ciao,
So, I’m in Italy. It’s awesome. Yes, they will serve alcohol to anyone over 18
on international flights. I spent my first day in Rome. I met some English
kids at the hostel and we went into town and saw the coliseum, forum etc. We
spent the night drinking cheap beer and wine out of a box playing 21 on the
roof of our hostel in down town Rome.
I arrived in Perugia on Friday. Perugia is a city on a hill. The city center
is on the top, which is where we live and take some of our classes. There are
so many steep hills around town that on one side of town there are escalators,
to take you from level to level of the city. On the other side, the incline
was too steep for escalators, so there is an elevator with an up button and
down button. The city is full of history; there is a wall in the city that was
built by the Etruscans in 300BC. Everyone around here speaks this weird
foreign language, and they expect us to speak it as well. They become offended
if we cannot answer their questions in their language. I started taking my
Italian class today, I’m in level two and I lost our professor right after
Buon Giorno (good morning).
My apartment is terrific, there are 6 of us and five bedrooms, so only two
people have to share and there is a couple living with us. We actually have
control of our heating as well, our landlord is very nice and only asked that
we turn off the heat at night. Most of the other student apartments cannot
control their own heat and the apartments are kept at around 55 degrees.
One of our roommates lived here last semester and she is almost fluent in
Italian. She has been showing me all of the good bars and hangouts around town
and introducing me to her friends, some of them Italian. I met a guy named
Davide, his English was about as good as my Italian so our conversation was
fun but challenging. We finally realized that we both spoke Spanish the best
and did a lot of our communicating in it. Davide = Italian Stallion:)
Wine here is cheaper than water. A gallon of high quality wine goes for about
8 Euro. But a beer will cost you about 5.
Arrival in Rome, moving to Perugia
January 5, 2005 by Erin