day 2: arrival
at the great risk of sounding corny, i'd like to preface this by saying that thinking back to this day is a very strange feeling. one year ago i met 40-odd people who certainly changed my life, almost exclusively for the better. all things start somewhere i suppose.
la foto più bella
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the day's events:
arrived early morning at Fiumicino with Boss Meg (who i guess already was Boss Meg, but i didn't know to call her that yet). claimed our bags, passed through passport control and the essentially nonexistant customs. so much stuff in Fiumicino (including some advertisements) is in English that culture shock hadn't set in at all. we were able to find the taxi stand pretty well, but had a little trouble communicating where we were going. i had it written on an index card, an address that i now have committed to memory: Via A. Algardi 19. the cab driver and another man at the taxi stand tried to figure it out, they were looking in some sort of directory that looked like a small phone book, and they eventually decided that the place we were going was near the "American School" (which i now understand is the American University of Rome, about 4 blocks from the Centro). on the autostrada, Meg tried to strike up a conversation with the driver, who, truthfully or not, responded that he didn't know English beyond the business he'd already transacted with us. we rode in relative silence into the city, along roads that i could probably recognize now. as we got close to the Centro neighborhood i though it looked like a bad place to live. now i realize that it just looked urban, which is bad in the US but not in Italy.
when we got close to the Centro, Meg spotted it by sight and the taxi stopped just outside the gate. we rang to get in, and Letizia came out and helped us bring our bags in. i think we were the first arrivals that morning, but there were a few people already there. i had heard that the corner rooms were largest so i was excited when i was shown all the way to the end of the hall. too bad i had drawn the wrong corner. i was less than impressed with the size of my room (which was probably about as big as my single the previous semester).
after dropping off my bags i went around trying to meet people. i remember meeting Megan, but no one else stands out particularly. we went up to the terrace and were chatting when Luke came in. he came and joined us after that.
for lunch we went down to the pizzeria on Ottavilla. Megan led a whole group of us...man we were bad at ordering. i think i mumbled something that wasn't quite italian and just pointed. thank goodness we chose the friendliest of the local pizzerie. from there we walked up to the park, sat down in the grass and had lunch. after lunch we wandered the park and i took a bunch of photos. umbrella pines were at that point still a novelty. we took a long walk...i don't think i ever ventured as far into the park as i did that first day (later on i stuck to the shade trees right near the villa proper)
i'm not sure how i spent the afternoon. [update: duh i remember how i spent the afternoon. i watched my first ever Lazio game. i believe i actually semi-misconstrued Walsh as a student because he was sitting in the lobby like he was supposed to be there (and i hadn't seen any other profs all day) and he must have got a haircut recently because he wasn't looking too grey. so, in my complete ignorance, i sat down and watched the calcio. (i did figure out who he was.) Lazio drew with Parma 1-1 (yeah i had to look that up).] i did some unpacking (including a hilarious battle with the cable ties on my luggage. why couldn't the TSA have opened the one suitcase that had scissors in them? i wound up hacking it off with my house key.) i can't remember when exactly Brett arrived, but it wasn't until fairly late in the day.
in the evening there were two groups that decided to go to dinner. long story short, i sided with the wrong one, we couldn't find a restaurant (it was Sunday after all), i stepped in dog shit twice (in my new shoes), and i went back home tired, hungry, and cranky. apparently (i have no recollection of this): "back at the Centro i turned on the late NFL playoff game and dozed off in the second quarter, so i went to bed. i hear carolina won."
