Dear Mom,
I hope everything is going well at home so far! I know it’s only been about three weeks but I’m already missing everyone. I’m so grateful for your support throughout this entire process. From helping me renew my passport to driving me to the airport I’m truly blessed to have a parent whose main goal is to make sure I succeed in life.
As of right now, I am currently living on campus at one of John Cabot University’s apartments in Trastevere, a charming medieval neighborhood in the heart of Rome. When I arrived at my apartment on the first day, I was so amazed at the commodiousness, and cleanliness of it. My apartment has four bedrooms: a single, double and two triples as well as a storage room, kitchen, living and dining room. I’m living in the double with my roommate who goes to Texas Christian University. In total, I share the apartment with eight other girls who come from various universities such as the American University of Cairo, University of Wisconsin-Madison, as well as the University of Delaware. But… I know what you’re thinking… eight roommates?! How could anyone possibly live with eight roommates? Well.. to be honest it’s not really as bad as I thought. In fact, I would say there are some pros and cons that come with it.
One plus is that whenever I want to take a trip somewhere it’s nice to know that I least one of them would be happy to accompany me. In fact, one of my flatmates and I went exploring along the Trastevere neighborhood where we came across a beautiful view of Rome by climbing up the Gianicolo hill, as shown to the right. In fact, my flat mates in general are all friendly and respectful, we haven’t had an altercation once so I’m crossing my fingers and hoping for the best. However, on the downside, for the first week it was quite hard for me to figure out when I should shower. I thought having two bathrooms would make things easier however one of them is suitable for someone handicapped while the other one is not. Therefore a majority of my flatmates use the bigger bathroom since it’s easier to shower in during the day. The other bathroom is quite hard to stand in since the bathtub is curved in order for a handicapped person to sit and bathe. As a result, I try to shower as early as possible before any of my other flatmates wake up so that I can get dressed, brush my teeth and do my make up in time before class. Other than that, my only other con would be having to share one washer for laundry purposes. It seems like for the past three weeks either one of my flatmates is doing laundry every other day. Therefore, I’ve decided to do my laundry on the weekends since a majority of them tend to leave for weekend excursions. Overall, my flatmates and I are getting along pretty well. I can’t wait to learn more about them as the semester progresses!
In addition, my classes are going pretty well Mom, however, it was quite stressful the first week. I ended up dropping two courses I wanted to take due to the amount of work I saw listed on the syllabus. In fact, one of the classes I dropped was entirely in Italian so it was quite difficult for me to keep up. Therefore, I’m officially taking Health Psychology, Social Psychology, Child Development, Intermediate Italian II and Spanish 101. Yep, that’s right, I’m taking Italian and Spanish! Your daughter is well on her way to becoming multilingual.
For starters, so far I’m really enjoying my Health Psychology class; I had no idea psychology could play in role in the concept of health and illness. In fact, in my class we are currently learning about how to live past 100 in this day and age. Apparently, there are “Blue Zones” all over the world where people are able to live past 100 due to their daily lifestyle. However, my Social Psychology class is quite disinteresting from my perspective. The only reason I didn’t drop the class was mostly because of the fact that it is one of my major requirements in order to stay on track at Northeastern. Furthermore, my Child Development class couldn’t be any more helpful. I love learning about theories on infant and toddler development since I spent six months doing a co-op with this age group in Boston. As for my Italian class, I’m honored to have such an amazing professor who truly wants us to succeed. Not only am I augmenting my Italian skills but I also to get to practice them on the locals in the area. Lastly, taking Spanish 101 was not what I expected. On the first day of class my professor started speaking mostly in Spanish, therefore without any prior background knowledge of Spanish, I was quite lost. However, don’t worry, I managed to have her tutor me in the Foreign Language Resource Center which really helped. Overall, I’m looking forward to see what else I could learn from these classes as the semester progresses.
As for my first trip outside of Rome, Italy, on Saturday Jan. 27, I traveled to Tivoli, Lazio with three of my friends. This small town outside of Rome comprises various villas that tourists are able to visit for at least seven euros. My friends and I went to go visit Villa D’Este, a 16th century villa famous for its Italian renaissance gardens and its alluring fountains. The featured image on the blog post displays me sitting by one of these gorgeous fountains. Also, you probably won’t believe this Mom, but the entire day trip costs only 12 euros! The price of a round-trip ticket from Roma Termini to Tivoli was about five euros whereas the price to enter the villa coma out to be seven euros. Overall, with this day trip, I was able to save money and spend some amazing time with my friends.
Honestly Mom, I believe this semester is everything I could ever ask for and more! I’ll see you in three more months!
Warm regards,
Jade
