Day 7: One Week in Rome!

So as of today I have been in Rome for one week. As I begin my one week anniversary post, I will give you two words that I have learned in Italian, I use them very often. The two words are are grazie (pronounced gra-t-zee) and the always useful reply of prego (pray-go) which means thank you.

As I began my second week in Rome, I woke up to attend my early Italian class. As each day progresses, as much as I hate waking up early, I  find myself looking forward to my Italian class. If I have not mentioned before, my classes are very small, my Italian class only has about nine people in it. (It did have more, but some people switched to the later class which is at ten). On Tuesdays, I have a class at nine and then a class at around two thirty, so in between my classes we decided to go to a small cafe around the corner for some coffee and a bit of lunch. even though I do not like coffee, one of the things that we have talked about is how amazing the Italian version of coffee is. So I tried my first coffee in Rome, which in face turned out to also be my first cappuccino. It was very bitter and I decided to add a fair amount of sugar to reduce the bitterness. After adding the sugar, I was very happy with the taste, and I finished the whole cup. I am starting to think that this may become an everyday thing, because I will definitely need the caffeine. The good thing is that at these little cafes, things are very cheap.

In between my Italian class and my last class of the day, some of my friends from CEA and I went to try to find the American bookstore in downtown Rome. We hopped on the bus right outside of the CEA headquarters and went off in search of our books. The store we ended up at is the Italian version of Borders, and sadly they were out of the book that we needed to get for our class. So we gave up and returned to Piazza Bologna (which is where CEA and our apartment is). Before my last class, we decided to grab a quick lunch at my favorite restaurant and local hang out Stuzzico! The owner was very happy to see us come in. Today I got a calzoneish type thing. It is burrito shaped and they have many different types filled with many different things. Today I got the veggie calzone, which had mainly broccoli and mushrooms. We got it to-go (which is known here as take-away) and then proceeded to our last class (many of my friends and roommates have the same classes as me, which is very nice).

My last class of the day is my once a week class on the food and wine of Italy. As we began to learn more about what exactly we are going to be doing in the class, I began to get more and more excited about it. We will be sampling and learning about the culture of wine and how it relates to Italy, along with sampling cuisine from all the different regions of Italy. It seems as if this is not a class that will be helpful when it relates to business, but my professor is covering so much more then just food and wine. We are talking about the over all culture of Italy, specifically how it relates to Rome. I believe this will be a very helpful skill and a very marketable skill if I am ever to do business with Italians. (Or maybe all that I have just said is my way of trying to justify why I am taking this class, but I really do think that it will be helpful!).

After class I returned to my apartment where I proceeded to take a small break before we attempted to go to the other bookstore where they have the books we need for our classes (we had passed the international version of the bookstore on the bus we took on the way back to CEA). When we left our apartment to hop on the bus to go get books, I was the one who was to lead us to the bookstore since I had seen it on the bus ride back. After while we reached the bookstore and they were out of the books that we needed. (what I didnt tell my roommates, and what I didnt realize at the time was that the bus we had taken only passes the international bookstore on the return bus trip, so the bookstore we had reached was the bookstore that some of us had gone to earlier, luckily none of my roommates were with the original group so they didnt know the difference) One of the workers at the bookstore gave us directions to the international bookstore so we hopped back on the bus. When we got to the stop, we decided to take a side trip to McDonald's. Although I do not like McDonald's I was very happy to get a chocolate shake and some fries. When we were about to leave to go to the bookstore, one of our friends from our program called to tell us that the international bookstore was also out of the books that we needed for our classes. This was the third failed attempt to get to the bookstore and acquire the books that we needed for class.

After this we returned to our apartment. Where I proceeded to relax the rest of the night in an attempt to fight of the major cold that I am getting..... So overall today was a very good day even though it was marred with major failures.

As I end my 1 week anniversary post, I will leave you with a video that they showed us in our orientation to help describe the differences between the people of Italy and the people of the European Union. I did not realize how true at the time these stereotypes that the video is portraying our, but this video is funny and will honestly give you an accurate depiction of how things in Rome operate on a very different schedule.

So hopefully you enjoy this video and hopefully it works!