Ciao! My name is Christine Bergesch. I am currently a junior
struggling through her second semester in the Eleanor Mann nursing program.
This past month I participated in University of Arkansas’s Rome Center travel
abroad program.
The University of Arkansas provides apartments for all
students. Each student’s living circumstances are based on their roommate
requests but most importantly the classes they are enrolled in. Since I was
enrolled in Italian I, I was placed with 6 girls in the same course… in
addition to 3 other girls. Although living in a 9 girl apartment isn’t most
people’s dream, it worked better than expected. The apartment contained 5
bedrooms, with 2 beds in each, a bathroom, an extra sink and 2 single beds.
The
living area and kitchen was my roommates biggest frustration. Having only one
kitchen made it difficult for many people to cook at one time and only having
one set of pots and pans did not help the situation. Having only a small space
to eat and study made living difficult, but bonded us as roommates since there
was no escaping each other.
The apartment was newly remodeled and had never been
lived in before. It had many luxuries we had not expected like electric black
out blinds and spacious balconies. As Americans, we all found it hard to adjust
to the lack of a dryer, ice machine and a small hot water heater.
Small quarters made for tight bonding. One of my favorite
nights in the nine girl apartment was after class on a Friday afternoon. I had
begged one of my roommates to teach us how to make crepes and we all bought
toppings and ingredients on our way home from class.
We struggled through the
absence of mixing bowls and learned making crepe mix in a pitched is actually
the best way to mix and pour the batter into a pan. We topped our crepes with
nutella, jam and sugar- a skill and night ill never forget!
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For more information about the U of A Rome Center: Summer program, visit http://studyabroad.uark.edu/romecampus!
