Life as a Centrista

Since you're all reading about my life in Rome, I thought I'd give you an idea of where I'm actually living and what my day-to-day life is like. You know, so you can spend your whole day imagining what my day is like. I live in the Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies, AKA the Centro. That's 'center' in Italian, for you. Here it is in all it's glory:

 Living at the Centro is unlike any school experience I've had, since we have our classes, meals, and sleepy-times all in one space. The first floor has a library with a constant temperature of about 10 degrees, a classroom, offices and a living room area in which I spend disgusting amounts of time sitting in one spot studying. Next two floors are rooms and bathrooms, and the top floor is another classroom and a little work-out area. The basement has 2 little dining rooms where we do our eating.
Since the space is not huge, and there are 36 of us, you basically see everyone all the time. At meals, in class, field trips, studying, everywhere. At this point it's nice. I'll touch on that again about half way into the semester...

My room is kind of tiny, but has a sink and a huge window, and someone else is responsible for taking the trash out, so I'm pretty satisfied. Here's what that looks like:

Again, it's tiny. If I back my chair up all the way you can't open the closet, or really walk out of the room. So I don't really spend much time in there, hence the sitting in one spot in the living room all day. Also, that way I am actually being social and seeing people.

A normal day at the Centro: Wake up around 7:30. Grumble about how early it is. Breakfast at 8:00. Mondays we have class at 9, Tuesday and Wednesday we have field trips, and Thursday and Friday I have nothing until 4:00. Lunch is at 1:00, and is usually a nice hearty soup and some other fun thing, like fried zucchini flowers (that's a thing people eat!). Afternoon classes, general nothingness, and dinner at 7:30 (which is a very long time away from 1:00), which is some amazing pasta dish that will make me hate my life whenever I eat pasta in America, then a second course of some meat dish, and every night, dessert. Pannacota, gelato, tiramisu. You know, the usual. Luckily, our field trips require a lot of fast-paced, often up-hill walking, so maybe I will not gain 20 pounds, and only gain 10.

The people here are awesome too. Everyone is a classics major, which is an unimaginable difference from my normal life. No one to make fun of my major and tell me dead languages don't count! (That is personally directed at you, [insert friend from home's name here]). I'd say 80% of my discussions with people here are about Greek, Latin, some classics joke or the reading we all had to do for class. People don't talk about science all the time! It's great!

That's all I have to say about the actual program for now. As for my life, since Saturday morning not much has happened. I had mussels for the first time (kind of by accident, but they were good!), found people to play Settlers of Catan with, built some puzzles and had amazing pizza and gelato. And now it's Monday, so I am awaiting another amazing week! Ciao!