(Mis)Adventures

Right, let's get after it, shall we?

So my travels started last Tuesday.I left in the afternoon and arrived in Rome the following day after a solid 24 hours of travel. I was supposed to meet Dadasaurus Rex, the Ultimate Dad, while the Ultimate Mom stayed in Moldova on Wonder-Dog-Watch. To my complete surprise, both Ultimate parents showed up at the airport in Rome to meet me! They're pretty okay. We spent a lovely day and a half together, during which we ate ourselves silly, visited the Pantheon (which we kept accidentally referring to as the Parthenon), revisited the Colosseum and the Trevi Fountain, and again ate ourselves silly. Here are some photos:

Trevi Fountain

The Roman Forum

Visiting the Colosseum

Trevi Fountain again at night

On Friday morning, I made my way back to the FCO airport and met up with the group from Umbra Institute. They split us up into several groups throughout the day and sent us on to Perugia on coach buses. It was about a three hour bus ride through Tuscany toward Umbria, which was in parts lovely and depressing. We drove past some small centuries old towns and some run-down factory towns, so we got a wide variety of views. Our first night in Perugia was down the hill from the walled city center in a hotel, where we would meet our roommates and the other participants.
We got to the hotel around 5:30, checked in and got all of our information re: the upcoming orientation. Two of my flat mates, M & A, were sharing a hotel room with me. When I got up there, both had been sleeping off the jet lag so I explored the room by the lovely soft (read: blinding) light of my phone. There was a small balcony outside our room, so I thought I'd slip out there and see what I could of the city from it. I turned the door handle this way, then that way, then tugged. And that's when it came off in my hand.

It was a rough first night, if I'm being honest. I woke with a start around 4 am and couldn't fall back to sleep, which turned into me realizing that I had no idea what I was doing, and how scared I was. Homesickness is probably the worst sensation at 4 in the morning, especially when I thought about what exactly I would go home to if I left. There aren't many options for me, besides just going back to Gustavus, and I've established with myself that I need a solid break from campus. So that was out of the question, as was just going back to my house. What would I do, lounge around at home for four months? Not an option either. So the only option was to suck it up and realize that four months will go by rapidly, even if the clock at that moment was as sluggish as it had ever been. I hate admitting it out loud (ish), but for a couple hours there, all I wanted was just to go home.

Saturday definitely shook out the wrinkles in my mood. We finally met the rest of our roommates (there's a total of five) and were driven to our flat, which is up the hill and in the old city. I refer to it as the old city even though I'm not sure where the line of distinction is, because lower down where we spent the first night was definitely newer looking, though not necessarily attractive or clean. What a relief it was to learn that we were in the medieval part, where it was all weathered brick and ivy and aquaducts! We each have our own (very small) bedroom, with two bathrooms and a small kitchen. I got to do some exploration of the city both last night and this morning, and was in awe of the crumbling beauty of the city I am living in. Only issue: the flat is only heated for a few hours a day, so right now I can't feel my fingers.

We've had a couple minor issues with our flat so far, aside from the heating. The refrigerator sounds like it has an animal trapped inside it, which is charming and quiet (not). The toilet won't stop running. One of the bathroom sinks is perpetually clogged, and we just got here. Our second night was an adventure, because all of these problems arose on Sunday, our second day in the flat. Honeymoon period was over after 24 hours, I guess! It's not an adventure without misadventures, I suppose. Like our dinner last night: we all made pasta together, a sort of 'flat family dinner', only to discover that we bought tomato juice instead of pasta sauce. Ah well.

It was still a nice day overall though, we slept in and then went exploring round part of the town, trying to get 'lost.' It was incredible, we walked along a street called Via Acquaducto which was on top of, you guessed it, an old aquaduct. The buildings are all those lovely shabby shades of apricot and cream and pink, with blue and green shutters and ivy crawling all over the cracks in the cement.

Today we started a week of intensive Italian, and then next week classes begin! I'll update as that situation unfolds and include more photos as I take them. For now, that's it. It's 9 pm and I'm ready for bed. Is it too early? Never mind, I'm going to bed anyway. S'laters.