First experience at the supermercato and a tour of my appartamento

Wow, I have so many posts to write...I already feel like I'm behind! We've taken a lot of trips in the past few days that were included in the program so I will have to write about those soon.

First things first though - my first food shopping trip. My roommates and I talked to one of the program leaders and she told us of a good supermarket that's close to us that we should check out to buy our essentials at. It's called Sidi's, and it was about a ten minute walk away from our apartment. It had a really good selection of food and household products -- we all knew we'd be going back there soon, so we just bought a few things to tide us over until then...

I bought water bottles, a loaf of bread, two bottles of Gatorade, dish soap, Yogo bars (they're little peach flavored cake bars that are made with yogurt) and pasta (of course!)

We each bought one household item instead of buying them separately and splitting the cost because we figured that would have been too complicated. I got all of those items for about 9 Euro, which equals about 12 dollars. Not too bad at all...the pasta alone only cost 0.42 euros which equals only 0.60 cents.

Now, on to my apartment! The program guide who brought me to my apartment from the airport was telling me that a very famous Italian author used to live in the apartment building that I live in before he died. Of course I can't think of his name right now, but I will post about it later because there's a plaque on the outside of the building that says something about him. I thought that was pretty cool.

The apartment is way nicer than I thought it would be...it's very large with a lot of windows and shade. The only thing that would make it perfect would be air conditioning...but I guess I can't have everything :) In the airport the program leaders were telling me that my roommates and I definitely got the "lucky" apartment because not only is it the nicest one offered by the program, but it is also only a five minute walk from campus, and from our program's main office. Besides one other apartment which is a little further away from us, we are the only students who don't have to take the bus to campus each time we go, which is awesome. Also, our apartment is in a more quiet, residential section of Rome (in the Monteverde neighborhood)...there's lots of trees and we're surrounded by families rather than other students. Our building is also a regular Italian apartment building...we are the only students living in it.

First, my huge key...it makes me laugh every time I use it



Here's the stairway view looking down from our floor



View of our door from the inside



To the left of the door when you walk in



Hallway when you walk in the door:



Our living area



Right side of the living room...television



Our table



Left side of the living room...computer and bookcase (a lot of students who stayed here previously left their books so hopefully they will be what we need for some of our classes so we don't have to buy our own. There's also a lot of information books about Italy that were put there by the program.)



Windows in the living room



View from living room...we can totally see into people's houses and they can see into ours if they choose so that's kind of strange. But the windows have these outer metal blinds that we are supposed to close whenever we leave during the day in addition to locking the windows so we always do that.



Our balcony off of our living room (you can see the glass doors that lead to it on the right side of the living room behind the chair)



View from the corner of the balcony, looking around onto our street



Our laundry room with a washing machine (no dryer...Italians don't use dryers - they only air dry. Our program leaders also told us that the washing machines in Italy usually take about three hours to run one cycle(!!) That's going to be tons of fun when we need to do laundry...) and a second toilet



Spare room that has things like an ironing board, hampers, etc. for us to use if we need them



...other side of the spare room



My room! My bed is on the left, and my roommate Kristin's bed is on the right



Our mirror (that I am taller than) and nightstands



My bed



Our closets



Kristin's bed and our balcony



Balcony...it goes across to our other two roommates' room too (I love our clothesline!)



Balcony view





Landon and Jen's room



Our bathroom (complete with a bidet...that thing definitely won't be getting any use this semester)



Kitchen



Stove and fridge



Microwave and cooking utensils



Spices that were already in the apartment



And there you have our apartment! There's a couple of other things I didn't take pictures of...just some closets and cabinets. We have a TON of storage in this apartment...a whole wall is just cabinets to store stuff in and there are a lot of other cabinets as well. We don't really need them, but I guess if a family actually lived here they would because there are no closets.