Pictures...

Oh, and happy birthday Laura!

wandering around Italy

Orientation ended today and we got a huge stack of textbooks. It took me two trips to carry them up to my room. After that a group of us decided to take the bus to a nearby town (Albano) for exploring and dinner.

We walked down a very busy road that looks like it only has one lane, but actually supports two-way traffic that zips along at 30-50 mph. It had no sidewalk and a basically nonexistent shoulder. After that we waited for about 15 min for the bus.

Once we got into Albano we spent an hour or so wandering around getting a feel for where stuff was and seeing if we could find a restaurant. It was a little bit difficult, but we finally found a place and upon going in we found three UD students already there. Ordering was kind of tricky because the owner didn’t speak any English and no one in our group knows any Italian. We had an Italian phrase book, but it wasn’t much help. Eventually we managed and everything was quite good. We tried to show our appreciation by saying things like “grazie” and something I can’t remember now that means “delicious.” It was a lot of fun and we plan on going back soon, and on really throwing ourselves into our survival Italian class. Tomorrow we are going to be going all over Rome on a scavenger hunt, so hopefully my team wins :)

First few days

I'm here, and starting to settle in a little bit. The plane flight was sort of difficult and I was up for around 34 hours before getting to sleep. I sat next to a UD student who I had never met before for both flights, and by the time we finally got into Rome, we were pretty good friends and felt like we had known each other for a really long time.


Now the jet lag has pretty much worn off and it looks like it is going to be a great semester. We had a couple hour tour of Rome today and we ended with mass at the Vatican, which my group was unfortunately late for. We saw the Trevi fountain, which was really cool and not that crowded, and the Spanish Steps. Apart from that we just learned how to use the multiple public transportation options around the city. Rome is actually pretty small so you can also walk all over the place, which is neat.


Some groups had Italian men follow around and either try to sell them things or take pictures with random girls, but my group didn't have any similar problems. We did come across one guy who we suspected might be a pickpocket, but no one had anything stolen. Apparently it isn't really pickpocket season; that comes later in the spring. Unfortunately I don't have many pictures yet; my camera wasn't charged and died on the road there. I'll correct this sad situation soon! The picture that is up is the view from my window, which has shutters rather than blinds by the way.

I'm nearly ready to go! I've finally finished packing and I'll be off to the airport after a few hours of sleep, all set for a 16 hour flight. I'll let you know what it's like when I get there.