Bye Bye Birdie

Hey everyone!! Ciao from Roma. Its been a very busy weekend since we checked in and it looks like its going to be a very busy week as we get acclimated to being in Rome. I arrived on Saturday morning at around 8:30 only to find the airline left my bags in Philly. So since then, I've been living on 2 shirts (one that I flew in) and a pair of jeans. Luckily, my roommates have been really helpful allowing me to borrow the necessities. The airline was supposed to deliver my bags this afternoon from 1-5, but no such luck. It doesn't help that I don't have a cell phone yet and have had to rely on my roommates'. HOPEFULLY they will come tomorrow...pray for me. Its all part of the adventure, is it not?

I'm living in an area of Rome called Trastevere, which is where the school is. Some students are living near the Vatican and it takes a long time to get there. We're about a 25-30min walk from campus (and by campus i mean the building that JCU is) but there is also a tram we can take along our street that drops us off a couple blocks from campus, but it costs one euro a ride. I'd rather save my money for gelato, and walk to burn the calories from all the pasta and pizza I'll be eating. I have 7 roommates, all are BC girls, and are all awesome! I think its going to be a really good semester.

Unfortunately, we live across the hall from our RA who is kinda ridiculously strict. Shes an American who is studying here full time and is hell-bent on sticking to the rules. There is some ridiculous law saying we cannot have overnight visitors and if we get caught by the police we will get fined 1500 euros, but I think we are going to try and get around that. There is no way I'm making a friend who comes to visit stay in a hostel by themselves.

Last night was our first night, and we went out to dinner at this place near our apartment called Station where we ate pizza and drank wine. Life is good. After, we went to Campo di Fiori to a bar called Sloppy Sam's where we met up with other BC students. It was basically all Americans and we met some students from other schools there, so it was fun. While in Sloppy Sam's, we ran into a pub crawl being led by this crazy British guy named James who invited the entire group of us to join his pub crawl for free, so we ended up going to about 4 other bars and ended up at a crazy discotecha. Welcome to Roma!!!

Tomorrow, we have our only session of orientation. We go from 10:30-12:30, then basically have the rest of the week to do whatever! We're planning on spending the afternoon exploring the city and are making a family dinner for the 7 of us here in the apartment.

I'll write more soon and post pictures to let you all know how I'm doing enjoying la bella vita. Arrivederci!