Thursday, January 17th
A visit to ancient ruins outside of Rome with Fabio the tour guide, a traditional five course meal, and bus ride with 70 jet-lagged college students.
Day 2 was just a lot of legal paperwork and orientation formalities so I won't go over that day as much. I did have my first plate of authentic pasta and some gelato though which was as wonderful as I hoped it would be.
Day 3 was nuts.
It started with us meeting at one of the campus buildings at 8:30am which is a lot to ask of students, so it was bold of them to ask this of students who also where now under the impression that time is just an allusion. However, everyone seemed to make it. We took about a 40 minute ride to Ostia. This was essentially an entire town from thousands of years ago in great condition. Fabio was our tour guide for this part of the day and he quickly became our favorite tour guide because he was the most excited person I've ever seen talk to a group of tired students about Roman history. He also tried really hard to make jokes along the way and we appreciated that. Fabio gave us another tour later but that's for another post.
After the tour we went to restaurant that was about 45 minutes from Ostia. Imagine a wedding venue from a high budget Four Weddings episode; that's where we ate. We had a 5 course meal that included chicken, potatoes, spaghetti, pizza, spinach, cheese, and lots of wine. After that we loaded back onto the buses for the hour or so long ride back to school.
Since we now had quite a few overserved, over-tired, and over-fed students on a bus that was navigating winding streets...not many were feeling well afterwards. We got back around 5pm and everybody stayed in including my roommates and I. Ally (my roommate) and I went to bed around 8pm and I slept through the entire night.