My first day in Roma!

Yesterday was an interesting day. After my nap I awoke to head downstairs for a meeting and then dinner. Dinner is called Mensa, and it is used instead of the term "cafeteria." As in, I'm going to Mensa. The food is decent, not good by any means, but excellent news: I will survive! Haha! It is extremely basic, and I hope that they haven't been pulling out all the stops on the food the first few days because if they have then I don't have much to look forward to in that department. Pasta with Pomodoro sauce or an herbed Pomodoro sauce. "Pomodoro" or "herbe" were the options today at lunch. They have nicely steamed but somewhat boring vegetables. Yesterday it was green beans and today it was broccoli. They also have chocolate pudding that moves as one jell-o-ey unit and yogurt that I have been sneaking away to have for breakfast. The yogurt is great, it comes in a few flavor options: banana, ananas, pesce, faggoli (banana, pineapple, peach, strawberry). At dinner one of the full-year students invited us out later that night with them. Anyways, they told us to come to the front door at 9:00pm and they would show us a fun place to go out via bus. So we showed up with approximately 40 other students. We got on a bus and took it to the end of the line then walked about 30 minutes (in the rain) until we got to Piazza Navona and then they said, "have fun, and the busses end at midnight (it was about 10:15), so be prepared to take a cab home, I hope you know the address!" And then they totally peaced out. So five of us SLU students, not trying to be cliquey but trying to avoid being those embarrassing wasted Americans decided to ditch the other 35 students and head off on our own. It was Brooke, Mary , Andrew , and Kyle. We walked around for a while and checked out the prices at a bunch of the bars but they were all about €6 per drink, 9 per cocktail. Eventually we found a Canadian bar with €4 pints. It was good, but it was only trafficked by Americans because the guy spoke English and thus it was not a truly Roman experience. It was fun, though. Anyway, this morning I woke up and showered and went to a few logistical meetings. I went to Mensa and headed out on an optional neighborhood walking tour. I'm not sure that I'll be able to replicate where I went but I now know where to find a laundromat, gelatoria, supermercado, lingerie store, and wine store. So thats good. I'm ready to start my classes and see if there are any awesome people hiding in my human rights class or something of the sort. I have to figure out my internet too, I've been trying to steal it in my room but its not going well. I skyped my parents briefly from the computer lab but it was awkward! I feel weird talking to people in a quiet room with like 20 other people in it. We leave tomorrow morning at 8:30am for Assisi, I hope it is fun.