Orientation @ IES

This morning I woke up at 7:00 and took my first run in Rome which was obviously amazing. I ran down a main street to the river then took the stairs down to the water side and ran three miles than ran around the other side and ran back another three miles. During my run I experienced so many different things from bums sleeping under bridges to stray dogs running around randomly. I love running here. I actually saw two of the girls running this morning that ended up being in my orientation. I got back to Morisini around 8:15 and we all showered; planning to leave for school by 9:00 a.m.

Once we arrived at class we went in the basement and met up with April who goes to school with Pat and I @ U of I and talked to her and her home-stay mate for awhile. Orientation was pretty boring they were just going over certain procedures and things of that manner. Finally at 1:00 p.m. they had a gourmet catered meal prepared for us on the terrace at our center. The food was all little sample appetizers but outstanding (as it usually is here). Everyone talked and we met some people which was pretty interesting. After lunch we went back and had more meetings and lectures, we each had to introduce ourselves to the class of 100+ and about 25% of the kids go to school together in California. But there are kids from everywhere from Penn State to Harvard to Tulane. It is crazy how many different people from everywhere are here together to allow themselves to experience the trip of a lifetime! Our meetings ended around 3:30 p.m. where the cell phone meetings began. There were two choices of phones but I chose the pre-paid phone so that I could not go crazy over minutes and texts so at this point my piece of garbage phone was free with up to 100 free texts a day and calls cost .16 cents a minute. My phone only has 22 euros on it. Hopefully it will work out to my advantage and I won't be using my phone so much here in Roma. After getting our phones everyone exchanged numbers but I met so many people that I barely remember any names, but no one does since everyone just wore name tags. I am terrible with names.

Overall, orientation was long and drawn out but definitely necessary for basic things that we should know about safety and that. We also tried to find a new way home from school and got lost of course, but that is okay because we will definitely get it down eventually. Tonight everyone is going to text/facebook and try to plan some pre-game somewhere. Word on the street is we are partying by the Colisseum. Anyways, I will keep you as updated as possilbe.

Ciao

p.s. we went out and got extremely lost but luckily ended up at the Vatican, maybe the most prestigious chapel in the history of the world.