Ciao! After packing (and repacking several times) over the last week, the day has arrived: My flight to the next five months of my life in Rome, Italy! While trying to weigh my luggage at home was a small feat, I managed to condense my check-in bag to a solid 69lbs (1lb under!) and cram the rest into my carry-ons. The stress was brewing on my car ride to the airport, as I did not have my COVID test results back yet. Luckily enough, they arrived as soon as we parked at the airport; taking this as the ultimate sign that I was meant to be going to Rome. In all reality, my type-A personality planned slightly TOO far in advance to be at the airport, so after my family goodbyes, I waited in anticipation for my flight for about two hours.

I arrived in Amsterdam after my six-hour flight and sprinted to my next gate (though kind of hard to run when all the escalators are turned off and I am carrying three bags up many, many flights of stairs…). It was a considerably foggy morning, so my flight got delayed, my gate changed, I “ran” back down the stairs to my new gate, and it was finally time to go. My flights went smoothly, though all my attempts to sleep on the plane failed. After arriving at FCO and grabbing a trolley for my enormous amount of luggage, I met up with a Mizzou friend to head to our John Cabot University guides.

It was nonstop “to-dos” from there. We sent our luggage with the apartment hands and headed straight to our school orientation! It was a pretty quick turnaround and we finally arrived at our apartment to unpack and settle in. Come to find out I am not great at handling luggage and keys; I quickly got the door jammed so we met our other five roommates through a silly conversation behind the door. If we’re honest, it was probably the best icebreaker that could have occurred.

The next couple of days we took tours across the various parts of Rome to see the city, the Colosseum, the Vatican and other remarkable places. While I love these must-see spots, our neighborhood of Trastevere felt like home right away with its late-night college crowd buzz, pubs and crazy cab drivers. And although we did a bit of grocery shopping along the way, nothing beats a real Italian dinner. My roommates (or ROMEmates if you will) and I go out to aperitivo and dinners often and try a new gelato place almost every night. It is safe to say these last two weeks in Rome have been a whirlwind in the best way possible. I have never been surrounded by so much history, tiny alleyways or uneven brick roads, but I have been grounding my feet here more and more as each day passes.