Going out Thursday night before our 6 AM bus to Roma was a bold choice for us. To make a long story (and morning) short, 75% of us dragged ourselves to the station and boarded our bus to Roma. Those 4 AM travel wake-up calls from my Dad finally paid off! After looking for our hostel, finding our hostel, and downing some much needed caffeine, we started our "Tourists in Roma for One Day" tour. If you couldn't guess, this tour features the highlights of the Colosseum, Pantheon, Trevi Fountain, and the ruins. I remembered a lot from when my family and I were in Rome, but mostly I remembered going in a lot of churches and my mother's custom Angels and Demons tour. Rome was touristy. Like a more cultural Disneyworld. It was beautiful, no doubt about it, but the amount of English being spoken, the people peddling fake Gucci bags, and the exhausted screaming children (been there), was a huge difference from Ascoli. Although I did get a Nutella crepe which was amazing and I have no regrets about that.
Me being basic by the Trevi Fountain
After some night time gelato by the Trevi Fountain, we headed back to our hostel to prepare for another early wakeup to meet our bus to go to Florence. We took a tour geared towards college students. It was very different from the Hefner Tour de Firenze featuring every church ever built that I had been on eight years ago. It was good to have someone showing us the way around, though, because it was easy to get lost in Firenze. We saw all the major sites and got some shopping in. This time I went for the Nutella Waffle, which was just as good, if not better than the crepe.
Bringing the basic to Firenze (and accidentally blocking the Duomo...)
We walked approximately 500 miles that day in Florence and had the worst returning bus ride ever, so everyone knocked out when we got back to the hostel. The next morning I used my quirky girl senses to find the hipster shopping part of town. It was a great success. Probably because I used Google. Anyway, we found a store where the woman made all the clothes in store, and I got an adorable dress. While searching for food we stumbled upon an "Urban Handicraft Market", which was the BEST. It was all quirky jewelry and clothing, and they have it every weekend. Definitely heading back there soon.
1:50 rolled around and we either missed the bus or the bus never existed. Either way, we camped out in a WiFi-enabled coffee shop until our 4 PM bus. All of us were pretty homesick for Ascoli. The difference between our quaint Italian town and the bustling, study-abroad haven of Rome and Florence is monumental. We eventually got back and had a stressful situation on our hands because we thought there was a Taken situation happening but all ended up well.
Today I went to the school where I will be teaching English. Diana, one of our program directors, walked me to the school which is right by my apartment. She knocked on the door and the teacher came to talk to us. I saw a little boy's face peek out behind her in the door, disappear quickly, then another little face popped up. Two seconds later there were 15 little Italian kids staring at me, when one piped up and said "ENGLISH?!" to which I said "Si!" and they freaked out. Even the children can tell I'm American just from looking at me. Anyway, I'd say I'm pretty popular with the under 10 crowd here. My first day teaching is Wednesday, I can't wait!!
My fingers hurt now.
Ciao,
Maria Rosa
P.S. I know the whole Billiken Basketball team reads my blog, so just wanted to say congrats to my boys on the win.
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