- woke up at 8:30, had honey balls cereal for breakfast, got ready, and took our first tram to class... we discovered that our walk to class is full of beautiful buildings & piazzas; the tram stops right next to caryn's favorite KITTY RUINS.
- orientation with ACCENT. what we learned can be boiled down to this: if anyone speaking italian is being nice to you they are either a) pickpocketing you b) going to follow you home c) scamming you d) about to traffick you... we also learned that the building we have class in was originally built to be the bank for the vatican and our piazza is used all the time in movies (including kari's favorite, roman holiday with audrey hepburn)!
- phone shopping with caryn, brandon, joe, david, amanda and brad, so now we have cell phones!
- grocery shopping with caryn, joe, brandon and david, so now we actually have food! caryn and i made delicious sandwiches for lunch and then took a siesta for approximately 2.5 seconds
- wandered back down to the classroom, taking lots of photos of all the buildings on our walk
- crash course in italian for 2 hours, which was helpful but we were all too tired for anything to stick. luckily we did learn the most import phrase in italian: "vorrei un cono da due euro di lampone i di menthe" (i want a 2 euro cone of raspberry and mint) our teacher, mario, was super awesome and as our final test he took us out onto the street just off the piazza where we have class and showed us a delicious gelato shop and had us practice ordering.
- went on a massive adventure/tour of rome with caryn, brandon, joe, and kari. we went to piazza navona, the pantheon, trevi fountain, the spanish steps, and the villa borghese... finally, after about 7.5 years, my trevi fountain coin toss/wish came true, i was back! i feel kind of skeptical about testing the power of the fountain, but i threw another coin in behind me, just in case. we were pretty tired after this massive excursion took over 2 hours, so we were starving
- split 2 pizzas between brandon, joe, caryn and i in the basement of a really long and narrow restaurant, listening to the most awkward mood music possible.
- walked back to fermata argentina (our tram stop) via trevi fountain all lit up cause it was about 10... there was so many people there! this time they were mostly people dressed up to go out, carrying wine, and enjoying the atmosphere of the surrounding pubs/cafés. we also walked by the vittoriano, which is basically just an enormous monument to a king of rome, it was beautiful to see all the white stonework lit up at night... there is also a museum and piazza designed by michelangelo near there which we will visit on wednesday with tobin, so excited.
- finally, we took the 8 tram home showered/washed our feet (so sore!) and went to bed... it was such a busy day!
