May 31, 2013
DAY ONE – From the freshman class:
Today was a long day, mostly because there’s no way to really tell where the day started. We all arrived at JFK around 4 o’clock and waited around in the airport catching up with each other until we finally boarded the plane at 8:45. We were on the plane for 8 hours and landed in Rome at 11 a.m. local time.
We breezed through customs and then got to meet our awesome tourguide, Leo. We bussed over to the Colosseum, where we got to walk around and get our first taste of Italian food while waiting for our first official tour to begin. Mia, our Rome tour guide, met us outside the entrance to the Colosseum. We listened to her through headsets throughout the remains of the Roman city. The Colosseum was really cool and we heard some interesting stories about the gladiators.
We then moved on to the remains of ancient Rome where we saw where Julius Caesar was cremated, some churches, the “wedding cake” and many other buildings. By the end of the tour we were so tired and headed back to the hotel to get ready for dinner.
Despite the fact that we decided to do class dinners, we all ended up going to the same restaurant in the end for our first taste of Italian pizza and pasta! It was amazing and so was the gelato that followed. The one issue that a lot of us are having is how to communicate with workers; some of us are trying to speak Spanish and most of us just use a lot of hand motions to try to convey what we’re saying. Needless to say, a lot of people have started to download Italian translators! So far things are going great! Can’t wait to see the adventures that the next seven days will bring!
