Wednesday/Thursday
-after my class with Estefania I caught a bus to Madrid, grabbed some food, then took the metro to the airport. Then I got to spend like 5 hours “sleeping” on the airport floor waiting to check in for my flight. I slept a little, waking up about every 20 minutes. One of those times I woke up to a fight between 2 men about 25 feet in front of me. Always a great way to wake up.
-actually that was just one of the ways that my trip to Rome started off not so great… other ways included:
-realizing I forgot my camera at home
-getting my brand new 13 euro bottle of sun block and face wash confiscated from security.
-not being able to find the hostel because there were absolutely NO signs marking it.
- While looking for it I got yelled at by some Italian woman.
-when I got to the hostel I found that it was quite unorganized and not the most clean looking place. I couldn’t check in a little early because nothing was ready so I went to walk around the town a bit. All I wanted was to sleep and shower.
-however, Rome is a beautiful city and exploring made me less in a bad mood. The city’s really cool and unique because you’ll be walking down a street that is all modern with shops and stuff all over the place and then you look across the streets and there’s these crazy ruins. I loved it. I was really bummed I didn’t have my camera. Looks like I’ll just have to go back :)
- I found an amazing pizza place to stop for lunch. That definitely made everything all better.
-I hit a point where I could no longer walk any more so I went back to the hostel and napped and then showered and then went to explore a bit more- finding the necessary coffee.
-I went back to the hostel to meet up with my friend Steph. We went to high school together. Well, technically only 9th grade, but we were great friends that year, and stayed somewhat in contact since. But she’s currently studying in a town like an hour from Rome. I decided to wait for her outside since it was impossible to find and I walked outside just as she was approaching the hostel. The timing couldn’t have been more movie perfect.
-soon we were off exploring the city together, talking non-stop. We eventually found a restaurant for a pasta dinner accompanied by a nice glass of wine.
Friday
-we headed out to explore some more. Checking things out with Steph was quite interesting since she’s an art student she had a different view on many things. I loved it.
-I also loved that if people spoke to me slowly and enunciated well in Italian I could understand them.
-we discovered many cool things- a turtle fountain, an elephant statue, some cool churches, a bunch of ruins…
-honestly, I really didn't care what we saw or didn't see. I was just really happy to be with Steph. She's probably one of my favorite people. She's just super sweet and encouraging. We had so many well needed conversations.
-it was another day that involved eating pizza for lunch, pasta for dinner (with another glass of wine) and gelato randomly during the day. Real Italian food is soooo good.
-besides walking the entire city, we even did some boutique shopping- both of us walking away with some unexpected items :)
-by the end of the day we were exhausted from soooo much walking and exploring. But we had such a fun time wearing ourselves out.
Saturday
-later in the morning we went to the train station and met up with 5 of Steph’s friends that she’s studying abroad with and off the 7 of us girls went to the beach. All we had to do was take the metro and then take a train thing. It took like 45 minutes total and only cost us 1 euro… not too bad.
-the weather was beach perfect. Really hot but with a nice breeze and not so humid. The water was a little on the cold side though.
-Ostia beach in Italy was just like being in South Jersey. I swear most of the people there thought people were scouting for new Jersey Shore cast members…
-it was a fun, calm day. I really enjoyed it. And Steph’s friends were fantastically nice.
-back in Rome, after saying goodbye to the other 5 girls Steph and I went around on a wild chase for a special souvenir for myself. We eventually did find one that was good enough.
-we were both quite exhausted from being out in the sun all day and having walked the whole town the day before that we decided to just go to the hostel and make our own pasta dinner. So another day that involved pizza, pasta, and ice cream just that the wine was substituted for a beer.
Sunday
-I was up super early, we said our goodbyes and off I went on a bus to the airport.
-in the airport I met a super nice couple from Chile. Chile might be one of my next destinations in the future. I met another nice Chilean couple in our hostel and I figure if the people are so nice, I definitely want to go.
-the flight went well. I got a window seat. Because it was a short flight we didn’t go that high and I could see a lot of Italy and Spain. I loved it. It was gorgeous.
-I made it back just in time to catch the 1:00 bus and therefore made it home in plenty of time to go church which made me really happy.
-my friend Fran was actually there too. He’s starting exams so he didn’t have classes for Monday so he had no rush to go back to college. It's always good to catch up with a friend.
Monday
-my last Monday of work. I’m gonna miss some of my classes. 2 of them were complete disasters today. Those are definitely 2 classes I’m not going to miss very much…
-the parent-teacher group gave me my last week of afternoon classes off as well. That was a nice surprise. However, I'm not sure if it's a "punishment" for having canceled my classes last Thursday to go to Rome... if so, it's the best punishment ever. haha. Now I’m going to have tons of free time!
-one of my favorite futbol players (Pepe Reina) was on one of my favorite shows (El Hormiguero). It was fabulous.
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