First Few Days in Rome!

Well I've been in Rome now for almost a week, and its definitely been an interesting experience so far.  I still have a hard time realizing that I'm actually in Italy, and for the whole semester.  Here's a recap of what I've done so far everyday:

Monday: First I flew out from KC to Newark, where I met up with around 20 other UD students that were on the Continental flight with me.  The rest of our class was on a United flight out of DC.  Although I was originally on the United flight, I was glad to have switched to the Continental flight since my classmates leaving KC on United had their first flight cancelled, and missed the group flight to Rome.  They ended up getting to campus significantly later in the day than everyone else.
The flight itself was really long, but the plane was really nice.  They served us quite a bit of food, and we had video monitors in our seats, but mine would only play movies in Italian.  The flight was eight hours- we left Newark around 5:30 pm on Monday and arrived into Rome at around 7:30 on Tuesday morning.

Tuesday: We arrived in Rome and then got our bags.  When we went through customs they didn't even stop us to check our visas or ask us what we were bringing into the country.  Then we all got onto buses and drove about an hour out to the UD campus.  We have our own private campus out in Marino with its own working vineyard and fruit orchard.  The grounds are absolutely gorgeous, but since the Europeans are really strict with energy use, the buildings aren't heated very well and are really cold.  Luckily, however, the weather has been really nice and sunny the whole time so far.
Although most of us had gotten little, if any, sleep on the flight over, the schedule for Tuesday was so packed that there wasn't really time for a nap.  First we had to unpack, then we had breakfast, campus tours, and then lunch.  Our cafeteria (or mensa, as it is called here) is run by Italian grandmas who handmake the food and pasta everyday.  They also serve lots of really good cheese :).  After lunch we had a little free time to shower and finish unpacking, and then we had a long boring meeting to fill out the Italian permesso forms to get permission to live here for three months.  After that we had an opening Mass, an opening convocation (in which many of us fell asleep :P ) and then a celebratory dinner.  We all went to bed pretty shortly after because we were exhausted!

Wednesday: We started off the day with a three hour academic orientation meeting.  After lunch though, we got on buses and drove into Rome for a walking tour.  We got to see (briefly) sights like the Roman Forum, the Colosseum,  Trevi fountain, the Spanish steps, the Pantheon, and lots of other ruins, obelisks, and buildings.  Then we hopped on a metro bus that took us into the Vatican to St. Peter's, where we attended a Mass.  We had a little trouble getting into the Mass because a group of 1500 pilgrims had shown up for the Mass, and they didn't originally think they had enough seats for our group of 111.  Luckily, they found enough seats for most of us, so I was able to be in a seat for the Mass.  After another bus ride back to campus, we had dinner.

Thursday: We had another three hour orientation meeting in the morning- this time for student life.  Then in the afternoon we had our first day of classes.  Classes are normally just in the morning, but that day they moved them to the afternoon because of the student life meeting in the morning.  Everyone takes the same classes here, but at different times.  First I had Western Civilization I with Dr. Hatlie, who is also the director of the Rome Campus.  The class seemed pretty interesting so far and Dr. Hatlie is practically a genius.  Then I had Western Theological Traditions.  Although the subject matter of the class seems like it will be really interesting, the teacher seemed a little boring.  However, the class was at five in the afternoon and I was really sleepy, so I'll have to have a few more classes to see how its going to be.

Friday:  We had more classes again this morning, at their normal times.  At eight a.m. I have Literary Traditions III.  We study Greek tragedies and Shakespeare.  I think the class is going to be really interesting, and the teacher is really good, even though she has an atrocious sense of fashion.  Next I had Philosophy of Man, which was actually more interesting than I was expecting.  The professor seems really good (plus he has two of the cutest little girls that live on campus!  Their names are Hannah, age 6, and Cora, age 4.  The moment they saw us they immediately made our entire class their friends.  They always come up to people in the mensa and show us their treasures.  Today I had to help Cora feed her baby doll, who was originally named Sophia, but whose name just changed to Molly).  Then came Art and Architecture of Rome.  We have a really good teacher for this class too, and shes been teaching here for 17 years.  After Art and Arch we FINALLY got lunch.  Now I'm hanging out in my room waiting for our room checks to assess the room condition so they know at the end of the semester what damage we did and what had already been done.  Once we're done with that, my roommates and I are going to walk over to the nearby town to explore and get some stuff at the local supermarket.