1st Week In Rome

This past week has been one of the craziest weeks of my life. It was my first time taking a plane for an extremely long time (18 hours) and nothing could have prepared me for the jet lag once I arrived. Luckily my friend joined me at Rome’s airport where we helped each other stay awake since our program coordinators warned us about falling asleep once we arrived and although we were very tired from our long journey our excitement was enough to keep us awake. I was placed in a little apartment right across the Stazione di San Pietro which I found very nice since it made it easier to take the bus and or train. After my roommate and I were done unpacking we decided to go walk around our neighborhood and see if there was any good food for us to eat, but sadly we decided to go exploring between 4 and 6 pm, so most if not all of the businesses were closed until later that day. Luckily there was one small pizza shop that was open which we were grateful for since we were starving from the long plane rides. My roommate and I stood outside for a minute trying to figure out how we were gonna order some food without knowing any Italian but once inside the person behind the counter was really nice and was able to understand what we wanted. After this, we headed back to our new home for the quarter and fell asleep. For the following days, I had my schedule busy with many activities and orientations offered by the Accent program here in Rome. They gave us all the necessary resources in order to succeed here in Rome which made the transition a lot easier and less scary. One cool thing I learned about Rome was that they don’t have large convenient stores like Walmart and Target. Instead, we need to go to different stores for different things, for example, Pam Market for food, Farmacia for medicine, Humana for clothing, etc. Back home I usually went to Target for most if not all of my errands so this is going to be a big change for me but I feel like it’s a cool way to explore the city. This week has been fun and my roommate and I have already made many new friends who we’ve been exploring Rome with. We have been To the Trevi Fountain, The Pantheon, we took a field trip to Frascati where we took a wine tour of one of the oldest wine vineyards in Rome as well as a tour of Frascati which came with an amazing lunch that included a charcuterie board, a jar of wine, cheese spread, bread, and 2 types of pasta. They had red spaghetti and a white mushroom and truffle pasta which in my opinion was the best which caught me by surprise since I don’t like mushrooms. Overall this is the beginning of an adventure and I can’t wait to see what else is coming in the future.