Ciao! Mi Chiamo Ambra!

(Ambra, my new Italian name!) I've been in Rome for a week already! We've done so much in one week, I can only imagine what I'll feel like after four months. I think I'll just go through the week day by day and tell you about all of the exciting things I did, and PICTURES! Alright, let's go!
Monday! We had a short orientation to the program and then walked over the the American Academy in Rome, which also happens to be the highest point in the city! It was an amazing view, which looks slightly less amazing in pictures due to the fog. But here it is anyway:

Later that afternoon we had a tour of Monte Verde, which is our neighborhood (and also a favored area for old Italian facists, apparently...) and then had our welcome dinner (I'll get to the food later). After that, I pretty much collapsed, still recovering from jet-lag.

Suddenly, it was Tuesday! We had our first class, which was slightly overwhelming, and the rest of the day was free, so I went out with some people for our first Italian coffee-bar experience! I can never drink Starbucks again.

Next comes Wednesday! And Wednesday is the exciting day- our first field trip! We visited sights of very early Rome, like the Circus Maximus (which takes a lot of imagination), the Capitoline museum, and THE FORUM. I've seen the forum in so many pictures, and read and learned about it so many times. Being there was an amazing experience- I could not stop smiling. The entire day was so amazing that even after walking around for almost 7 hours straight and freezing nearly the whole time, I was still as happy as I was that morning.

Thurrrrrrsday! I had no class but Italian on Thursday, so it was a pretty laid-back day. I went to the supermarket and got my food for the weekend (mozzarella and prosciutto, do I need anything else?). That night to celebrate the fact that I wasn't falling asleep by 9 PM, I went out with a few people to Trastevere, the land of bars and large groups of drunk Americans. We walked around and had a few drinks, ran into 4 other groups from the Centro a few times, and headed back. My first bar experience: successful.

Annnnnd Friday! Friday I had one thing to do at 3, so from around 9 in the morning until then I sat in the same spot and read/puzzled/talked. It was quite a lazy day, which was nice after the excitement of the rest of the week. At 3 I had a latin field trip, where we saw the inscription that we will be working on for the rest of the semester- AWESOME. At night I spontaneously joined a group of people going to see Drive. After the movie (which had about 15 lines of dialogue?) we walked in circles around Trastevere for a while (walking around outside with drinks is totally acceptable here!) and then somehow made it to Campe dei Fiori, which is probably not somewhere I could find my way back to on my own... We sat at a bar/lounge thing, drank wine and discussed the lack of Centro gossip after only one week. A classy night.

Annnnd that's my week! I'll try to post more often (maybe?) in the future, so I don't have to go through an entire week in one post. Also, I obviously took a lot more pictures than the two I put here, so those will be on facebook if you want to see them. If you're not my friend on facebook, you probably shouldn't  be reading this blog anyways. Creep.