I am in Rome!!!!! The flight over was nice but just long. We arrived in the morning to a beautifully sunny day as we flew into Fiumicino Airport, we were able to see the classic brown Italian homes that lined the coast. Several of the UARK students were on the plane together and we tiredly made our way through the airport, not having a clue where we were going. Did we need to go through passport control first? Do we get our bags first? After asking a few people at the help desk (who looked at us like we didn’t know anything, which we didn’t), we realized this was just the first of many things we would have to figure out on our own. We got through passport control, getting a real stamp in my passport, an officially *stamping* the beginning of my journey! Luckily, our bags all came through and we trudged towards the exit. The Rome Center was kind enough to send a shuttle bus to pick up the 13 of us. We were pretty quickly confronted with many taxi drivers and other car services trying to get us to to choose their overpriced fares. After making our way to the bus and heading to our new home, I was surprised by many things. Entering the heart of Rome, I was hit with the realization that this massive city was my new place of residence for the next four months. I was also blown away with how narrow the streets were and how much graffiti littered the buildings. Everywhere you look there was graffiti. This was definitely not what I was expecting. The second thing that I was not expecting was the driving. Oh my, I was sure we were going to get in a wreck before we even made it to our apartment. The vespas (motorcycles) weave in and out of traffic and drive in the middle of the street, on the sidewalks-they’re everywhere!!! It’s like the street signs and lane lines were more of suggestions instead of requirements. Cars were honking constantly, ignoring pedestrians crossing the street and were stopping abruptly. I was ready for my first memory in Italy to be a car crashing into our huge bus. The cars were all so small as well with the exception of a couple of tourist buses. Many of the streets were also one way so in order to drop people off we were basically just driving in circles (we were able to see our first glance at St. Peters). One of the guys (Dave) we dropped off first was told to go across the street (there was not a crosswalk at this part of the street) and to wait by the gas station next to a building for someone to let him in. The lack of instructions he received and how relaxed they were about sending a person to a location he had never been and telling him to wait on someone he had never met, really made me learn pretty quickly how much of a different world we were now in. We finally made it to a stop near a large grey wall which we would later learn was the wall surrounding Vatican City, and were asked to get out and grab all of our luggage. We were guided by a friendly woman, Julia, who worked for the apartment complex that we would be staying in. A few block walk felt like a 3 mile hike throughout the city, with 100 pounds of luggage on a surprisingly balmy January day. After making it into our apartment, all we really wanted to do was fall asleep but we had to go over a checklist of all of the things that should be in our apartment. The apartment appeared nice-nothing too fancy but a seemingly comfortable place to live and grow during the semester. When we discovered that our wifi was not working, they sent someone over who promptly fixed it. I was immediately drawn to how kind and helpful these people were and it definitely made a good first impression on me. Julia was great, answering questions like, “how do we flush the toilet and use the laundry machine” with great ease and was even willing to wait around for one of our roomies, who was on a later flight, to show her the ropes as well. After a few hour nap, we woke up around 9 and headed out into the city in search of some food (we had ordered a pizza and it was horrible, :-p). We came across a cute little restaurant that was practically underground. After indulging in a yummy pasta and bacon dish we treated ourselves to a tasty chocolate dessert, learned how to correctly pronounce “gratizie” and returned home around 11 just as many Italians were sitting down to dinner.
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Communication major & Business marketing minor Jordan Gershon is spending the spring 2018 semester at the U of A Rome Center with the help of our Office of Study Abroad Scholarship.Read more from Jordan at jordysjourneyabroad.wordpress.com
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