La Prima Giornata. Il 4 febbraio.

Ciao tutti. Today marks the beginning of the official Roman Holiday. Enough about broken computers—onto la dolce vita.

Today was actually a complete travel day, so in other words, a not so dolce day. After a relatively painless but long and restless flight from Philadelphia to Paris, I arrived at Charles de Gaulle prepared to make the transfer to Roma. Flying Air France was nice even though it involved the transfer. Before we even took off from Philly I found myself speaking French to a gentleman beside me who struck up a conversation. He was en route to Paris where he would catch his connection to Morocco. Interesting guy. He’s getting married to an American in New Jersey in the summer. Nice.

I arrived, as I said, at Charles de Gaulle having pocketed that French introduction to my Italian vacanza. 5 euros at the airport got me a water and a croissant. That’s fair. On the flight to Rome from France I met a bunch of other IES students: Liz, Jenny, Andrew, and Matt (I think). Names are still relatively fresh and uncertain. They are all excited about our mutual endeavor.

I spent way too much time at the Rome airport in the IES lounge waiting for another student to come through whose apartment was close to mine. IES had set up a private welcome room in the arrivals gate where arriving students could meet and pick up orientation materials. Despite the frustrating wait, I did get a change to meet a good number of other students in the program. We have what is shaping up to be a good group: a definite relief.

Finally, Joe, a student at Illinois, arrived, who lived close to my apartment. We hopped in a taxi and departed Fiumicino for Rome. The drive was nice; the taxi driver indulged our mediocre Italian and we managed a nice long conversation balancing between bad English from the driver and bad Italian from we the passengers. Once in Rome, we dropped Joe off at his apartment in Monteverde and headed towards Via dei Genovesi 34, my new home.

I am in the heart of Trastevere, and when I mean heart, I mean my roommates and I have an absolutely incredible apartment. It is very small, but tasteful and delicately furnished. It is modest in terms of grandeur, but it is about 150 years old with beautiful wooden i-beams. According to our Italian graduate student roommate, it would sell easily on the market for over 2 million euros. It’s just ridiculous. In no way do we deserve such a spot. Pictures will be up soon to better describe the feel of the place. I arrived at dusk, and was thus unable to experience the splendor of the huge wide open sunlit windows. The view out those windows is about as picturesque as one could ask for. No point in describing it any further in words though…pictures to be taken on the next sunny afternoon will be posted to aid the effort.

My roommates are good fellas. Sam hails from GWU, hometown in CT, and knows a bunch of people in Rome doing other programs. That will certainly help facilitate the attempt to widen our social network outside the IES program. Scott goes to the University of Rochester and is a Studio Art major. We are planning on heading out together to do some sketches. If Rome had to be just one thing, I would say it is first and foremost sketchable. Every single street corner and alley seems to be the perfect predetermined composition for a careful rendering. I’m looking forward to testing my drawing skills against the beauty of the tightly woven and dense urban nooks of my charming wrinkled neighborhood.

Our Italian student companion is the man. Antonio has a brother who is a professional drummer in Rome. He promises to get me in touch with him. That could be really great for me in terms of getting out to play. I am sharing a double with Antonio. He is committed to speaking only Italian if we choose, and will prove an invaluable resource for both learning the language and getting a grasp of the elusive true Roman culture.

Despite the encouragement of the apartment and my new roommates, it would be wrong to say that I wasn’t feeling a bit down this evening. Exhausted from the extensive travel and running on airplane food and Junior Mints, the reality of leaving my family and embarking on this substantial challenge was raining on the parade. I wasn’t proud of it, but what can I say. There was a while there where I just wasn’t feeling it as I had hoped to. Luckily, Antonio sparked up a conversation about jazz and we started to listen to some music. I got a weak but effective internet connection from an unknown source and I was able to catch my mom online. We chatted. That saved the day, as expected.

We had a quick dish of pasta prepared by Antonio in the living room and decided, despite our significant exhaustion, to go out in the ’hood to celebrate the beginning of this adventure with a beer. We walked through our area of Trastevere taking in the Monday night scene, which was surprisingly alive considering the day of the week. Young people, old people, meeting out on the street, sharing a cigarette and a glass of wine, all amidst the backdrop of the rich Trastevere facades; the whole scene was charming in a very real and nonchalant way. I cannot wait to indulge in it as a semi-resident of the area.

We settled on a bar by the Tiber and warmed up to a round of Peroni. It was then that we decided that Antonio was sworn to speaking only Italian to us for the rest of the night. We proceeded to have a great talk in broken Italian, touching on topics ranging from the congiuntivo (subjunctive verb tense) to the undeniable and overwhelming attractiveness of basically every Italian ragazza that we saw that night. We decided by the end of the drinks that it was going to be a great semester. Antonio fell in love three times. With the waiter and then two other times with two other girls.

After a mad dash through a sudden downpour, we arrived back at home base. The crew crashed and I took a moment to jot this entry down. Time for bed now. Tomorrow, everyone in the program heads off to Perugia and then Assisi for a three day mini-vacation/orientation. I’m guessing its going to be three days of duck-duck-goose paired with a healthy serving of world famous architectural sites.

Check back for the pictures. Buona sera.