Rome: Our New Home

Ciao Bella Roma!

This is just a short introduction to our time here in Rome and how we spent our first week or so in the city and in orientation before having the blessing of taking off on a six day pilgrimage of Siena and Assisi. The program officially started on February 15^th but we arrived the night before and spent the night in a hotel near the Vatican. We got to go to Mass for Ash Wednesday at Maria Maggiorge, one the four main basilicas in Rome. After a day of fasting, we were all very excited to have our first meal in Italy and then we headed to St. Peter’s Square for our first glimpse of the Vatican. I think its almost prettier at night then it is during the day!

The next day we made our way to the Residence Balduina, where we will be living for the next three months. It is located three train stops away from St. Peters but about a 45 minute walk. Luckily we are provided with a card that gives us access to all the transportation inside the city and there are two buses within a short walking distance of the building.

Residence Balduina is an apartment complex with three buildings that share a common courtyard. The guys all live in one building and the rest of us girls are split between the other two. Christendom only rents rooms from the complex so we all have Italians as neighbors. We all get our own apartment that we share with two other girls. I was so lucky to be placed with two of my good friends: Maggie Adams and Bailey Young.
We love our apartment, its so homey! Unlike some of the other apartment models, all our beds are actually in the bedroom which gives us the space to have a couch in our living room which doubles as the kitchen and dinning room. But the best part about our place is the large balcony off the kitchen and bedroom, it has a beautiful view especially around the time the sun is setting. The first I did was to unpack and get settled so I could start to feel at home. I had even brought along pictures to hang above my bed!

I have really enjoyed having to make all our own meals (with the exception of two group lunches and one group dinner every week). I have started to really experiment in the kitchen, especially with some of the regional Italian food we keep seeing around the restaurants and markets. It has always been lots of fun to have other rooms over for little dinner parties. We set a goal of trying to have everyone over but we will see if we will have enough time to achieve that.

Our first few days were filled with basic orientation information, an introduction to the program and the classes we would be taking, a general overview of Italian culture and what to expect, and a tour of the neighborhood. We got to go to Mass at St. Peter’s on our second day and then that weekend we got to go to the papal Angelus and blessing at noontime on Sunday.

Our full class schedule wouldn’t begin until after we got home from pilgrimage week but we did start our Art and Architecture Class with Professor Lev and had a week of Intensive Italian. I was super excited to start Lev’s class because I studied art history in high school when I was intended on going to Savannah College of Art and Design for Interior Design. Some of the material we are learning is the exact same that I used to be tested on in AP art, but now we are adding in so much that relates directly to Rome culture and design. And our Italian class is taught by the Rome program director, Miss Ott. It is a great introduction to the language but focuses primarily on basic practical applications, like how we can buy groceries or ask for directions when lost, etc. We are also learning the grammatical conjugations and rules but they are understanding of what we need to get by for the short time we are over here.

We also got to go on a city-wide scavenger hunt! Each room was paired with another room of guys and we were given a map and a list of 25 things to find. When we started out, eight hours sounded like more than enough time to complete the long list of stops, but boy were we wrong! 15 miles of walking later, and we still hadn’t completed the list but we had to scramble just to make it back to Balduina in time. At each place, we had to take a group photo doing whatever the task was at the given spot, such as racing at Circus Maximus or strike a gladiator pose at the Coliseum or taking pictures with a bus driver and using all the modes of transportation in the city. It was a lot of fun but truly exhausting. I was very ready for bed by the time we made it home.

Besides taking Italian, we also got the chance to go to the home of an Italian woman for a cooking class. I was so excited for it. We learned how to make gnocchi, a fennel salad, and cardoons which are similar to artichokes. She has a gorgeous apartment with a beautiful rooftop terrace where she grows a lot of herbs and vegetables. So after we had finished cooking the meal, we got to enjoy lunch outside on the terrace.

The staff members offered an optional trip that first weekend to attend a wine tasting at one of the most posh restaurants in Rome! We got to try five different wines paired with small dishes. It was the beginning of us attempting to practice our wine knowledge when we would subsequently go to the store to buy some for dinner parties.

Our first week flew by, and we spent much of the time later in the week just hanging out with each other in the apartment because it was raining each day after we got out of Italian. Life here makes you feel a lot more independent and even the simplest of tasks makes me feel more like an adult. Whether its grocery shopping, managing a budget, or just making sure you catch the train in time to get to class, I feel like I have grown up during my short time here. Cheers to this just being the beginning! 

The Brunette