Welcome to Rome
Well I’m here safe and sound in Rome. My flights here were pretty bad. The first flight, which was express service from Detroit to Phili, was on an extremely small plane. I had to sit next to a very very big man who overflowed into my seat. Not very comfortable. Luckily it was only an hour. From Phili I flew to Rome. I had a window seat, as I requested, and I was sat next to a young Italian man. I was actually pretty excited when I first got on the plane because every seat was equipped with personal in-seat monitor so you can watch whatever movies or shows you want. HOWEVER, neither the man’s nor mine worked. The flight attendant said that we could move to different seats, but there were no empty window seats—and I HAVE to sit by a window. So whatever. Watching movies wasn’t very important and I had my laptop with me anyway. I just decided I’d try and sleep for most of the flight. Then we noticed another problem. The buttons on our arm rests did not work either, which meant that the overhead lights would not turn off. So after dinner when all the cabin lights were turned off so people could sleep, we had this intensely bright light shining down on us from above. Oh well, I was thinking. That’s what eyelids are for… so I tried to fall asleep anyway. In fact, I think I did dose off for a few minutes right up until we started getting to that point in the sky where your ears feel a lot of pressure. And guess what… just guess. I was sitting two rows behind the “baby section” of the plane. (I call it the baby section because the reserve the front row for parents with very young babies because bassinettes can be set up right in front of the first row.) Three babies. Three babies with their ears popping. Three babies all crying as loudly as possible. Bye-bye sleep.
It all kind of sucked, I’m not going to lie, but I got to Rome in one piece and I found the JCU reps right away. A girl walked up, welcomed me, and gave me a sheet of paper to fill out. I grabbed a liquid blue pen out of my purse to write with, and immediately upon pulling the cap of, I had blue ink all over my hands, all over the paper I was suppose to fill out, and worst of all, on the sleeve of my white coat. Welcome to Rome! Seriously, though… I was exhausted, dirty, and I began to feel that I had bad karma or something. But after I washed off all the ink from my hands and attempted to get it off of my coat, I was given my housing placement and keys, and shuttled over to my new apartment.
My apartment is cute, but cute in a relatively spacious way. I really had no idea what to expect before I got here, but I guess the place exceeded the little expectations that I had. However… surprise!! I have five other roommates. There are six girls living together in this little Roman apartment. Six! So with that, I have good reason to believe that this is going to be a very drama filled semester. Luckily, I got here early enough to pick the room where there are only two of us. Since one of the girls requested and paid for a private room, the third room is home to the other three. The place is completely furnished with nearly everything we could possibly need—including a piano. Nothing in our apartment is what you would consider modern, but when you’re living in a city as old as Rome, I never expected it to be modern. There are a few downfalls though. For one, it’s freezing in here. We cannot regulate the heat at all and it doesn’t feel much warmer inside than it does outside. (And right now its probably about 54 degrees out. And to make it worse, they turn the heat off completely every night at 11:00. So I guess I will have to heavily rely on blankets when I sleep for the next couple months.
We have two bathrooms. One bathroom has a stand up shower, and the other has a bathtub which has a handheld faucet/shower head thing. Upon arrival, I decided to take a shower and so I gave the stand-up shower a shot. The showerhead must be as old as the building because only about 4 tiny holes have any water coming out, and it sprays everywhere. And the water goes all over the floor, too. By the time I finished washing all of the shampoo out of my hair, there was a two-inch pond in our bathroom. I guess this is all just going to take a lot of getting used to.
But all in all, everything is good. The street we live on is cute, we’re very close to Vatican City, and our apartment is definitely livable. So if anyone was worried, don’t be… I’m gonna be just fine here. 
