Day 5 - January 29th 2009 Rome, Italy

Arose this morning at 8:30am to travel with Audra for our introduction to the tram and bus system getting to the Lorenzo de’Medici school. It is about a 15 minute tram ride then a 15 minute bus ride with minimal traffic to get to Via XX Settembre where our school is located. It is right near the Presidential palace and quattro Fontane intersection. We arrived at the school after about 40 mins because traffic was bad and walked up the stairs to the 3rd floor. Lorenzo de’Medici or LdM for short is a recently renovated school that takes up only one floor of the building with 4 classrooms, a small library, computer lab and a few administrative offices. I finally got to see the other students attending LdM this semester, a few coming from Mexico, and the others mostly like where we are from, eastern United States. We heard presentations from the administrators then a woman came in to speak from the US Embassy in Rome. She told us about all the stupid things abroad students have done in the past like get drunk and try to go swimming in the Tiber River. She noted that this was behavior we would want to avoid if trying to have a safe and successful study abroad. The consulate official finished her presentation and we had lunch, and a delicious one at that. Some veal cutlets, potatoes, and a few other things I cannot name at the moment but were scrumptious just the same. Lunch was followed by a walking tour of a few spots around our school that the administrators wanted to show us, a great pizzeria, hair salon, the quattro Fontane again, the direction of the Spanish steps, Trevi fountain, statue of Vittorio Emmanuele etc. They also gave us this red card that gets sconti or discounts at most of the places they showed us. Finishing the walking tour we were back on our own so Ryan and I decided to check out the menswear on Via Nazionale. We cruised and window shopped for a bit then ducked into a store named Big and Kids. The owner and a woman were inside and I asked the woman about looking at shoes and overcoat jackets. I had no idea what I had gotten myself into. A whirlwind of clothes started flying at me and in no time I was wearing black leather spats, a sweatervest, and a wool cappotto overcoat. I was not used to the slightly feminine way of masculine dress even though I knew it beforehand and had already seen it all over, but when the woman brought out the purple argyle sweater, I tried it on and immediately looked over at the owner and asked “Come si dice....gay?” He had quite a laugh over this. I ended up walking out of the store with nothing bought while Ryan got a shirt and a better looking sweater than the purple one I tried on. We went back to the apartment, had some dinner and tucked it in for some rest.