Il giorno di la tourista.

...that means "the day of the tourist." Meaning myself. Because I felt like a dopey American tourist today.

The morning started out with standing at a bar on a corner cafe asking for espresso. Not gonna lie, if you thought espresso in America was strong, this is MUCH worse. I didn't finish it and the guy gave me a really funny look when I left.

Whoops.

After our orientation and lunch in a cute little cafe (most cafes in Italy have outside seating), we went on a 3 hour tour of Rome. And to be honest, I'm not even sure if we got to the whole city. Monuments and historical sites EVERYWHERE. We visited like 8 different churches but only went inside about 3(?) of them. My favorite was St. Ignatius.

Gorgeous outside, and even better inside.

Take that, Sistine Chapel.

So, this is the ceiling of the St. Ignatius church. I'm not sure if you can tell from this picture, but it's pretty much 3D right? The ceiling is actually flat and it's all an optical illusion. They actually had another one further into the church. If you take a few steps away and look up, this is what it will look like:

Not so 3D anymore.

We saw what was mostly in the historical section of Rome. Basically everything I wanted to see in Rome besides the Vatican and the Colosseum. But we are getting our own tour of the Colosseum and the Vatican museums, so I think I can handle waiting.

After dying from our 3 hour tour, we came back home and people from the host school taught us how to use our apartment. We have like 4 different recycling bags because they're crazy here and recycle a LOT. And we had these weird bugs in one of our bathrooms and there were a lot of minor problems for maintenance to fix.

We had an orientation dinner after that. The restaurant gave us 10 different kinds of appetizers anywhere from cooked onions to bruschettas to cheese and tomatoes (which actually isn't that bad). And that was all before our actual pasta dish. And dessert. In Italy they don't believe in rushing you out of a restaurant (which is awesome) and they also believe in having a full course dinner with antipasti (appetizers), pasta, the main course, and dessert. But to balance it out they don't eat a lot during the day.

A few of my classmates and I went to get gelato afterwards. It wasn't the best, but it was still pretty amazing.

And then we ran home in the rain. Without umbrellas. In skirts and nice clothing.

So that was basically my day. Long, yet I'm still not very tired. The jet lag is pretty much gone which is fantastic. Tomorrow I'm going to a fresh fruit market with some friends and then going off to my first day of Italian class. 

...and I forget almost everything. So it will be an interesting experience.

Ciao, y'all.