the second week...

07.09.08
Today we decided to walk around Viterbo to try and see some places we hadn’t as well as to take some pictures of the macchina outside of the Santa Rosa church. I love going down the little streets of the beaten path in Viterbo. This city never ceases to amaze me. It’s the little undiscovered streets that are sometimes even better than the big ones. Sunday here is like a ghost town, though. Sunday night is busy and even Monday night everyone is out, but Sunday during the day nothing is open and no one is out or in the streets. So we found the one place that was open on a Sunday (and until late, too!) -McDonald’s. It was just like home! And the girl who worked there even spoke some English.

08.09.08
Today was the real first day of classes (besides the placement test day last week). I had Italian composition and the professor spoke only in Italian and we were supposed to do the same. We jumped right into reading some texts. Today was pretty confusing but I think we (all 6 of us, myself included) are in the same boat, and it will probably get better as time goes on. I hope we do some speaking or something though, because I would hate to waste 6 credits on only learning how to write a letter to my bank in Italian when I could be learning things I could use for everyday conversations in Italy. After class we decided to go to an internet café we had seen in passing to get some actual high speed internet so we could skype/upload pictures, and guess who happened to be at the café? Like half of the usac people! I thought it was funny that we all had the same idea (and it makes sense since apartment people have no internet at all). It was cool because we were actually the only people in the whole café, which was a really cute place. In the end we ended up going back to school to use the usac wireless, where we found another dozen or so usac-ers. I don’t get to see everyone all the time, so it was nice!

09.09.08
Today was the first day of my Italian culture class. It sounds really interesting and is stuff I would probably look into on my own even if I wasn’t taking the class. Though the 3 hour class in the warm classroom was tough! Over the past few days more students have been arriving to the city. Its pretty funny how we can instantly tell who is American (or Anglophone) and how our ears have become fine tuned to the sounds of the English language. No one really speaks English here, so to here it makes us all excited! And we found a laundromat with a dryer today! That’s exciting because we are all already so over having crunchy towels.

11.09.09
Today we had a little impromptu conversation circle since the cinema class was cancelled. I love hearing Italian being spoken! It’s so pretty. I also really like living in the dorm with all the international students, it reminds me of l’auberge espagole!
Today was 9/11, but having limited internet, no tv, and almost never speaking to anyone from home on the phone made me feel kind of removed from the situation, which is how I feel most of the time actually, it was just weird since today is always a big deal in the US.

12.9.09
On Friday we have no classes so we used that opportunity to go to a little town only a few kilometers from Viterbo called Bagnaia. In Bagnaia there are these beautiful renaissance gardens called Villa Lante. Even though it was a little drizzly, it was still beautiful there. We all took way too many pictures, most of which have some random German tourists in them. We ate the same café like 3 times that day, and I got this amazing coffee drink that had chocolate gelato in it. We also got to learn how to use Viterbo public transportation that day, which is surprisingly on time, considering most things in Italy are not. When we got back to Viterbo we decided to go to the Coop. Though going to the Coop is not anything special, this particular trip was definitely memorable. We took the elevator up from the parking garage and there were some other Italian people in it. But when we get out, Caitlin goes to one store and we (me and Carla) start heading towards another when we realize that one of the guys from the elevator is like right behind us and we think he is following us. So we decide instead to make a bee line for the purse store across the mall, assuming that he won’t follow us in there. Wrong! He goes in and starts looking for purses too! We try calling Caitlin, but she didn’t have her phone. So we decide to go back to the other store and look for her so she wouldn’t have to walk alone with the possibility of this guy following her as well/instead. The guy of course follows us to the other store and into that one too. We try and go around the store and out a different way, but we got stuck back in a dead end corner! Now this guy is right behind us constantly trying to talk to us saying things like “scusi, ciao” over and over. We try to talk loudly in English and laugh to drown him out thinking that maybe he would get the picture that we are not from here or that maybe we don’t speak Italian. However that doesn’t work either (Italian guys are really persistent)! So we’re standing in this corner of a store looking at the only item on the one shelf and there’s no way out. So I turn around and say “ciao “and try to scoot past but he’s like introducing himself (si chiama Fabio) and asking if we are here on vacation and I was just like “si, si” and then he asked if I wanted to go get a drink with him. Luckily at this point I was pretty close to the door and I just said “no, grazie” and ran out! So that was pretty crazy, and really made me wonder who told Italian guys that girls like to be followed.. or yelled out on the street or stared at or one of the many other things that Italian men seem to all do (these have all happened to me and other girls so far). Needless to say, we were on the lookout for this guy the rest of the time we were at the mall and as we were about to leave the lights started flickering. Carla thought it was the creepy Italian coming for us (!), but really it was just a huge thunderstorm outside that knocked the power out. Of course we didn’t bring our umbrellas, but we decided to make a run for it as fast as we could home. But once we got outside we realizes it really wasn’t good weather, especially when a huge thunder clap sounded and then a bolt of lightning appeared right in front of us! Everyone screamed and some Italians laughed at us. It died down a little so we eventually left but still got soaked on the way home. The roads were flooded too so there was no way to avoid the water that day.

13.9.09
Saturday we went to Rome! The city was great, but the getting there part was not so great. We woke up early to catch the 8:25 train from Viterbo to Rome. We planned ahead, brought food, and tried to get to the train station a little early to buy tickets. The person who sells tickets is not there on the weekends, however there is a little machine which I thought would be easy enough to use since most of those types of machines are. Wrong! The machine (which was from like when computers were invented – it was so old!) had a bunch of buttons with no labels, wouldn’t take our cash, and had no directions anywhere! After pressing all the buttons randomly, I finally got a ticket to some train station in Rome, even though it wasn’t the one I wanted. It took so long for us to figure out what to do though that we ended up missing our train. On top of that Caitlin forgot her money but then had time to go back and get it. Finally we all go some sort of tickets but then we realized they all had different ending points in Rome. We decided to all get off on the same stop since we knew they wouldn’t care. So we had to wait until 10:55 for the next train and then it started pouring, which made us doubt our decision to even go. Finally, we got on an actual train and headed off to Rome. The train feels like it goes so slow, though, because there are so many stops! On top of that there were some mechanical issues so we had to stop and one stop for 30 minutes. And on top of that, we were sitting next to some people who were blaring Indian music and clicking pens the whole time. That was annoying. So we finally made it to Rome around noon (keep in mind that it’s only 60 miles away, so that was a long trip) and got on the metro to the coliseum. As soon as you exit the metro, the coliseum is right there! That was breathtaking and amazing. The other first thing I noticed was all the people; there were so many tourists, which I guess was because it was a Saturday and still not too late into fall. Rome was really different than Viterbo in that way though because there just aren’t too many tourists in Viterbo. Also, I heard so much English being spoken, probably more that I heard Italian being spoken, which was sad. It was also annoying when we would go into the shops and try to speak Italian to the people (like we do in Viterbo) only to have them instantly realize that we were American and switch to English. We wanted to practice, though! I loved the big city atmosphere of Rome, but all of these things made me really glad that I’m studying in Viterbo, because there is so little English and it just seems so authentically Italian and not touristy. So after walking around the Coliseum for a bit we decided to look for the entrance to the Palatine Hill since our guidebooks told us the line for the tickets for would be shorter there. We found that and decided to start with the Palatine Hill and work our way down to the Roman Forum. Then we got some really expensive crappy food from a cart and headed into the Coliseum. This sounds easy enough, but all of these things cover a large amount of space and take a long time to go through. After the Coliseum we headed back to the metro to go to the Spanish Steps, when we saw a bunch of other usac students right outside the Coliseum (I’m pretty sure everyone went to Rome that weekend for at least one day). We never saw any signs for la Notte Bianca, the all night festival in Rome that we thought was going to take place that weekend, so we decided to go back that night. First, though, we headed to the Spanish Steps, which we cool, but we didn’t really see any steps since every square inch of space there was covered with people. From there we walked to the Trevi Fountain which was really beautiful. There was a wedding going on in a church nearby and they were taking pictures at the fountain, which I am sure turned out great. We actually saw like 20 (no joke) weddings that day and even said that we must have missed the memo to wear our wedding dresses to Rome. We looked at a few souvenir stands while walking through some shopping streets (Via del Corso) but compared to Viterbo everything in Rome was expensive! Plus the majority of the stores where we were major designer labels (Dior, Chanel, Gucci, Prada, etc). It was getting dark and we knew the last direct train for Viterbo left around 8:30 pm so we decided to head for the main train station, Termini, which was different from the one we arrived in, Ostiense. This train station was so much bigger than the other ones we had been in that day and it had several, modern machines to buy tickets from, that could even be switched into English. We got the tickets back no problem, and they said the train station that we got off in (Ostiense), which we thought just meant that we had to switch trains there. So we had like 45 minutes to do whatever so we wandered the train station and got some food. Closer to when the train left we tried locating our platform on the computer screens but we couldn’t find it. We ran all around the train station and finally decided that the reason the other station was written on our ticket was because we had to leave from there. The ticket machine never said that though. It said something about taking some sort of regional connection to the other station, but it never said anything like purchase a metro ticket and go there yourself. So we only had about 10 or so minutes until our train left, from the other train station! We hopped on the metro.. well actually we ran to the station just to wait for the train to come. Plus we had our metro passes, but Caitlin couldn’t find hers, so we kind of had to sneak her through the metro since we were in such a rush, and the alarms started going off and it was bad. The train came, we went like 4 stops and then we got off at the other station way and by that time it was way past when the train left. I wrote down when the last connecting train left (our only hope) so we got on that one to Cesano. When we arrived in Cesano we had an hour before our next train, which turns out wasn’t a train but a bus. So it’s like 11pm at night and we are in the middle of nowhere in Italy waiting for some bus. Finally 11:05 rolls around and the bus isn’t there. All that is there is this tiny little unmarked short bus that probably seats about 20 people. I was sure that couldn’t be it, but after asking, it sure enough was. There weren’t even enough seats for everyone and there wasn’t even a way to hold on for those who couldn’t sit. Then we started our hour and half or so ride though the smallest, narrowest and windiest roads in all of Italy. This driver also sped the whole way and almost hit 2 cars and a person! We met some cool tourists on the bus though, from Germany and the Netherlands, all of whom I’m pretty sure spoke English better than any of us. Once we had finally made it to Viterbo, the driver didn’t even know where the train station was so we had to tell him. We got off the stupid bus around 12:30 am, so that was about a 3 hour trip right there just from Rome. We all walked home and crashed, not to awake until late the next day. I loved Rome, and didn’t get to see everything (still want to go to the Pantheon and the Vatican, at least) and can’t wait to go back. Hopefully the next time we will know what we are doing though and will have better luck with the transportation!