Seattle-Chicago-Rome

The journey to Rome started with a three hour trip to Chicago, then a three hour layover and then off to Rome. Luckily the two flights were on time and an hour shorter than usual. When we got on our flight to Rome, many rows were free of people so we were able to stretch out and lay down over three seats. It felt too good to be true! I think the weirdest part of it all was being served dinner and then sleeping and then being served breakfast. I have never had a flight longer than 6 hours so an 8.5 hour flight was a change! When we were served breakfast I felt super weird eating it because I was used to eating dinner at that time.

Anyways, we got off our plane at around 8:30 am Italian time and then headed to the spot where we would meet our driver to take us to the city. Unfortunately, the driver did not show up so we had to wait an additional 3 hours for a new one. But we made it to Rome and finally got to the UW Rome Center.

When we drove through the city, it was truly amazing to see all the ruins scattered throughout, and surrounded by apartments. We arrived at the Rome Center and were directed to our apartments which were a 20 minute walk from the UW Rome Center, so we taxied. Luckily my friend Campbell speaks Italian so we were able to communicate with the taxi drivers somewhat. When we were each dropped off at our different apartments, my friend Karly and I were overcharged by our driver by 10 euros. And being completely new to the language we had to pay him.

Getting into our apartment was a little bit of a struggle, because the key would not open the stinking door. But someone helped us after hearing us in our struggles. When we got inside, we found a cute living room and a bedroom with three beds. We also have a full kitchenette and a bathroom. We have a view of a courtyard where we can see the adjacent apartments, so it is nice and peaceful.

After getting off the long flight, the jet lag had me super tired so I took a nap right when we got here and woke up about 3 hours later to my lovely roommate Karly bringing me pizza! It was good, but my grogginess had me going to sleep soon after that at 7 pm and waking up at around 4 am. I am now up writing at 7 am and we will soon be off to find food and water, because we don’t know if we can drink the water in our apartment yet! Luckily orientation starts at 9:45 so maybe we will find resources through our professors.

That’s all for now!