Ben goes to Rome!

So as I sit here in my Italian apartment, I decided to start a blog about my travels and experiences. I am not sure how much I will actually use it, but I will do my best, and I expect those who read it to make no comments about my grammar or my excessive use of run on sentences.

To start I will give a run down of Day 1 (and by Day 1, I mean the day that starts with me preparing to leave for my flight at 9 in the morning on January 11th and ends with me crashing and burning due to a lack of sleep at the end of January 12 in Rome)

Day 1:

Although I was sad to leave Knoxville behind, I was very happy to get the flying across the ocean in a big metal box part of the trip out of the way. For those of you who know me you will not be shocked that on my  flight from Knoxville to Atlanta, I made a friend, her name was Lady (Yes her actually name was Lady). We talked about me going to Rome and about how she and her friends Bill and June were preparing to go on a cruise. They were very nice, and I later ran in to them again in the airport, to which they invited me to join them for lunch. This was very good for me because I did not want to eat alone. So it worked out in everyone's best interest. I graced them with my presence and in return I didn't have to eat alone. The most interesting thing that I picked up from my new friend Lady was that there really are people who refer to Italians as I-talians. Hearing this helped me realize that my southern accent really isn't that bad.....

As the day began to progress I finally made it on to my flight from Atlanta to Rome. In the early stages of this flight two major things went wrong. 1. I didnt ask to be bumped to business class. There were over 10 empty seats and the flight attendant told me I would have had to ask for them to upgrade me before I got on the plane if I had wanted to be in business class. This was quite a disappointment because I could clearly see many open seats in business class. 2. I almost made my first Italian friend, a little boy who was like ten years old. He started talking to me in Italian, and then asked if I spoke Italian, to which I sadly replied "No," to which i replied with silence and proceeded to get up and move seats to another row. This was both saddening and exciting. Saddening because I had failed to make my first Italian friend, and exciting because I now had the whole row of three seats to myself. Now I just had to get through the 8 hour flight......

8 hours, two horrible meals (and I mean they were awful), a constant rearrangement of positions, and 3 movies (all of which were mediocre, specifically Eat, Pray, Love, or as I deemed it on the flight Eat, and Pray I never have to watch this move again) later, I finally landed in Rome.

Once in Rome, I nervously made my way through customs and to the baggage claim, and after watching my bad go around 4 times (each time becoming surer it was mine until I finally grabbed it), I finally proceeded into  the Rome airport to meet my ride aka CEA (my study abroad program)

After nervously waiting for 25 minutes I noticed a group of students who were yammering about something in English and I though I heard one of them say something about CEA, so I tried to insert myself in the conversation and was informed that CEA was on their way but they would be a little while. This began the process of quick introductions and the exchanging of school and hometown locations. For future reference I will give some names and key phrases that will not only help you remember who the new people I met are, but will also help me remember them. First I met, tyranny (this is her actual name, but not spelled like that). then psychedelic summer (I got the impression she liked flowers), then there was Mohawk Max and his posse from Penn State. These were the original people that I waited with for CEA (and little did I know the waiting was about to go on for a long time)

6 and a half hours later, we put all the students and their luggage in a van, took all the luggage out of the van and put it in another van, slowly traversed our way through the city in the slowest way possible (upside was I got to see random bits of Rome and meet the other members of my program the Arizona gang (10 people from AZ state, Mary Alexis, my southern friend, who I found out worked at a camp with my one of my friends from Knoxville, and a bunch of random others who will remain nameless simply because I dont actually know there names), and finally arrived at my apartment. The lesson of today was that CEA has very little organisational skills, what should have been like a two hour task took what seemed like years.

When I finally got to see my apartment I also got to meet my new roommates for three and a half months. Eric, Aaron, and Spencer who are all from Arizona State, but are not from the Arizona gang mentioned earlier, and then Ron, Chase, and Michael. They were very nice and we live in the 7th story of an old Italian apartment complex. The whole 7th floor is our apartment and it is kind of weird because we have other people who live in the apartment building who are random Italian people  (one of whom came by to say hello and to also ask us to not make noise late at night). In what little time, and what little energy I had to explore the city today, all I did was go with my new friends to eat at a small pizza shop on the corner of our street. To end I will share with you one last story from the land of Italia. When I was at the small pizza parlor, I needed to use the bathroom so I opened the door which I thought would lead to the bathroom which instead led to a small winding staircase down into a basement, after following the stairs and some signs I eventually reached the bathroom. Point of the story is that we don't have bathrooms hidden under restaurants in America.

Thus ends Day 1. This day was extra and so was the blog post. Hopefully I will continue to write, post pictures, and tell you the many encounters I have during the day.