September 3, 2018 - September 14, 2018
Over the next two weeks I note in my journals just how fast it’s all going! Too fast, insanely fast.
It’s the settling in portion, before true classes begin, where all we have to worry about is an Italian practicum—a crash course/review of the language, that everyone within the program is taking across all skill levels.
I continue to get to know my homestay family over dinner, and new friendships are made on spontaneous trips to the best sites the city has to offer, both right after class and later into the night. When the sun goes down, the countless cats of Rome prowl and claim all of the city’s landmarks as their own.
I’m learning local spots for great food and quick on-the-go fixes—like Mondial Pizza, right below the apartment complexes in Trastevere. It doesn’t take me too long to discover I Supplì, a friggitoria that serves the most wonderful street food ever invented. Supplì are croquettes, filled with rice and sauce surrounding a stringy mozzarella core. Good Lord do I miss them. I fall a bit too in love with Roman carbonara as well, and note that I really have to slow down on that.
Finally, the three weeks before classes are filled with incredibly fun and informative cultural tours that range from café crawls to market stalls, and of course, historical crash courses at amazing sites. I never had Professor Alei as a teacher, but I still remember his tour quite well. He mapped the city through its monuments, and delivered an awesome mini-lecture atop the Campidoglio, where he contextualized Rome—not as a musty old city of disconnected layers, but as a living and breathing consciousness, constantly informed by the past and made anew. Cool stuff!
Better luck with the next one, Hazel. Don’t worry, there’s cats aplenty skulking about the city center 😸
