Italy: Day 8

Today definitely made up for the last two days. This was definitely one of the longest days of my life.

We decided last night to go to the Angelo American Bookstore to get our textbooks for class this morning. I crawl out of bed at 8:55am and we meet Tim at the tram stop at 9am. We take the tram to the school and then walk a long ways. We go across the bridge to the other side of the river and walk some more. We finally make it to the spot where we are supposed to get on the bus, and there is no bus stop. It has apparently disappeared. So we continue to walk down the road till we come to the next bus stop. After getting on the bus we go 7 stops to one of the main bus stations. We finally get to the bookstore at 9:55am. Our directions from the school say that the bookstore opens at 10am. Come to find out it doesn't open until 10:30am.

So we walk down the street to grab some breakfast. When it hits 10:30am we walk back to the bookstore to get our textbooks. I spent 368 Euro on textbooks and that is including a 15% discount. Tim spent 88 Euro, but they didn't have all the books he needed (which is unfortunate because this is where the school orders the books through).  After getting all my textbooks into a bag, we walk back to the main bus station. We look for the bus that goes to Argentina (bus 53). We take this bus 25 stops and get off at what we think is the right stop. As we look at our surronding, we realize that we are in the middle of nowhere. I would describe it as the suburbs of Rome (without the houses, everyone lives in apartments).

We have no idea where we are, so we result to calling Lisa (the SAI advisor). She asks what bus we took and after we tell her she replies, "oh I have never taken that one before." Which isn't a good sign, considering she lives in Rome. She says she will find us directions and then call us back. We stand around for what seems like forever before she finally texts Tim the directions. By the time this is all happening it is after 11am and Tim has class at 12pm.

Lisa tells us we need to get on the 910 bus and take it 7 stops. Then get on the 280 bus and take that 20 stops.  And we would end up right in front of the campus. After this long adventure, we finally got back to campus at 1pm. Tim missed his class and I still needed to go back to the apartment and get my stuff for my 2:15pm class. Who would have thought that it would take 4 hours to get textbooks?

I made back to campus just in time for my class. After class I headed right back to the apartment and passed out. When I woke up, I showered and got ready to go out for dinner. We felt that we deserved a night out after the day we had. So we headed over to the pizza place between Tim's and ours apartment.

This restaurant has become my new favorite. The lady (whom we think owns the place) wheres little tank tops and her boobs kinda spill out. We call her Tata (not her real name). We decided to stick with the normal and Tim, Bliss, and I ordered cheese pizza. Tynisha decided to order some lasgna. Tata said, "so four orders of lasagna, si?" We all laughed it off, thinking she was joking about it. NOPE. The waiters brought out four orders of lasagna. We were absolutely shocked by the situation, but the lasagna was delicious.

After getting the food, Tim decided he had to document the evidence. So he was taking pictures of the food. During this time, a waiter showed up behind me and asked Tim to take a photo of me and the waiter. Tim laughed it off and the waiter walked away. Then Tata came back over and gave me a high-five and told me to finish my lasagna (cause apparently I wasn't eating it fast enough). Let me point out a very important fact before I continue. This restaurant is a very nice sit down restaurant. It is NOT fast food. The waiters are all wearing black pants and vests. It is very classy. So what happened next took my by surprise.

Tata was walking by and I smiled at her. She came up to me and grabbed my face and started shaking it. Apparently this means she likes me? It was the funniest thing ever. I was in shock. That type of thing would never happen in the U.S. We have decided to make this restaurant our Thursday night dinner place.  OH! And Tata has a little dog that runs all over the restaurant (again this wouldn't be allowed in the states).

Let me throw in the part about Tim and the homeless guy quick. When we were walking to dinner, we came across a homeless guy on the sidewalk. We didn't notice him right away because he was covered in blankets. But as we walked by, he started moving up and down. Tim was the closest to him. Tim got totally creeped out and took off running down the sidewalk. THEN...after we had dinner, we had to turn around and walk back past the homeless guy. At first we didn't think he was there. But then we saw him creeping inbetween two vehicles on the street. Tim swears the the homeless guy was taking a poop on the street. And again, Tim started running away.

Anyways... after an exciting dinner, we head up to Tim's apartment to meet up with the rest of the guys. We were planning on going out and having a few drinks to end our night. It took awhile to get everyone ready and we headed out around 11pm. We were gonna hope the tram and head over to the bars by campus. But last minute the guys decide to go the complete opposite direction. So we run across the street, dodging traffic to reach the tram before it pulled away. Luckily we all made it on.

We got off the tram at the very next stop. None of us had any idea who was leading or where we were going. Most of the guys went inside a cafe while Tim, Bliss, Tynisha, Cuyler, and I all waited outside. When the other guys came out, they said we were going to walk 20 minutes to a discotec. Tim and I weren't to thrilled about the idea. We both had a gut feeling, but we went along with the group.

We literally walked to the ghetto of Rome. Tim became really protective and walked behind Bliss and I. It was really great knowing we had him looking out for us. Tim said he didn't want our dad to get the Marines to cut his balls off if we got hurt.

Well after asking directions from three different groups of people, we finally make it to the club area. This area seemed very Italian. By this I mean, no Americans. We didn't go into the first club because it was really busy and we didn't feel right about it. So we walked down to the next one. This one was a steakhouse, which we felt may have catered a little more to Americans. Cuyler and Antone walked up to the bouncer and the bouncer told the to turn around and leave.

After that happened, Tim, Bliss, Tynisha and I just turned around and left. Everyone else stayed behind, but we weren't having it. We finally made it back to our apartment at 1am. I didn't have so much as a drop of alcohol and it just added to the stress of the morning.