Ciao, ciao lettore!

Ciao tutti! This is going to be a blog about my semester in Rome. I'll try to keep up with it as a way of keeping everyone up to date with photos, etc. We'll see how long I last!

I arrived on Sunday and had a bit of a rocky start. I had been on a plane for about 10 (practically sleepless) hours total and arrived to a stifling hot Rome, where I was promptly led out of the nice, urban, downtown center area to a neighborhood on the outskirts of the city called Colli Albani. We only walked half ablock from the dingy metro station to the super-modern, pink cement buidling that housed my "host family", which turns out to a be a lady who is 60-ish and rents out the bedrooms in her apartment to students.  I have a balcony though! Care to see the view? 

Notice the bus in the right-hand corner. It stops directly outside my window about every fifteen minutes and idles then screeches away.

Anyway, enough of the whining. On Monday, Joe and Carolyn (the other two Lexia students) and I went to the Colloseum, if only to be tourists extraordinaire on our first full day in the city.

Here we are being tourists in a tunnel:

My favorite things that I've seen this week are the churches! More specifically, the ceilings in the churches. So far, I've seen only two churches: San Giovanni, which is near my school, and then my favorite (so far), Santa Maria di Trastevere. Here are their ceilings!

Santa Maria di Trastevere:

San Giovanni:

Okay, enough for now! Basta! My land lady gets sneaky and unplugs the internet sometimes because she thinks it's too expensive. So I neeeever know how long I'll have internet access for. It's just another element of surprise here in Roma.

Tanti bacci a tutti!