Summary of the First Two/Three Weeks Part III

As I'm waiting for my pizza to heat up in the oven now seems like a good time to continue...

The way the classes work is that first there is a 3 week intensive course in just Italian, and there are two slots time slots, mornings 9:30-1 and afternoon/evening 3-6:30. At a mandatory meeting they gave us an option to choose either the morning or afternoon class. I chose the morning class as my preference. Out of 124 students, 122 also chose morning. So I got the afternoon class. My whole day is kinda gone because I get back home by 7 the earliest but oh well, at least I get to sleep in. And the walk to school is about 25/30 min and is really amazing. I pass by the Vatican (I live on 135 Via Candia, you can look it up on google maps) and of course pass by La Basilica di San Pietro (St. Peter's) which, is really big and is designed by Bernini, the greatest sculptor ever who basically designed all of Rome's masterpieces. The first part of my walk gets me right along the Vatican walls. Then once you follow the walls you get to St. Peter's.

This is one of the roads I walk on to school. That of course is La Basilica di San Pietro in the background. A closer look below... (not my pic)


Then after that I take the road down and cross the fiume Tevere (Tiber River) on Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, which is one of the bridges that crosses over the river. This is a photo I took on the bridge of another bridge.
To the left you can see the St. Angelo's Castle. Or just look below.The bridge itself has many statues on it, which are some of my favorite sites on my walk to school. I really like the lion heads at the base of the statues...
My Italain class is pretty fun. My teacher is a crazy Italian guy named Mario. Since there's only 18 of us in the class Mario knows each of us pretty well and we have a lot of fun. Since I'm taking the beginner's class it's pretty easy and I actually understand and speak Italian on the streets from time to time. The next week is where I established my routine. I get up, make myself breakfast, go do errands if I have to (like buy pasta sauce from the supermarket or buy groceries from the open air market) and then eventually I head to school. School actually goes by pretty quickly and I get home about 7. By then I'm all sweaty and I usually take a shower and always make myself something to eat. From there I can do homework and then go out if I want to. That's pretty much it for the first week, but on the next post I'll talk about my day trip to Orvieto. Stay tuned...