First Full Day
Yesterday was an interesting day. I made it to the residence pretty easily, all considering. In fact, the only problem I had (and I’m ashamed and mad to admit it) is that I really got ripped off by the taxi driver. You see, my ride over cost close to fifty Euros (way to high to begin with when I could have taken the metro for a Euro and then walked for about five minutes). Well, I handed him a fifty, he walked away and turned around and told me that I only gave him a ten and gave it back to me. Well, I didn’t think about it at the time because I was tired and stressed and just wanted to get into my residence, so I apologized thinking that I had grabbed the wrong bill (possible considering I really haven’t gotten the grasp of the Euros colors) and so I gave him another fifty. Well, later that night we had an orientation meeting and the instructors talked about how we need to be careful for pickpockets, it was then that I realized that he had switched the bills on me trying to get more money from. How do I know that he did this…well, thinking back, I had counted my money that morning and all I had was fifties, so he screwed me good and made 90 Euros off of me. Now that sucks and I am pissed to admit that but it is all a learning experience.
My apartment actually is a lot better than I thought that it would be. It has two bedrooms with two beds in each (I have three roommates: James, Matt, and Steve), a huge balcony that wraps around, and, the best thing out of all that, we are the only apartment here that has air conditioning. So that is great!!!
My roommates are pretty cool from what I can tell so far. James, Matt, and I have hung out the entire time so far. Last night, we went on a thing call the pub crawl. It is actually for foreign travelers and Italians aren’t allowed. You have to be invited on it from the people who run it and be given a ticket which states the time and place to meet. Last night, the meeting place was in a piazza overlooking the Coliseum. That was my first thing that I have thing that I wanted to see and have studied about and it was absolutely amazing. It was at night and it was all covered in lights. The pub crawl was ok, not as fun as I thought it would be though. What it involves is that all these people meet and you drink as much free beer as you can (after paying the fee to be there) for an hour, which includes some drinking games, and then everyone walks to five bars. At each bar, you are given a free shot as you walk in the doors and then have to pay for everything after that. So, it ended up being a little expensive yesterday all considering and now I can’t spend that much for the next couple of days.
In fact, on the money issue. It is going to be hard to afford all of this as far as I can tell. The Euro makes the dollar not too far and things are even more expensive here on top of that, which makes all of it a doubled edge sword about stretching my money out. I’m doing better today though and have only spent money for lunch. When looking at it all, I probably will not eat another meal today and only one meal a day for most of the time so that I can make this work. But we’ll see.
I was tired this morning and had a really boring history lesson class today as well so I came back after lunch and took a nap. So, I think I’m going to go walk around for a little bit right now before I come back early to go to bed. I have to get up really early tomorrow to leave for Todi. Todi is a small town in Umbria where some of the best wines in Italy are made. I guess, the school has a big lunch planned for us there too which is free tomorrow (that will help me out on my money situation). On top of that, I have 60 pages of reading to do for Monday….
….talk to you all later
posted by Attakid8 @ 3:58 PM
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