Rome, Italy

A Rome Around Italy. A New Home.

September 11, 2011 10:34 a.m.

It is almost a month since I have arrived here in ROMA! Rome is now my new home. I still can’t believe that I’m currently living in Rome!

…and the fact that I am sitting here in Europe and talking about Europe! I am having a good time and lots of funny experiences as well. I miss my family though–but I know that this is a once in a lifetime opportunity so I’m going to enjoy every bit of it. So far, I’ve been able to visit the Colosseum, the Treve Fountain, the Arch and the Ruins, the Vatican, the Castle, and the president’s house.

My first night in Rome, I went for gelato–because of course that’s the first thing you have to eat! Then–I went for pasta because if that’s not the second thing you eat, then its Pizza! I opted for pasta this time. Later on, I remember purchasing what I thought was a bottle of milk. However, it wasn’t in a refrigerator when I bought it–all of the milk were on shelves in the grocery stores which I thought was odd. When I drank it, it didn’t taste quite like milk. I gave up. I just threw it away. I think I’ll just have to settle for gelato, forget the milk.

I went to the beach too and we got stranded in the dark for a couple of hours. This is what happened:

(August 23)

Today we went to the beach…It was the funniest, craziest day! We all got stranded, all 14 of us, because we weren’t paying attention.

Before sunrise, we all got up to make our journey to the beach. As it turns out, it took us a bus, a train, and another bus just to get to the beach. We missed the first train after we got off the bus because we couldn’t find the right terminal, so we had to wait for two hours just to get on the next one. Finally, it comes and we get on and later we got on another other bus that takes us to the beach. By the time we got to the beach it was 6pm and the bus driver told us that the last bus to leave the beach comes at 7:30pm, so we only got to hang at the beach for 45 minutes. We finally decided to leave at just about 7:30pm but the 7:30p bus doesn’t show up so we all start to get scared. We continued waiting and now its 9pm. By now all 14 of us are whining and complaining. Some of us were even crying. We decided to sit down and eat dinner because there was a little restaurant in the area. So we sat down opened up our menus to order. Myself and Diamond went to get coffee and all of a sudden one of the girls yell “BUS, BUS” and everybody just jumps and runs. The chairs flipped over, people were screaming and yelling and we all took off and ran for the “BUS”. The Italians were SO mad…yelling at us as we fled the store to the bus–hey, they don’t know our story! So we get to the bus and the driver tells us we can’t take it because its going to the depot…we were like seriously? Is he serious? Can he just take us please. We were MAD! Then out of no where a charter bus comes…this nice luxury bus with two floors. We started crying and whining about being stranded in the dark at the beach and missing the last bus. The driver hears our cries and takes us back to Rome for FREE. Once we got back to Rome, we caught the bus and the metro back to the dorm… whew, that bus driver saved our lives. We are still laughing about this until today!

Later I went to visit the Spanish steps and I actually really liked this area. For some reason, I didn’t feel like I was in Rome anymore. I went back to the Vatican to spend more time and then to St. Peter’s Basilica.