Wait, what time is it?...

This has been the longest day/two days imaginable. It's almost 9:30pm in Rome right now, we just got back from dinner, but it's only about 1:30pm back home and thus to my body. As of now I have gone 28 hours without sleep and we are all exhausted and loopy. It started with a 9 hour flight from Seatac to Amsterdam, and let me just say that I have learned my lesson. From now on I will always connect in New York, I will never again do a flight that long. Even though I kept busy watching 3 movies (The Changelings, Doubt, and Quantum of Solace, none of which impressed me much), by the 7th our I wanted off that plane more than you can understand. And coincidentally, at hour 7 the plane sickness started up and I was nautious for the entire day. Worse than I have ever been, I almost lost it on the connecting flight to Rome, the poor kid next to me looked genuinely worried I would get sick next to him...

But something about stepping off into the beautiful, sunny 65 degree Roman air miraculously healed me :) We made it through baggage and customs without any trouble, then split 2 cabs between 4 girls (plus mountains of luggage. the cabby was stunned). What they say about driving in Rome is absolutely true, I was terrified. Our cab got within inches of the cars in front, and would even get next to someone in the same lane sometimes to force them over! But he was a nice older guy, and once he realized I spoke enough Italian he began pointing out different places and buildings in Rome to us. He drove us past the Roman Forum, and laughed when I told him I thought the Circus Maximus would be bigger than that. He dropped us at the Rome Center in Piazza del Biscione/Camp dei Fiori and we got all checked in etc.

We then waited for about an hour until the whole group met for an orientation, which the exhausted and hungry ones in my flying group (including myself) barely made it through conscious. Then we all took more cabs back to our apartment across the river in an area of Rome called Trastavere, which was yet another taxi ordeal. But the apartment is very cute, it has 2 decently sized bedrooms, a foyer, kitchen, living room, and a tiny little bathroom. For the five of us it fits well. Now we just need to get the toilet to flush properly and the heat to turn on... When we try to turn the radiators on, they literally shoot a stream of water at us. It is surprisingly comical.

So seeing that our internal clocks are all messed up, we starved ourselves until about 5 when we finally got settled enough to go search for a tratorria or pizzaria on our block. After walking past about 5 closed restaurants, we remembered that Italian's take big lunches and then do very late dinners. So we had to wait until almost 8 to go out again and find an open place. We stoped at the first pizzaria, and were mostly too tired to be hungry anymore. So we each ordered what we thought was a slice of margherita pizza, and one of the girls ordered (for herself) a glass of house red wine and sparkling water. Nope, didn't happen. We instead got a bottle of water and a bottle of wine for the whole table--which we proudly finished so that we could take the bottle home, only to leave it there accidentaly--and each got an entire pizza! It was ridiculous, and we ate what we could but now we have enough left overs to make an entire pizza sitting in the fridge. So that was our trial run, our warm up. Tomorrow will be our redo first night out, and now we know what we're doing.

Alright, I am now the last one awake, though barely. Tomorrow we go to the mayor's office and hear about our internships at the Campodoglio (Capital). Wish me luck, I'll tell you all about it tomorrow!