Day 1: May 5th-6th 2012

First, I would like to say "Hello from Rome!" Second, I would like to say that this blog is starting as a school assignment while I'm here in Italy (for the first week). 

Yes, I am considering two days as one because for me it was only one day. My day started at 8am Memphis time on May 5th and 3pm Rome time and continued on until well after 11pm May 6th (after 4pm Memphis). That's a total of almost 33 hours with only a little dozing on the plane and a 2 hour nap....

I'll start with the arrival in Rome (9:15a). Customs, walked right on through, baggage on the other hand, took a while because our luggage was the last to come out. The train ride was slow, but it gave me a chance to see all of that could be seen from the train. There are small red flowers that are just beautiful scattered everywhere throughout the city. Graffiti covers everything and there is wild corn growing in areas that used to be farm land or gardens.

We arrived at the hotel ( 11:15a-ish) and sat around for a while until we found out that our rooms weren’t ready. We (Danielle, Matthew, and I) then wandered around searching for a place to eat and we stumbled upon a little hole in the wall ristorante. It was crowded so we knew it must be an amazing place to eat. Matthew had lasagna (so yummy!), Danielle had fettuccine alla ragu, and I had spaghetti. I gotta say, the lasagna was the best! We shared a bottle of wine and for desert Matthew had strawberries and I, of course, had tiramisu.

By the time we got back to the hotel (1:30p) Matthew’s room was ready but Danielle’s and my room was not. I pulled out me blanket and stretched out on the couch in the lobby for a nice little cat nap. I slept till about 3:30p and woke up because our room was ready (YAY!). Finally got up to our room and the first thing I do is check out the beds. So uncomfortable! They were super firm and so was the pillow. We had a couple hours to settle into our room, thankfully.

Next was orientation. We left the hotel at about 6:15p in order to walk to another hotel (still don’t understand why…) to have orientation where we received out course materials and all of our assignments (way too many!). Our assignments consist of writing a 500 word journal entry each day, a 3000 word paper, and an oral presentation. After orientation we went back to the hotel for about half an hour until dinner.

Dinner was delicious! We had bruschetta as an appetizer. Matthew decided to treat Danielle and me to another bottle of wine (such a sweetie!) and then we worked out way through our main course of two different types of pasta. One had a cheese sauce and one had a red meat sauce.  Dessert was vanilla custard covered in pastry flakes and chocolate shavings, so of course I was happy. Our group, Danielle M., Danielle T., Matthew, Matt, and I, were the last ones to leave and we didn’t get back to the hotel until about 10:30p. This is the last thing I did before bed and finally fell asleep at about 11:45p.