"Maps" is just "spam" spelled backwards.

Well, I have officially completed my first week of classes in Rome.  And that's all I'm going to say about that.

This week has been so full of adventures!!!  For starters, I got supremely lost and ended up in an Italian commercial.  I really just want to leave you with that, but I should probably elaborate.  After our first day of class, me and a friend decided to walk back to our apartment rather than take the tram, which is totally reasonable because we only live about a mile and a half away from school (although that's not including the 237 stairs we have to climb on the hill...).  What is not totally reasonable is that instead of following the tram tracks across the river and back to our place, we walked in the opposite direction. 

This slight error probably would have still been manageable if the streets ran horizontal and vertical like they do in the U.S.  However, THIS IS ROMA.

I think that blue thing is a river.

So yeah, South became North and we ultimately found ourselves heading to Germany.  As a result, we stumbled across some really neat sights, including but not limited to: the Pantheon, Piazza Navona, 32 gelato shops, and the Museum of Rome.  It was around this time that I realized we were about 2 miles North of where we lived, as well as on the wrong side of the river.  Oops.  But like I said, it's all good because we got a lot of adventuring in and made our way back.  And it was actually on our way back that we turned down one of these narrow streets and saw a huge group of people with filming equipment and a bunch of actors.  We literally didn't know what it was until we were practically on the set- they didn't have any of the streets blocked off.  We saw some other gawkers and they told us what was up.  So there may or may not be a shot of me in an Italian commercial. 

I've become much more familiar with the area since that first day.  Or probably because of it... At any rate, besides getting lost, I've also gone on some really cool site visits with my group!  Today, we went to the Forum and got to walk around all the old temples and excavation sites.  Rome is kind of surreal in this sense, because it is a city built on top of another city.  Literally, there are pits of ancient ruins and lush trees surrounded by paved streets and relatively modern buildings.  It's a little hard to imagine but extremely cool. 

I also got to check out the Colosseum today!  Needless to say, it was colossal!  I believe it was modeled after Soldier Field and created for a Paul McCartney concert or something like that.  It was crazy looking down into it from the top!  I never realized this before, but there is a maze inside it!  And all this time I thought it was an open arena... Damn you, Hollywood!

I still have many more things to see and discover, but I don't think I've done too bad for my first week.  I mean, with the exception that my diet now consists of pasta and gelato :)