Post Uno

Well, as I'm in Italy now for a month and I've been sparse on photos and haven't been great about recording the happenings of my daily life in Rome, I think its appropriate that I do some catching up from January 12th to now:

The first week was awesome. I've learned through this and my trip to Vegas last January just how fun it is to travel with my parents. We had some great times and its amazing to share a city that you both know vaguely (from the 2004 exchange) but are re-learning yourself proved quite interesting.

During orientation I realized that Carrie (a friends of my roommate and ex-friend Emily) was studying @ JCU as well. I was, quite obviously due to the history Emily and I have experienced over the past year, scared of what this would mean. We quickly latched on to each other as having a little bit of New York with you in another person proved to be very helpful in the first weeks in Rome

Its become evident that the gay presence in Rome is not as visible as New York. This is something I expected as there are still many place in the United States that don't match New York in visibilty, but I can say that its interesting to see the juxtaposition of a major city which is very much like New York not carrying the same feeling of "acceptance."

John Cabot as a university seems overall more challenging academically then my home university of Pace. Each teacher seemed to be very adamant about their respective (strict) attendance policies. This seemed to be more to scare us "visiting" students not to use study abroad, weekend travel etc. as reasons to skip class.

Also, within the first two weeks, the school experienced extreme tragedy. One very prominent male student (fully attending JCU) was killed in a motor-accident the night after Heath Ledger's death. The following morning there were calls the girls in SAI from our program coordinator checking on them and their roommates as a female body had been found in the area of the ponte sisto bridge at 5am. We later learned (after many mixed messages and misinformation) that it was a study abrod student who was the roommate of Carrie's friend Jesse.

It was quite an experience to take on the second week of being in Italy (and the first week of classes). I was already for a vacation while on this seemingly vacation.

On to food:

Mostly everyone from the States here had been going into protein-deficiency due to our mostly Pasta-based diets of the first weeks so when the possibilty of Mexican food came up, I happily joined my roommates.

Oh, about them. All very nice, I was a bit stand-offish at first as to try and make friends outside of the school (hopefully Italians) which has proved more difficult.

Anyway. The Mexican wasn't good, but I did meet Jacquie and Kate from an apt. of 8 girls downstairs. The next night I went down and ended up meeting the rest of the girls and in the weeks following have all become very close.

(Jacqui, Dana P., Me, Dana G., Niki, Kate, Jenna: unpictured)

2008.02.10 I had my first trip outside of Rome to 2 small towns in Tuscany. The views were amazing and the towns looked fake, almost straight out of Epcot. We had a dinner which was outstanding.

I was a little annoyed with the ride home as the whole meal I talked about how awesome the nap on the ride home would be, but as I closed my eyes on the bus "Swordfish" came on the TV (and on the only speaker above my head) on full blast. It was torture.

Allora. Once back in Rome I realized that Friday was in fact my 22nd birthday. The girls downstairs (Jacqui, Kate, Jenna, Dana P., Niki, Dana G.) were going to be in Milan and invited me to join and on a whim I decided to do so. More on that in the next blog.