And the Adventure Begins, Activities of Weekend #1

Ok first I am not a writer so please excuse me if my blogs are boring? It's fine you will grow to love it. Second, This first blog is going to be very long for I will try to describe my life in Rome to the  best of my ability. Ok here we go...

It has been an exciting couple of days. I have only been in Rome for 6 days and it feels like longer. I know that since classes started I will begin to get a weekly routine in order and then time will not be able to go by slow enough. I encountered so much since the time I stepped off the plane. I didn't know how I felt about the situation at first. I wasn't really excited yet because it didn't seem real to me. I had a small feel of butterflies in my stomach. Upon arriving it was pretty easy to navigate there were people there from John Cabot to tell us where to go and what to do. The next two days reminded me of freshman year at Tech. We had multiple seminars that were so boring you wanted to sleep through them all. The jet lag was at it's fullest and it felt as though you are a zombie who just stayed up all night studying for a final and when the exam finally came you couldn't care about anything but going to sleep. They had lots of activities to help you meet people and it was just like orientation as a freshman, everyone clicked off within the first ten minutes of being there and didn't want to branch out. I of course do as I always do and tested the waters in several groups. I finally settled on a solid group of friends, three of which are my roommates. The school provides several trips throughout the semester, wanting to make the most of the cheap rates I signed up for everything they offered. Of course I plan on having some of my own trips, first of which I want to plan for my birthday weekend.

The weekend was the first time we started to feel like we had a chance to explore. I didn't venture very far into the city for I knew I had two scheduled tours the school would provide for me on Sunday. The streets are so narrow and the drivers are crazy. The cars look like toy cars, and every street is made of big cobble stone. I don't understand how the women wear heals! I swear I would get my heal stuck or roll my ankle, but then again I am not the most coordinated person so that probably isn't saying much. Since Wednesday I had made it to Campo di Fiori which is pictured on the right. This is "the square" as I refer to it. It has a bunch of restaurants and bars and this statue in the middle. This is also the location of the Pub that I watched the Jets beat the Patriots! The beer was very good and the game was even better! J-E-T-S Jets Jets Jets!!

Friday night we (the "we" I keep referring to is my group of friends) decided to venture out and find some sort of bar or club. The first place we came upon was a bar called Dee Jay which was just right down the road from our residency. It was tiny and once we made it inside I could not even walk so we decided to leave and find something else to go to. As we were walking around there was a lady handing out club promotions for a place called Mood. After circling Campo di Fiori we passed a bar called 18 18. It wasn't very packed but we were in a big group so we decided to sit for a while and have a drink. I got a screwdriver for it was the only thing that didn't have sugar in it. After about and hour or so we decided to give the club a shot so my friend Alicia, who has been our savior for this trip for she speaks Spanish and Italian, went to a local and he pointed us in the right direction. The club was so crowded and there was definitely a 1 to 3 girl to boy ratio. We got on the dance floor first, it was so crowded that you could hardly move. We ended up leaving at 5am with so much to talk about. The Italian men are so different from American boys. American boy tend to buy girls drinks and then ask them to dance in hopes that they will get lucky. The Italian boys just have this aggressive attitude that they come up behind you and start dancing with you and two minutes later expect a kiss! You try explaining that that is not an American custom and they give you this confused face as if they don't understand why.  Luckily I learn the most important club phrase which is "No baci!" haha which means no kisses. One boy told my friend that he had found the one and that he couldn't believe he went his whole life and finally found her today, the quote of the night was "If only I wasn't Buddhist" I told her she would find the only Buddhist Italian in Rome. The behavior they present is quite humorous, it is as if every girl is the only girl in the room, and the aggressive behavior is why they say the Italian women are dismissive. You have to be in order to be able to breathe from all the love they are throwing your way. One boy did ask me to a cinema the next day. I said sure gave him my number and went on my way. The next day when he called me I had a change of heart and decided to pass (my friend are shaking their heads at me because this is normal behavior for me).

Saturday night Andy, a former JCU (the name of my school John Cabot University) was giving a night tour. Andy is the same guy who is planning side trips to Prague and Dublin during St Patty's Day, also places like London, Paris and Barcelona.  (He took us to see the Pantheon which is pictured on the left.) On the way we also had several fountains. When we were in the inside I was taking pictures and an Italian man asked me and my friend Jasmine if we knew why there was a hole in the middle of the ceiling. I said no and he began explaining that in the summer exactly at 12, the sun fills the hole in the top of the building and Illuminates the whole inside. He then lead us to 

his favorites restaurant. The group we were with was 60ish kids and me and my friends decided that we really didn't want to wait that long to get some food so we started walking around the Pantheon for something to eat. we settled on a restaurant where the server seemed to be funny. we all got wine with dinner and toasted a good trip in Italy. After dinner we headed home to get ready to go out on the town again. We all decided that we wanted to go back to Mood for we felt it was a good place to hangout. We got there early (which in Rome is before 1230, everyone here doesn't go out until about 1230 and don't go home until around 5 or 6) so it wasn't very crowded. Side note: We also met some boys who were stationed in German who were in the Air Force. They joined us at the club and for all my ROTC friend one of them brought up "Chair Force" and gave me a high five because I knew what he was talking about is when he said you mean the "...... Force" I was like Chair. hahaha. Those same boys joined us on Sunday at the pub to watch the Jets game. I talked them all into cheering for the Jets! Ok back to the club, It started getting packed and we had our dancing shoes on. My friends were hungry an hour into the club so we headed across the street to see if we wanted to get some food. The girls asked a lot of questions about prices and the man got very agitated with us and started rambling in Italian. When we finally paid and went to go eat at a table we got kicked out. Then we crossed the street to go back to the club where a bunch of Italian boys asked us if we would say they were with us so they could get in. Being nice we said Si and headed inside. While dancing the best thing to do is to avoiding eye contact with any boy who I did not want to be near. Italian boy see eye contact as an invitation to come dance, dance and look down is the best policy haha. The boys from the door did end up taking pictures of us when we first got in and I danced with a boy who was very nice. His name was Stefano and he worked on the Isola Tiber (second picture), which is where Romulus and Remus first began Rome. It is now a hospital and a very prestigious place for the rich people to have their babies. I plan to have lunch with him one day in hopes that I can pick up some Italian as well as find the hidden wonders of Rome that you don't know to look for as a tourist. We again didn't begin to make our journey home until 5am. 


I will write a separate blog to describe the grocery stores, my classes slash school, and the tours I took.
--L'amore e riguarda--