Well, I moved into my new apartment last Wednesday. I have 7 roommates, which is actually really nice. We only had a 4/5 person apartment last session (Chels was the 5th roommate), so having more people around is pretty neat. More people, more fun. We live on Giulio Cesare (not pronounced Julius Caesar). It HUGE! My room alone is gigantic. I really like having more space and no stupid sea gull squawking fights in the middle of the night. My new roomies are Kendra (who lives in my room), Melissa and Alyssa (who are the veteran APIers like myself), Lacy and Jordan (the two new fellow Aggies), and Ariel and Ashley. They are all really great. I met the rest of the group the day after I moved in. There are two more girl apartments and then the one boy apartment (my old apartment on good old Pilo Albertelli).
API had organized a guided tour of the Vatican and Castel Sant'Angelo. I had already been to both (as you can see from earlier blogs), but it was definitely nice to learn from someone who knows what they are talking about. Last time Chels and I just stared at the pretty views and mosaics. Here are a couple pictures from that day.
Aggie roomies.
Body of a Pope.
Kristen, Jordan, Julie, Lacy and Me
Kaycee, Me, Sarah, Jenna, Meha, and Jessica.
With Sarah and Meha at the top of Castel Sant'Angelo. Love these two - They thought I was from California or New York. I thought that was pretty neat.
Here are the two new boys - Colin and Alex. Colin is from Oregon (random, I know :) )and Alex is from Virginia.
Most of the new group headed to Florence this weekend, so I decided to save the money and sit this one out. It's sad because the main reason I wanted to go back to Firenze was to get another leather jacket from the AMAZING leather market :). I'm sad, I know BUT last time I bargained and got 60 euro knocked off the price. Anyways, I met up with Caroline instead. She is still with the API program, but she is studying in Tuscania this session instead. Tuscania is so pretty, but very small. It is definitely a BIG change for Caroline. There are only about five people in her program and we have about twenty-one this session here in Roma! The best thing about Tuscania is the people! They were so nice there. It was very refreshing. Italians can have a lot of attitude and get very frustrated with Americans very easily, but these Tuscanians? were so patient with us and were encouraged us to use the language. I took a train to Tarquinia on Saturday morning to meet up with Caroline and her friends at the beach. We hung out in Tarquinia for a while then attempted to make our way to Tuscania. We had to take a 20 minute bus ride to Tuscania, but of course we got on the wrong bus and went in the opposite direction. Thankfully the bus driver was so nice that he drove us back to Tarquinia while making phone calls to the other buses to see if there would be one to take us to the right place. We were able to just hop on a different bus once we got back to Tarquinia and everything was fine - those little inconveniences aren't so bad anymore. The only truly bad thing about Tuscania is that you are stuck there after 5:30p.m. because there aren't anymore buses coming or going. That part was quite strange and a little unsettling. I just had to make sure that I left before then on Sunday or I would have been screwed. I did manage to make it back to Rome without getting on a train. I'm pretty sure I did something wrong, but I wasn't complaining because the trip only cost me 2 euro. I hopped onto the bus leaving Tuscania and it took me to Viterbo. I was supposed to catch a train in Viterbo back to Rome, but the bus dropped me off at a bus station and not a train station. So, I used my Italian skills and tried to figure out what to do. I was told by this man who didn't speak any English to buy the tickets on board the next bus towards Rome. So, I figured I would just buy the ticket on board but that didn't happen. There was no where to purchase tickets because the bus driver wasn't selling them, so I just used the ticket I had. It worked. I was able to go all the way back to Rome with that one bus ticket I purchased in Tuscania for only 2 euro. There is no way that little ticket would have gotten me that far because Rome is almost 2 hours away and things in Italy are not that convenient.
The first couple of days were pretty lonely in my big new apartment. I kind of just chilled by myself and learned how to make bruschetta because my personal chef, Chelsey, is no longer here to cook for me. I am an expert now. I'm in love with bruschetta. I could eat if for every meal.
Well, that is all I can remember as of now. Hope you enjoy! I have more posts coming soon..
You'll have to let us see if u truly have perfected the bruschetta recipe :)
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