There’s no place like ROME..
I have a feeing we’re not in Florence anymore.
On Friday morning, we had our final exam for our language class in Florence. After a few stressful, even sleepless, nights, we finished our exams and were going to be on our way to Rome shortly. It was hard saying goodbye to our professors who we had just gotten to know over the past two weeks, but they wished us well on our new adventures and we hoped to reunite with them once more. We had a few hours before we had to leave, so we did some last minute shopping and got some lunch. Then once the clock struck noon, we were on our way to the grand old city.
After a semi-long 5 hour bus ride, we made it to Roma. With big bug eyes, we all stared out our windows at St. Peter’s Basilica. It was so hard to believe that we would be living a short 30 minute walk away from this historical place. We are so close to Vatican City and it makes us so excited. We got dropped off in this sort of garage area, and then we were escorted by vans either to our apartments or to our “new family’s” home. I decided to stay in an apartment which is only 20 minutes away from our school. There will be six of us girls in this apartment and the challenging part is that we only have two bathrooms. It’s these sweet moments where I am truly grateful to have been apart of Residential Life at Concordia.
When we arrived at our apartment, we were surprised at how large it was. This is not the typical apartment you would think a bunch of girls our age would be living in. The neighborhood has a lot to offer and we are centrally located which is very nice. We discovered that we are a short walk away from the Express 30 bus that will be able to bring us to school in about 10-15 minutes, or we could take about a 20 minute walk to school. The best part about our walk is that we get to see beautiful buildings and landmarks on our way to school.
On our first official day in Rome, we got to have a tour of our school, which by the way is very beautiful. It is on one floor so it will be pretty easy to navigate around. Then we got a tour around the area in which our school is located so we could get familiarized with the area. We found out that our school is about a 20 minute walk away from the Colosseum which I found very interesting. I think it is so amazing that the people in Rome live in their history! After the tour, we had a few meetings about expectations and to see how we all adjusted. Then after we had a huge lunch and got the rest of the day to ourselves.
On Monday we officially start our classes and I am pretty excited and also a bit nervous. I believe I have familiarized myself with the area around me enough where I am confident to be able to get to places on my own. After all, this will be my new home for three months so I still have some time to figure it all out!
Until the next time, ciao
-H
