Greenlight

I sit typing this in my apartment in Roma, my window looking into a tiny alleyway where old women push babies in strollers and cats walk along the tops of fences.  Rome has been described as "Beautiful Chaos" and, if nothing else, the drive from the airport to our apartments perfectly embodied this idea.

Rome is gritty and dirty, the faces of the people who walk the streets here are not exactly twisted in a scowl, but there is a weight on the people who live here.  There is a certain sense of history that they cannot escape; the burden of living in a city that has been bustling for more than two millenium is evident in almost all aspect of life in this city.  Ancient graffiti covers every available space and while sirens wail and trucks thunder past.  Rome is not a place for peace and tranquility, it is a place of activity and constant motion.

Our flight landed and Will, Alice and I made our way through customs and baggage claim and met up with a women from the University named Susan.  We then borded a bus that ten or so other members of our program were already on, half asleep.  The drive into Rome proper from DaVinci was almost silent, we were all exhausted and the beauty of Italy captivated all of us.

Alice and mine's apartment which we share with two other girls, one of whom has yet to arrive, was the second stop the bus made.  After a minor problem with the key to enter into our apartment, we entered our home for the next four months.

We live in a building with all other Italian families, people who live in the Trastevere district.  Our apartment is right off a pretty big plaza and shops and cafe's line the street.  It's picturesque and coated with a film of exhaust.  We grabbed a bit to eat and drink at the cafe on the ground floor of our apartment and set off to visit another apartment shared by five girls in our program.

Walking around Rome is akin to a real life game of frogger.  Traffic rules are invented as one drives and walking is precarious.  I get to cross the Tiber whenever I walk to class.  How amazing is that?  The Tiber.  You know who drank and swam in the Tiber?  Casear.  And who wrote about the Tiber?  Virgil.  The Tiber is one of the four rivers that Dante through created a corner of the earth.  DC is historic, Rome is legend.