1 giugno: Arrival

Yesterday evening I departed Newark airport to Lisbon on TAP Portugal airlines with no huge incidents. Serendipitously, another girl on the Rome & Pompeii trip, my friend Zara Stasi, happened to be on the same flight, which made the flight experience much more comfortable. The plane was certainly not the classiest ride but we encountered no turbulence. I made friends with the guy sitting next to me, Josh, who works for John Deere and was flying to Lisbon for a product launch. The conversation made the flight easy. Sleep escaped me, but I was fortunate enough to see the horizon light up rainbow before the sun rose. Lisbon looks incredibly beautiful from the air. We touched down on the tarmac while the sun was halfway over the horizon. The flight got in late, so within 45 minutes we were on our next flight to Rome (after meeting another girl on our flight who would be studying abroad in Florence, and a couple on their honeymoon, who recommended I check out the secret room in some prestigious Naples museum housing ancient pornographic murals). The second flight was nearly as empty as the first was full. A few patches of rough turbulence, one or two screaming babies, but I was able to nap and we got to Rome without incident. (Oh - this was also the first time I've heard Portuguese spoken. It's interesting! It sounds surprisingly like French, and also reminded me weirdly of Esperanto. Maybe it's all the x's in the middle of the words.)

We met the other students and Professor Donahue while we waited 30 mins for our last arrival. Then the day got exciting. You may have heard that Italian drivers have a reputation of sorts. If that is the case, then we certainly got a dose of real Italia this morning. Our driver was beyond aggressive on the road - to the point of recklessness - and there were at least three times I remember coming within inches of hitting another car or person. After awhile everyone stopped smiling nervously at each other about it and we all fixed our gaze on the buildings passing by, deeply in need of a distraction from the sustained near-death experience taking place on the road. (By the way, the driver stopped to fill up the little van we were in - it came out to 120 Euro. And we think we have it bad at $4.30 a gallon!)

The courtyard at the entrance to the Centro

My room is the first full window at top

We survived the trip to the Centro. It's a beautiful building that blends right in with the other ones around here. It has a small entrance courtyard, a little lobby, a computer lab with maybe 10 modern Macs, a beautiful library, a classroom with two pianos and a couple guitars, and a spacious garden with two fountains, several trees, a ping pong table and a spot for barbecuing. Our rooms are simple but satisfying. This room is smaller than my dorm room but has a bed, a nice wide sink, a wardrobe with drawers,a desk and a huge bookshelf - so it's really better off furniture-wise than what we have at William and Mary. (I would kill just for the sink!) The window is wide and opens right up to a view of the street below. There are two showers in the men's bath with blissfully hot water, two stalls and three sinks. In short, it's a really awesome living space.

Jessica inspects the spiral staircase to the garden

The view from my window

I put my stuff away, showered, and went out in search of a few of the girls, who had gone out for pizza. I didn't find them but I enjoyed my short walk of a couple blocks on my own. Explored the garden and the rooftop terrace, played some music with Jessica, then had an excellent nap. We were explained the rules of the Centro by Franco, the very very nice director here, and were called down to dinner. Here we ate in the same room as some of the kids from Duke who are also staying here at present, though they were at a different table and we didn't interact. Dinner was unbelievably good - fresh bread, pasta alfredo, pasta with tomato sauce, a vegetable medley, a small salad with pulled beef mixed in, beans, and fresh-baked blueberry cake. All of us ate until we were stuffed. After dinner I met two guys from Duke who are here for a week.

As I said, the director here, Franco, and his wife Pina are molto molto simpatico and incredibly welcoming. I'm really pleased with the facility here - I could live here for a whole semester without a second thought. I'm sorry I'm not!

A fountain in the garden

Tomorrow I guess we're going to the island in the Tiber. Apparently tomorrow is the Festa della Repubblica, the equivalent of the Italian 4th of July, so we are promised parades and speeches and planes and what-have-you - although I understand that we'll (unfortunately!) be trying to keep away from it all, capitalizing on the absence of other visitors in the places we'll be visiting. It should be an interesting day.

I'm dying to use my Italian. I had a short conversation with Pina, and she seemed pleased with me (although I had to slip into English a few times), and I've been happy to find that I can understand most of the advertisements on the street. A cartoon was on in Italian on Cartoon Network and I probably followed along with 30% of it, which I was happy with. I'm really hoping to hone my language skills in the next three weeks.

Getting to know each other!