On a plane and in a bus to my Roman apartment we go

So my adventure began at the airport at O'hare and thankfully we were able to get out despite the snow. It was a pretty long flight, about 9 and half hours, but the on board movie and my chatty neighbor Greg made the time go by quite fast. When we flew into Fiumicino airport we got off the plane by walking down a staircase on to the tarmac just like you see in the movies! While it took a while, we passed through the passport line with ease, and got my first stamp in my passport.

It took quite some time for our luggage to come and unfortunately mine was all wet and so were my clothes. Thankfully it wasn't anything a drying rack couldn't cure. I'm sure all of us girls were quite a sight lugging our two pieces of luggage through the airport, especially when we couldn't get out of the elevator! We had a check in and after a lot of waiting we were being shuttled to the Gianicolo Residence. Let me tell you, if you think you've seen crazy drivers, you haven't seen anything until you've come to Rome. They don't like to stay in the lines, stop signs are definitely suggestions, and they don't stop for pedestrians. We almost hit a bus head on and barely missed a guy on a vespa. Needless to say, I won't be driving here anytime soon!

I was able to go up to my apartment and I was amazed at how beautiful the residence was! I found out upon entering that I share an apartment with 4 other girls, we have two bathrooms, 3 bedrooms, a kitchen, and a living room/dining room. We have a beautiful view from our windows looking up at the Gianicolo hill and other buildings. Right away we had a quick orientation thing at the Guarini campus and after that I had a little pizza sandwich thing which was delicious. The rest of the night was spent unpacking, meeting most of my roommates Sarah L., Taryn (we share a room), and Uliana. We met some other girls and had a nice time chatting and drinking some wonderful Italian wine. I somehow managed to stay up the whole time and was glad to get to bed to try to defeat the jet lag.