Sunday, September 7, 2008

Tuscania

I'm making this mainly for my mother, but also for anyone else that is just bursting with curiousity about what I am doing from day to day in Tuscania, and Italy, or wherever I happen to be.

I'm just going to do a run-down of the days so far:

Wednesday: I flew into Rome (Fuimicino) airport, and got incredibly lost. Thank goodness for a cell phone that worked, otherwise I might still be stuck in terminal B. I met up with my roomate Ashley and waited until Marco and Massimo came to pick us up. We also met this kid, Dan, who is going to be in Tuscania for a month as part of Lorenzo de Medici's Three Cities program. We arrived in Tuscania a short van ride later, and got settled into our apartment a bit. Later we went out to eat at this wonderful restuerant with another LdM (Lorenzo de Medici, the name or our school) Tuscania student named Rich. We sat outside and everyone's food was delicious! I had pasta with wild rabbit (lepre in Italian). I love how eating dinner here is such a different experience. It's very relaxed and you can sit and talk with everyone for hours, and no one cares. It's a far cry from the US, where you order, wait for the food, eat, get the bill, pay and leave, and if you don't leave right away you get dirty looks from the server because you're kind of taking tip money away from them. After dinner, we just roamed around the city and discovered this cool little park and some other neat places in the city. It's a very safe little city, and I feel completely comfortable walking around well past dark.

Thursday: We had our orientation for a good part of the day, and got a nice walking tour of the city. It was really good because we were told of all the services and places to go, and things to do. In the evening we had our welcome dinner at the same resteurant as we went to the night before, and were served a four course meal. It was delicious ("buono"). We walked around the city some more and went to a few bars. Just for your info, though, bars are more like cafes here (although they do serve alcohol).

Friday: Friday was just a day to do some random things that needed to be done, such as getting to the school to get on the internet, getting groceries, going to the bank and exchanging money, using the ATM, etc. We also went to this adorable little bar and had gelatos. I think I forgot to mention this, but all the restuerants and bars that I'm talking about have been outside dining. It's so wonderful to just sit outside and eat and talk with friends.

Saturday: We got up and met at the clock tower at 9:30, hoping to get bus tickets for the 10am bus to Tarquinia, which would be close to the beach, and we's just have to hop another bus to the beach. But there were not tickets, and so we sat around deciding what to do for a little while. We eventually got bus tickets to a different city, called Montalto, which was also close to the beach. So we rode to Montalto, then got a smaller bus that took us directly to the beach. The beach was kind of not too awesome, because it was really windy and the sand hurt like crazy when it hit you. It was also black sand, and it got everywhere!! We ate, and then took a bus back to the city of Montalto. We had to wait 3 hours until the bus back to Tuscania would come, so we just hung out at the park. While waiting we met these little kids who wanted to take us on in soccer ("futbol", not sure about the spelling). So we did and it was soooo much fun. I had to play barefoot, and I got these huge blisters on the bottoms of my feet. Ouch. When we got back, we met at Dan's apartment and met up with his landlord or landlord's son (I'm really not sure which) and some of his (landlord dude) friends. They drove us to his friend's house, and we helped to make pizza. It was a lot of fun trying to talk and understand each other, as some of his friends spoke very broken English, but it was a good time. And the pizza was out of this world amazing! Without a doubt the best pizza I have had... ever! I ate a lot of pizza, so they insisted that I take some of the leftovers back with me to our apartment to eat for breakfast. So I did, and had a good breakfast today. :-)

Sunday: Today... finally got to sleep in, went over to our friend's apartment and ate a little more for lunch, then came over here to the school to use the internet. I certainly value internet time a lot more now that I can't just use it whenever I want to. Classes start tomorrow, which is exciting.

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