The Night of Darkness

Let's see, where to begin. 

Yesterday I had my first Italian class for the semester, aaaand my first test! WOOT. It was just a placement test and I certainly remembered more than I thought I would but three was still a considerable amount of things I did not remember. Whoops. And it was followed by a short oral quiz with the professor so she could assess our speaking skills. It looks like I'm going to stay in the class but I'll just have to study hard! So we'll see how that goes! Yesterday was also torrential downpour day, which of course I LOVED. And to make things even better, I found our university's library yesterday and cuddled up in a little dimly-lit room with windows overlooking the terrace to eat my lunch and do some work during a break between classes. And to finish off the recounting of September 4th, we had another apartment dinner, this time of spaghetti and meatballs with garlic bread. Classic Italian, right? Have I mentioned these dinners before? Maybe? Just a re-cap, we have some pretty decent cooks in the apartment and so far we've had herb chicken and rice, beef stew, and spaghetti and meatballs. It amazes me how cheap it is to eat in! A dinner in Rome at a dinner-y restaurant would cost about €12. When we've cooked in, it's only been about €2! How great is that! If I can save money on dinners and then use that money to travel, you can bet I'm doing it! 

Oh, and I almost forgot (how could I forget?!) post-dinner, we had a major travel booking session. I mean major. Lindsey, Abbie, and I booked our flight to Milan for late September. We're going to try to link in Cinque Terre too,  but either way it's bound to be wonderful! And then, we booked our fall break flights too. Have I mentioned this? We're doing Paris, London, and Dublin! EEEEEKKKK!!!!! So crazy and so fun. I still can't quite believe I'm actually so close to all of this! 

Now, moving on to today. It was a tad bit less eventful (or so I thought). Class at 9, lunch, nap, class at 3:40, home, dinner, gelato. Fairly simple, right? Oh no, Rome threw a curveball. I was getting ready to get into the shower when, boom, darkness. That's right, my friends, we had our first power outage. Hip-hip-not-hooray. We had been told time and time again Roman apartments have an electricity limit and if you have too much plugged in and too much running the power will shut down. (For perspective, one lady told us she can not have the washer running and be ironing clothes at the same time.) Supposedly there's the simple solution of unplugging/turning off a couple of things and flipping a few switches and shabang you've got power. We were a bit puzzled to find that the power had gone out, seeing as we had very little plugged in, especially compared to some other times in the past. Still, we circled the apartment and unplugged whatever we could find...flipped the switches...aaaand....nothing. Nada. Zilch. So here we sit in the darkness, with only our computers and our iPods to light our way. We don't really have anyone to call to fix it because if we call after 5 and it's not an emergency (which we don't suppose this is) we get charged. No bueno. So, we're just toughing it out until the morning light and we'll figure it out tomorrow! Luckily, Rome has enough city lighting to make it bearable. But still, you want to know what our apartment looks like right now? Please, let me show you!

yes, this is an actual picture of our living room. can't you see the TV? ya, me neither.

Oh, and another tidbit, just about 20 minutes before the power went out I had the lovely experience of hearing someone play the piano. Ironically, I've heard people playing the piano a total of three times today and this is the first I've hear since arriving in Rome. This instance was special thought because I was in my bedroom. And the piano is on the other side of the wall. Like right. there. Probably a grand total of three feet from where my head lies on my bead. And what musical masterpiece was this Beethoven playing? None other than the magnificent "Three Blind Mice." And you know when you were a kid and you were practicing the piano and you would get frustrated so you would just bang on the lower, deep keys? Ya, apparently they do that in Italy too. So it'll certainly be interesting to see how this pans out over the next couple of months! 

Oh, and one final thought for you. In case you were wondering, I get to climb 60 stairs every time I come home to my apartment and 90 stairs at 9 am three times a week to get to my morning classes. Yes. I counted. Who loves morning workouts? Apparently this girl! 

So for now, goodnight, from a girl sitting in her dark apartment in Rome!

Ciao!