposed to rain again, was sunny and beautiful.  The dreaded Appian Way bike ride was upon us and we were not happy.  We got all the way there and it was not until we were up on our bikes finally riding that we started to have a blast.  The cobblestone made for a less than smooth ride, and after several bike chains popping off and people falling off of their bikes we were all a pile of exhausted and happy people.  The only ill after-affect was the bruised bums which still persist to this day.

Friday at 4:15am, we all boarded the vans to Fiumincino Airport to fly out to Venice.  Again dreading the trip to a supposedly flooded Venice, we all boarded the plane ready to see what was in store.  We were not off to a good started when we arrived, taking a very crowded ferry with luggage in hand to our hotel.  Then our hotel was cramped, none of the plugs worked, we got our room late and missed our scheduled nap.  Things were just going wrong left and right.  We fixed our room, Danilo fixed our plug issue, we got a nap later in the day and we got to explore Venice.  We walked around shops on Friday and got to ride in a gondola.  It was amazing!  Saturday we went on a tour of the Murano Glass factory and got to see and purchase official glass.  Sunday we ended the trip with a visit to Hard Rock Venice for a quick bite to eat before killing time, going to the airport, losing Amy on the ferry, and hopping a flight back to “Rome Home.”
We were all extremely excited to be back in our own captivating home, Rome.      

Week One (SOC 490)

Disclaimer for anyone reading my blog that is expecting an update for my time in Rome, I apologize, almost every other blog will be for my comparative health class! So, if you see a blog titled SOC 490, skip it, it’s not about my time in Rome.

The argument is whether or not universal healthcare should be a privilege or a right.  I personally think it’s a privilege.  Leonard Peikoff, founder of the Ayn Rand Institute, says it perfectly when he says, “Now our only rights…are the rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness.”  Nowhere in our basic rights does it say that we have the right to healthcare.  If you want healthcare, then you need to work for it.  Find a job that provides it and supplies it for your kids if you have any.  We were never promised in the constitution, the right to healthcare. 

Then there is Donald J. Boudreaux, the chairman of the Economics Department at George Mason University, he argues that providing universal healthcare would drive the cost of healthcare through the roof.  He uses the analogy of food.  If the government were to provide food as a universal right, in order to satisfy this right they would have to raise taxes enough to gather the money to be able to provide the anticipated amount of food.  Once people were provided with this free food they would get greedy, wanting to get as much as they could before other people take it, after that happened the government would then have to put all kinds of regulations on the amount of certain foods that you could receive.  It would cause more problems for the government than are being fixed by having it in place.  The same goes for healthcare, the rise in taxes to pay for the services and the regulations the government would have to put on it, would cause more of a headache for the government than is needed.   

Then in class there was brought up the point of the Catholic Church, and their view on the argument of universal healthcare.  They believe that universal healthcare should be a right, that everyone should have access to it.  That being said, where I live in Cincinnati, and I cannot talk for any other city, but our Christ’s Hospital, which is a Catholic hospital, will not treat you unless you have healthcare.  If they believe that everyone should be treated with universal healthcare why are they not providing the care now?  The people they supposedly want to help get health insurance are the very people they’re turning away now.  Seems a little fishy to me.  Not only that but way back in, I believe, the 1800s there was separation of church and state in America.  So, the Church can have its opinion but at the same time it shouldn’t then be turned into law because the church wants it to be.  There are more religions that Catholicism in America, and none of those churches are trying to have their opinion turned into law.      

Week One in Rome (GL 350)

One week.  One week is all it took to literally fall in love with Rome! We left Walsh University on Saturday, October 20th and arrived in Rome on Sunday the 21st.  It was the longest plane ride I have ever been on and let me tell you it was less than fun.  We “slept” for a little while on the plane but it was probably a collective hour and a half of rest.  Once we landed in Rome we went to baggage claim to retrieve our bags.  Once Denilo, a member of our Rome staff, grabbed almost every piece of our luggage, we ran to catch the train to immigration and customs.  Not everyone caught the train, which was nerve-wracking.  It was then that we discovered that Italian transportation waits for no one.  Once we were all back together we walked through immigration and got our passports stamped.  It was the first stamp I’d ever gotten on my passport so it was pretty cool.  We went through customs next, which went flawlessly; that surprised me a little bit.  Outside customs we waited for our drivers to come pick us up and deliver us to campus.  When they finally arrived we had to walk to the vans and then configure a TON of luggage and people into vans.  The drive to campus was beautiful!  Everything about Rome is beautiful.  When we arrived to campus we unloaded our stuff, received the keys to our dorm room and piled our luggage into the elevator and went to our rooms.  Katie (my roommate) and I live in the room right across from the balcony.  It has a beautiful view of the surrounding town and the land that the brothers own.  Once we got situated and found a home for everything in our tiny room we had to go to orientation.  Orientation was a little rough, considering we had been up for almost 36 hours, but we made it through!  After that they decided to walk us up to Castel Gandolfo, the town at the top of the hill a little ways from campus.  The hill was no joke, a 45 degree angle all the way up.  We huffed and puffed our way to the top and got to see the pope’s summer home, the beautiful lake, the church where we were invited to mass, and the world’s first mailbox!  The mass was optional and Katie and I were exhausted from travelling and the hike so we walked back down to campus, a harder feat than one would imagine.  We ate dinner as a “family” that night and discussed the next day.   

Monday was our first day of class with Professor and getting up for an 8am class after being up for so many hours was difficult.  We talked about Rome and the syllabus and got our textbooks.  After class we gathered our things and walked to the Villeta train station to catch the train into Rome.  The ride was about 45 minutes and then we arrived into the Roma Termini train station.  We met at our meeting spot and learned all about Termini from Denilo, Mike and Professor.  Once their instruction was over we were set loose to explore and find food.  Our first time ordering food in Italy was funny, exciting and scary all at the same time.  It also included a lot of pointing!  We then got to experience our first time on the metro.  It was crowded, or so we thought, and we got off at the Colosseo stop.  Literally right when you exited the metro, the Colosseum was right there, big and beautiful.  Like in our reading from The Smiles of Rome had said, it had once been the largest piece of architecture in the world.  It was massive from across the street and it was even more massive up close!  After our tour of the Colosseum we got a tour of the Roman Forum.  It was the hub of activity back in the ancient times, a place for people to meet up and have any exchange imaginable.  Whether it was for business or religion the Forum was the place to be.  Once that tour was over we had some free time and then had to find our way back to campus before dinner.  Since the Italians eat dinner so late, Danielle, Amy, Emily, Katie and I went on the metro back to Termini in search of a snack.  When we got back the Termini on the metro, we didn’t exit in the right spot and ended up outside, where we found a pizza place with really nice staff that got us the food we craved.

Tuesday we started our Italian class! We learned how to say our names, where we lived, and that we were students.  We went Campo di Fiori on bus 64 after we got off the train.  If we thought the metro was crowded the day before, we were sadly mistaken.  The bus is the main bus around Rome and it was a sardine can of people.  It also smelled because not everyone had showered that day apparently and there was no AC so we just sweated our way to the piazza.  We saw our first open air markets there and learned who to buy from and who to avoid.  After that we went on a walking tour of the Jewish ghetto which Professor and Denilo led.  It was pretty cool and we got to see a whole different part of Rome.  Once the tour was over we all went back to campus to nap, shower and do homework before dinner. 

On Wednesday we went into Albano Laziale.  It is a small town one train stop away from Viletta.  We went there to go to the police station to get our visas for our two month stay in Italy.  Since Wednesdays are our free days, we went and explored Albano for a while before heading back to campus.  Katie and I did our first loads of laundry on Wednesday and it was rather interesting figuring out which buttons did what because it was all in Italian.

Thursday was when we went and saw the Baths of Caracalla.  These were like work out arenas back in the ancient times.  They had hot baths and cold baths which were almost steam room type things.  It was pretty interesting.  Then we took the metro to Barbarini where we learned about the history and making of gelato.  After that Mike took us to a gelato place and treated us all to gelato.  I got nutella and tiramisu flavored gelato, it was so good! We explored after that and made our way, somehow to the Spanish Steps where all the expensive shops are.  We got to walk in Gucci, Prada, Louis Vuitton and so many more it was amazing! 

Friday Amy, Emily and Katie all left for Paris early in the morning and Danielle and I went on a shopping trip to Rome.  It was so much fun and we got all kinds of cute stuff.  My favorite purchase was my Ray Ban sunglasses!  All in all my first week abroad has been jam packed and so much fun, I cannot wait to see what next week has in store. Stay tuned!

Colosseum