You may have the universe if I may have Italy

Ciao! I have made it!  From the fading early morning layer of San Francisco fog to the snow covered runway of Atlanta to the sunny yet wintry chill of Rome, my arrival on the John Felice Rome Center campus has been long-awaited.  I have dreamt of this trip for months, for years really, but it has finally settled in that it is no longer a dream.  I have made it to Italy and there is no turning back.  In “De Gustibus,” Robert Browning wrote, “Open your heart and you will see graved inside of it,'Italy.' Such lovers old are I and she; So it always was, so it still shall be!” If at the end of this I can walk away saying close to the same thing, if I can fall in love as strongly with Italy as he did, then my trip will have been worthwhile.  And so, with two suitcases and a backpack containing as much of home as I could fit in them, I arrived as the sun was rising in Rome, passport in hand, extremely tired, slightly disheveled, and in need of a real meal.  I was dropped off at the gates to campus and buzzed in by the guard, and as I rolled my suitcase over the stone walkways littered with fallen oranges toward the great brick building that was now to be my home, it all hit me.  For the next four or five months, Italy is my playground and I get to explore as much as I desire.  Following a whirlwind of registration, I lugged my sixty pound suitcase up three flights of stairs (yes, I did almost topple over a few times) and pulled open the dusty shutters of my dorm room.  This semester will be life-changing – enlightening, instructive, adventurous, and terrifying.  I have chosen to trade in my USF student ID for a Loyola one, my apartment for a dorm room and rock-hard twin bed, my Muni pass for a visa, and have started my spring semester in Roma. 

My Professore Italiano explained today the lifestyle of Italians, something I have not had that much time to see for myself.  He said that they wake up, have coffee, think about what they will do for the day, have coffee, work for about an hour, have coffee, got to lunch, have coffee, work for another hour, have coffee, eat dinner, have coffee, and go to sleep.  While we in the United States live to work, they work to live – and take about eleven hours to complete what we would do in three.  Yet there are three times when this slow-paced “switch” is turned off.  1) When they drive.  In my forty minute drive from the airport I was convinced there were about five times we were going to die.  Not only was my taxi driver screaming on the phone in Italian, but he was swerving in and out of traffic, driving on the wrong side of the road, running red lights, and cutting off other traffic.  I have seen cars and motorcycles literally drive up onto the sidewalk to get through traffic.  And all of this is to get to work and…have a cup of coffee.  2) When they eat.  Forget if you have had their six courses already, apparently they will not take “no” for an answer.  And meals are on a completely different level and schedule here.  Breakfast usually consists of coffee and some sort of dolce – a sweet pastry (mine today was a warmed up chocolate croissant that was delizioso) that gives you just enough sugar to start your morning.  Some businesses shut down for hours at a time during lunch, and dinner is not until later, maybe around nine or ten at night.  3) Soccer.  I have been told that if there is absolutely one thing I must do while in Rome, it is to attend a soccer game.  Apparently, if I do not support AS Roma I will be shunned, and screaming FORZA ROMA in the hallways after quiet hours will not get me in trouble.  Yet for all this slow-paced to insanely fast mentality of Italian life, there is a quality of beauty that remains consistently strong.  Italians see beauty in everything, and hold it to a high standard.  Rome is a city with an extraordinarily rich history and culture, but above all it is a city steeped in beauty and teeming with life, and it is this that I have set out to find.

My dorm room

View from our window

Sunset from our window