In Rome At Last

Hey everyone! Well, I finally made it. I am sitting in an internet cafe in the beautiful city of Rome, Italy. And when I say "beautiful," I mean "crazy"...

The flights were perfectly fine, for the most part. We had a 2-hour delay on the flight from Dallas to Toronto, resulting from some sort of mechanical failure that the pilot discovered after we were all on board, so I ended up being on that plane for over 5 hours. Then I had about an hour and a half layover in Toronto, during which I ran around feeling scared and lost, but in real life I did just fine finding my terminal and gate. I must say that I didn't get all that great of an impression of the Canadians, but then again, if I worked in an airport I probably wouldn't be disposed to be particularly friendly either. I also was disappointed that Toronto's airport wasn't somehow strikingly Canadian...aside from the occasional Canada t-shirt, and Michael Buble playing EVERYWHERE, you would have thought you were in the US. But you can't judge a city by its airport, I always say. So then after that, I boarded my flight to Rome, and promptly fell asleep (thanks to a little Benadryl) for about six hours. The flight was eight and a half hours long, so the rest of the time I just relaxed, ate breakfast, and so on. Air Canada is a pretty nice airline, and it amuses me that every single announcement has to be made in at least two languages, English and French. On the plane to Rome, they announced everything in English, French, and Italian. Needless to say there was a lot of announcing going on...

When we landed in Rome, I just followed the herd of passengers around, through a looooong line for passport checks (I was giggling at the disgruntled New Yorkers who couldn't figure out why there wasn't a line specifically for first class), then customs, where they looked at nothing whatsoever, and through baggage claim, which was a claustrophobic scene verging on shoving matches at certain points. My bag was one of the last ones to appear on the carousel, and it took forever, so I was really scared that my bags were lost...but it turned out ok. Then I found my program coordinator easily, and waited for another girl to show up. Once she did, they packed us into a little semi-SUV thing...and this is where things got interesting.

First of all, the driver spoke no English whatsoever, so we really had no idea where we were or what was going on most of the time...and second, Italian drivers are absolutely crazy! I spent the first half an hour of the drive not even looking at the scene, but just fearing for my life. After a certain point, the drive didn't get any less harrowing, but I just got used to the fact that Italians drive really fast, cut each other off constantly, miss hitting parked cars by inches, etc. Apparently Romans have no respect for lane markings: this is especially true of the motorcycle riders, but it's true of the cars too! Sometimes you'll see one going the wrong way down a street to get ahead of a traffic pile up, then squeak over when a car comes. People honk, but they do that constantly anyway. Honking, and throwing their arms in the air like, "You idiot!" then turning around and doing some harebrained move themselves. (My driver was no exception.) It's highly amusing. And you'd be amazed at the way people park around here. Maybe it's a mark of their desperation, but the cars are sometimes double parked on the sides of the streets, and sometimes parked in the medians! I'm pretty sure that's technically illegal, but what do I know? The cars themselves are, of course, all very small. Lots of little Volkswagens, Audis, Fiats, and jillions of those tiny little Smart cars, with the occasional Ford Focus thrown in. They need to be small to navigate these tiny winding streets, and to squeak through traffic.

So needless to say, I won't be driving anywhere.

My driver finally got me to my apartment building, but I had no idea what to do at that point. My coordinator had told me that someone would meet me there with the key, but no one was to be seen when I got there. The driver ended up just leaving me there sitting on the step! I eventually managed to get in touch with someone and figure out how to buzz my roommates, but it was kind of scary for a little while there. Once I did get up to my apartment, I found two of my roommates, along with mucho heat and humidity. Lovely! Lol, I was prepared for that though. My roommates apparently weren't, but we bought fans tonight at a little shop around the corner, so I suspect we'll do just fine. (Incidentally, the internet cafe I'm in right now has AC. I'm gonna be a regular.)

I learned only a very few little phrases in Italian before coming here, since I was told by many sources that most people speak English, so I didn't really need to spend hours learning Italian. Ha. Whoever told me that has never been to my neighborhood. I am very close to the Vatican, just blocks away from St. Peter's, in a neighborhood just to the north and west of Vatican City. It's a really cute area, with lots of apartments and tons of neat little shops, but seriously, nobody speaks any English. Naturally, why should they? But I wish I had known that weeks ago: I would have spent more time on my Italian! But I'll pick some stuff up pretty quickly, I hope. I managed to buy some fruit and water this afternoon, and the aforementioned fans, by using the few words I knew and some hand signals, and I bet things will get easier as the days go on. These first two days are particularly awkward, I think, because we're just on our own in our neighborhood here, and we don't have orientations until Friday, so we have no idea what we're doing, basically. It's kind of fun though, a bit of an adventure. I liked walking around the neighborhood by myself this afternoon. The city is so densely packed, so old, so dirty (graffiti everywhere), but so charming at the same time. I like it a lot. :)

Well, I think I may be running out of time here. I promise I'll report again soon!