Ciao From Rome...

Now that I finally have Internet….

here is what has happened so far.  The flight here as all flights seem to be international or not was long but time since has been flying by.  Each day passes and most days I still have a hard time believing that I am not just here for a short vacation and will actually be living here until May.  How AWESOME!!!  First day was kind of rough.  We got here and it was a Sunday so of course everything was closed.  The bus could not drive all the way to our apartment so we had a fun time bringing our huge suitcases up two cobblestoned hills to our building.  We did luck out though our apartment had an elavator.  Some kids our living on the fifth floor and have no elevator so I am sure they also had a fantastic time getting their stuff into their building.  After we picked rooms we all started unpacking our stuff so we really did not chat much.  Claire, my roomate, and I soon succombed to jetlag and decided to go to sleep. 

The two of us woke up kind of early the next morning and set out to find some food.  We quickly found a fresh fruit and vegetable market right down the street from us and we bought food from there for breakfast and then continued to walk around a little.  The fruit there tastes sooo amazing, I to this day have stopped there almost everyday to buy fruit and am sure this habit will continue throughout the semester.  The two of us then headed back to the apartment and started working on unpacking our stuff, chatted, and listened to music.  We did that until we needed to get ready to head to orientation.  Claire, Jess, Krista, and I were ready to go and did not realize that the other two, Bree and Lindsay, were not up yet.  When we went in there they were confused because their clock was messed up with the time difference.  The four of us left and had an interesting time trying to get to school since we did not know any Italian and could not find the tram.  We did get thought arriving only half and nour late. LOL.

The next few days nothing major happended was still jetlagged, went to class, and just tried to get my bearings on the area.

The first weekend I went to Interlochen, Switzerland with the two Claires and Sarah.  We took a long bus ride there and then checked into Balmers Hostel.  The first day all four of us rented ski equipment and headed up the Alps.  I have been trying to pick up snowboarding but was not very successful my first two times so I decided to go with skiing.  I had heard it was easier to pick up than snowboarding and I had gone once before when I was younger.  Well my advice to anyone who is not a frequent skier or snowboarder do not try to pick it up in the Swiss Alps.  I spent the vast majority of that day lying on various parts of the mountain after falling either trying to slide out of the way of other people, struggling to get back up, or recooperating after my wipeout.