Stay out of dark places and parks at night...check.

Hello everyone,

Rome has been awesome so far. The flight in was pretty good except for the fact that I couldn't really sleep...I met someone from our program though which was good. When we got here we flew through customs as the Italian Officers didn't really care and was on his cell phone when he looked at my passport...safety first right?

When we got here we were put into our apartment which is really sick. We are living with two girls from Towson who are also really nice. We had lunch which was really good...pizza naturally on the first day. After lunch we all took naps and then decided to wander our way into the central city as we are more so on the outwards. We ended up at Castel dell'Angelo which was in the movie "Angels and Demons"..it was really neat and really great photography opportunities. We then proceeded onto Piazza del Popolo and the Trevi Fountain. We ate dinner over there as well.

After we had enjoyed our gelato (I got nocciola and nutella..buona!) We realized we didn't know how to get back to our apartment. We ended up at the bus terminal (which we learned today not to go to at night) and just got on the first bus we saw being that the Roman workers did not want to help me and I guess my clearly failing Italian at that time. Our bus was going past the Colosseum when we realized this was kind of strange...it took some nice British guy to tell us we were on the complete opposite side of the city. We get off at the next stop and start bolting towards the metro to realize that it is a bad idea to take that too. Naturally we were also standing in some sketchy ass park with sketchy bums of Rome.

It was here that we started walking...we stopped in a McDonalds and the people there told us pretty much we were screwed and would either have to take a cab or walk...so we walked...20 miles back to our apartment. It was hell and pretty scary and needless to say I am extremely sore today.

Today so far we went to our orientation which was good, also found out that we are going to hear the Pope speak at the Vatican on July 16th which I am also pretty excited about. Later we went to the Italian supermarket which was also awesome and now we are cooking our dinner and drinking some vino. La bella vità! Tonight we are making our way to Piazza del Spagna and then the famous Drunken Ship bar! I'll write soon!

A presto!

Gabbie