Week 1-Rome

I have been back in Rome for a week now and don't have too much to report on.  I've been staying at Giuseppe and Francesco's apartment as it has been in the 100's everyday since we've been back. It's too hot to even go out and walk around, so I usually end up staying in the apartment watching shows online, catching up with friends, applying for jobs and, of course, eating. The boys never let me go hungry, that's for certain!

I did go out for a walk yesterday and found a little grocery store nearby. I didn't know at the time, but I later found out that it is a discount store and the quality of food is not great from there.  Francesco didn't work last night and I thought it would be nice if I made him dinner, for once. I'm at the grocery and I see these "breaded meats" in the meat section...I understood that one was breaded spinach and the other was chicken, but I thought the third was fish.  I was in the mood for fish, so I decided to buy it even though I didn't know what "tacchino" was.  I came home, looked it up, and found out it's turkey...oops! Francesco was nice about complimenting me on my dinner, but I knew that it was not very good...fail! I promised to make a better dinner for him next time.

Back to the grocery store.  I was scared to go as it was my first time at a store without an Italian, but I knew that I would have to buck up and go at some point.  In Irsina, when you want produce, there is a person working that puts it in the bag for you.  I was uncertain if that's how it worked here in Rome, as well.  I watched someone put their produce in the bag themselves, so I did the same. I'm standing in line to check-out and notice that the person in front of me with produce has a sticker on their bag with a bar code and price.  I was worried that I really wasn't supposed to put the produce in the bag myself and left the line to figure out what to do.  I had to find out how and where to get the sticker with the price! After standing in the produce section for what felt like forever, I watched someone go up to a machine, weigh their produce, type in a code and out came a sticker. It wasn't difficult at all, but it was something that I was not used to.  It's all part of the learning process of being in a foreign country!

Tuesday night, Giuseppe had the night off work. We took the bus into Trastevere and walked along the river. In the summer, there are tents set-up down there with everything from restaurants to markets to clothing stores to souvenir shops. We had a beer and shared some french fries and it was great to be down by the river.

Last night, I went to the movies with Francesco, Manuel and Valeria.  We saw, "Conan the Barbarian." It was a movie where you don't need to know the language to understand what's going on as there was a lot of killing and screaming, "ahhhh"...universal in all languages. So it was great in that respect, but overall, it was not a good movie. I was appreciative to just be out and about for the evening.