Arezzo: The Beginning

Ciao amici! (Hi friends!)

If the past few days are any indication, I have a feeling I won't have the chance to blog super often... there is so much to do here! I will definitely try to write at least once or twice a week though so that you guys know that I'm alive.

The thing is, I don't know if you guys have heard, but Italy is freaking awesome! I've had the opportunity to walk around and explore Arezzo a lot more in the past few days, and it is such a cute town! There are definitely modernized areas, but the historic center is quaint and very old school. The other day we went on a walking tour and one of the coolest views I've ever seen was up at the highest point in town, looking over the city walls to the surrounding parts of Arezzo that are outside the "main city". Since I'm terrible at descriptions, I'll give you a few pictures.

They really don't even do it justice, to be honest. Anyway, so it was very cool to go on our little walking tour and see just a taste of what Arezzo has to offer.

One of the many hilarious things that have already happened in our first few days was the creation of our new catchphrase. At the risk of failing in humility, I have to say that I was the one who came up with it. We were talking during our welcome dinner last night (side note, it was amazing... a free 3 course meal in which my favorite dish we had was a black truffle tortolini pasta that was AH-MAZING) about how the whole "yolo" (a.k.a. "you only live once" for those not aware) thing is soooo 2012... but we needed a reason to order some more wine other than just that we were thirsty. So since yolo wasn't cutting it, I had the thought that we should just say "yoliio" --- an Italianized version of yolo, complete with the Italian hand gesture below, to stand for "you only live in Italy once". Because, let's face it, most of us probably won't have the chance to live in Italy for 4 months again. But yeah, everyone thought that was pretty funny and we've been throwing it out and hashtagging it ever since.

Thoroughly Italian kids over here

Speaking of #yoliio -- I actually had red wine with dinner last night and I even enjoyed it! I'm sure no one will be as surprised by this as my parents because, even though they are what some people may call wine connoisseurs, I have never really had much of a taste for it until now. But, I figured that while in Italy... You just gotta do it. Yoliio. And it was good! I'll keep you posted on my progress.

That's about all I've got for today... I don't have too much time, and I'm a pretty boring writer anyway, so I'll just leave you with some pictures.

 My room

 My room

 View from my room

 Next couple are of our apartment

 the Grand Piazza

 Building off of the Grand Piazza

 More Grand Piazza...

 Cool view of the sunset from the top of the Grand Piazza

 Random tree in the middle of it?

 Next few are of the Duomo, one of the churches in town that is at the top of the city

Park next to the Duomo

I made it!

I am officially an (albeit temporary) Italian resident! The last few days have been somewhat of a whirlwind, so this is pretty much the first chance I've had to sit down and reflect on them. I'll try to give a little recap of what happened because, let me tell ya, the first few days in a foreign country are CRAZY and also AWESOME but even more so, somewhat TERRIFYING!

So, I finally boarded my flight to Rome on Saturday night after quite a long time in the Philadelphia airport due to a delay. No biggie though... I was Italia-bound! About 9 hours and zero movies (yeah my inflight audio didn't work... I wasn't thrilled) later, I made it to Rome. It took me a little while to figure out that there wasn't a shuttle to my hotel since it was so close to the airport, so I eventually managed to somehow drag my highly-overpacked self across the walkway for the 7ish minute walk to the hotel. I checked in, blah blah showered, blah blah texted my parents, blah blah whatever... by about 4 pm I was ready to head into the city! For those of you that might not know, the Rome airport isn't technically in Rome. It's in Fiumicino which is about a half hour drive from the center of Rome. Anyyyyways, I took the shuttle from my hotel to Rome with plans to meet some friends from my program at the Trevi fountain at 5 o'clock (how cool is that??).

Unfortunately, my friends got the door to their bus literally shut in front of them and they couldn't make it into the city from their hotel. I lucked out, though, and met a really cool girl on the hotel shuttle from New York who was on her way back home from Amsterdam who wanted to check out the Trevi fountain and walk around for a few hours. So, we walked to the Trevi, took some pictures and looked for the two girls I was meeting, but after we couldn't find them for about a half hour we assumed they couldn't make it and took off to walk around and see other Roman sights.

I threw a wish in the well. Don't ask me, I'll never tell.

We saw the Spanish steps, the Pantheon, some Piazzas, and lots of cobblestones. Since we were only there for a few hours and it was raining for a lot of the time, we didn't get to see all the places that we would have liked. But that's okay... I have a feeling I'll have a chance to go back at some point in the next 4 months! 

We got dinner at a nice little restaurant called Ristorante XII Apostoli in Rome where I had the best lasagna I've ever had in my life. Then we walked some more and eventually went to a cafe where I got the thickest hot chocolate EVER. It was basically like drinkable fondue, which sounds gross but was actually pretty good. It was delicious to dip the cookies they gave us in.

I made it back to the hotel around 9:30 or 10 and just relaxed until Elizabeth, one of my current roommates, arrived to stay the night before we had to meet up with all of the people from our program the next day to make the journey to Arezzo. I somehow managed to stay up all day on Sunday to fight the jet lag until we finally went to bed around midnight. Victory!

After an amazing night's sleep, we headed back to the airport to meet with everyone and then take a charter bus to Arezzo. It was a 3 hour drive, but it was gorgeous. Like, never seen anything even close to it. You know in The Godfather when you see the rolling hills of green with sheep grazing? Yeah I saw those. We also saw a herd of sheep being shepherded by a car. Welcome to the 21st century?

Arezzo itself is very cool. It's more modernized than I thought it would be, but the historical center is still very much what I would think of as older Italy: narrow streets with stone, tall old buildings, piazzas everywhere. After we dropped our stuff off at our apartments, we all went to dinner together (I had very good ravioli) and then some of us who weren't quite ready to sleep yet walked around for a little bit and found a cool bar to hang out for awhile. Overall, it was an amazing first day, and I can't wait to see what else Arezzo has in store!