ROMA!

My last day of school was very emotional. It was hard to say goodbye to all of the kids, especially when they were all crying and begging me to stay in Italy with them. I got pretty emotional just because it was so much to handle. After leaving school I had 2 hours to eat lunch, shower, pack, and get to the train station to catch my train to Rome. Lunch with Simona and Valentina was great (homemade gnocchi!) and Simona helped me so much with packing all of the gifts I brought during my time in Modena. The family also bought me a beautiful Swarovski crystal necklace to say thank you (even though I'm the one who owes them the thanks!) and it was such a sweet gesture. I said goodbye to Fillippo earlier in the morning, but Simona, Valentina, and Matteo all drove me to the station. Matteo even asked to be checked out of school early to see me off, which was HUGE because he's been so hesitant to open up to me during my stay. Matteo, from VLC, also came to see us off, which was very nice. Saying our goodbyes was sad, but Simona and I plan to keep in touch and Matteo is coming to visit UGA in November, so it wasn't goodbye for forever... hopefully not anyways.

After a 4 hour train ride Natalia, Jessica, and I finally arrived at the Rome train station. Our hostel was only a little ways away from the station so we chose to walk instead of taking the metro. It was a bit confusing since it was nighttime, the streets weren't marked well, and we had all of our luggage, but we finally made it to the hostel around 10 PM. Once we got there we buzzed in the office from the street and were surprised to hear blaring techno music coming from the speakers. A guy then came on and told us to come up, so we were buzzed in. Some really nice people were coming in at the same time as us and offered to help us bring our bags up the stairs, which was a huge help. When we finally got into the Ivanhoe hostel we were in shock; it looked like a discoteque, with black lights and techno music blasting from the stereo. It was hilarious. There was also an open bar with free, delicious Sangria, which we definitely took advantage of because drinks are so expensive here! Jessica and I stayed in an 8 bed mixed room with six guys from Canada who are backpacking around Europe. Natalia stayed in an 8 bed all-girl room with people from China, Singapore, and Thailand. Staying in a hostel is definitely an international experience!

After socializing a bit and grabbing some dinner we went back to the hostel to get ready for bed. It was only about 12:30 at this point, but we were exhausted from a long day of travel. The boys from Canada went to a pub crawl and woke us up at 4 AM, which wasn't fun, but it was hilarious listening to their stories from the night.

We woke up this morning, ate a delicious breakfast at the hostel, and made our way around Rome. Natalia, Jessica, and I basically visited as much as we could in one day, mainly because Natalia only has two days here and wants to see everything. Our list of destinations was HUGE and we walked for forever, but we got to see the Colosseo, Palatino, Roman Foro, Monumenti a Vittorio Emanuale II, Pantheon, Basilica di Santa Maria, Fontana di Trevi, Piazza Barbarini and the Fontana di Tritone, Piazza della Repubblica, and Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore. It would take way too long to write about each thing we saw (and I'm paying for my time on the internet), but everything was great. It's crazy to think about how old this city is... I love it!

The most exciting part of the day happened right after we stopped at the Colosseo (The Colosseum) because we ran into some people who Natalia knows from UGA! They're working here for the summer to recruit Americans to come on pub crawls around the bars in Rome and we just happened to run into them, which was great. They convinced us to go on their pub crawl tonight, so hopefully that'll be fun and not to exhausting because we've already had such a long day.

Tomorrow we're heading to the Vatican and San Pietro, so we're all really looking forward to that. I've actually got to run and get ready for tonight, but I'll write back again when I can!