Ok so this
is my first blog post and i am afraid it is one month into my trip to Rome but
it has been such a busy and crazy month that i have not got round to doing one
yet. Excuse please the poor and uninteresting lay out of my blog. I am not
sure really how to use this site, but i am sure i can work it out along the
way. I don't really know where to begin as the past month has been such an
exciting but emotional roller coaster I could never describe in detail
everything that has happened so i will just give you snippets of my first
month. So me and Liv flew out here on 11th September and arrived in Rome during
the evening. While we looked for an apartment we stayed in two hostels. The
first was very nice, clean, spacious and safe. It was near Termini which is not
a great area but it was a useful location. On arrival we were greeted by an
extremely creepy guy, but he turned out to be actually very helpful and kind to
us. We just had to try and ignore his inappropriate jokes and strange looks.
Looking for a apartment was extremely stressful and difficult. I expected this as
we had been given absolutely no help from the university with accommodation -
all they told us was that Rome was one of the hardest places in Europe to find
somewhere to live - brilliant. We spent
most of our first 4 days on the internet in the hostel and visited sites at
night to keep us sane. We struggled massively due to two reasons. One, many
people lied about the location of the apartments they were trying to rent and
also Italians do not email. So this meant that we wasted a lot of time being
interested in apartments that were in completely the wrong location and also we
had to attempt to speak with Italians on the phone. It was difficult to
understand we managed eventually. We finally found an apartment that we loved 5
days in to our search. There was one small problem though, we could not move in
until 30th September. This was the worst possible news and at this point i was
ready to get on a plane home. The landlady offered us accommodation in a room
they had in their apartment block which was very kind of them to offer until
they expected 40 euro a night as well! So we had the choice of either paying
for another 2 weeks in a hostel which was an unthinkable amount of money, staying
in basically a cupboard which had barely any daylight and no wifi, for again an
unthinkable amount of money or continue the search for another apartment. However
we were rescued by Kelly and Roy , family friends. They let us stay in their
beautiful apartment for two weeks until we could move in. We stayed two nights
in a horrendous hostel (it was dark, dirty and our room had no safe) and then went
to stay with them. I have never been so grateful in my life. Not only did they
save us a lot of money each but we also could have the apartment that we loved.
Their apartment in is a lovely area of Rome. We had our own rooms each and
could watch english television! I do not know what kind of state i would have
been in if they had not come to our rescue. During the two weeks we stayed there
did a lot of relaxing. We sunbathed quite a bit, went to the British embassy
pool which was wonderful as the weather at this point was around 30 every day.
We met our future house mates which was great and it was nice being able to
practise our Italian. We then thought that it was probably a good idea to visit
the university but we had had no communication at all with them. No emails,
nothing. But we realised very quickly that this was a reflection of university
in general. They don't really care about Erasmus students. We had to find all
information ourselves and most of it we found on facebook (if you didn't have
facebook i don't know what you would do). Administration here is so poor. We
needed the university stamp on a form and this took 2 and a half hours. Our
'welcome meeting' was more about drinking erasmus events than anything else. We
didn't get told any course information and teachers here do not do 'office
hours'. Our erasmus coordinator's office hours are 1 hour 2 days a week ' not helpful.
We moved in to our apartment on 1st October. I was actually very sad to be
leaving Kelly and Roy as they had looked after us so well. But i was very
excited to move in and feel more settled. So we have been in our apartment now
nearly two weeks. It is a very nice apartment in Piazza Bologna which is a student
area on metro line B. My room is very, very big, probably too big but we
visited Ikea so it feels now a bit more
homely. We have been attempting university but it is a lot different to
England. You don't sign up to any courses only the exams so i have yet to start
properly as up until now we have just been going to any courses we want to see
if we like them. But my method of choosing my course is based on how nice the
teacher is how well i can understand them or not. I went to a literature class
yesterday and i understood absolutely nothing the man said - and that is not an
exaggeration. We have been on a lot of fun nights out, to bars, piazzas and
clubs with other Erasmus students and Roberta, our house mate and her friends.
Last weekend we went to a Wine festival in Marino which was very fun but not
classy like it sounds! lots of very cheap good wine. So there it is, i tried to
be concise but there is really too much to tell! But from now on i will try
post more frequently so i can give a more detailed description of everything
that happens. Hope you like the photos!
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