Home away from Home

So Jojo and I finally moved into our homestay in Rome or Roma is how the Italians say it. First of all, just want to thank God on here becasue we were both a little nervous, espically with the graffit signs on the outside, but we couldn't have asked for better accomodations. First of all, the family is terrific; there are the two parents and then they have two daughters and one son. The oldest daughter lives on her own, she is 26, and the other two live here with there parents. Luca is 19, Sylvia is 22 and julia is 26. Luigi is the dad and Sabina is the mom and they are very kind people. Luigi is an information technology consultant and Sabina teaches physical education to high school students. Everyone except for Sabina speaks relatively good English, and even she speaks a little, but they understand that we want them to try to speak Italian as much as possible, until we look at them with stupid faces and say "no copisco" which means I don't understand.

Our "homestay" which I said is more like an apartment of our own, has a small kitchen, our own bathroom with a shower, a living room connected to our kitchen, and enough closet space to please most girls these days. Our shower is a bit interesting, it is in the corner of our bathroom and only a curtain that is usually strapped against the wall when not in use, is used to keep the water in. There is a drain in the middle of the area, but doesn't seem to slope that far down so water tends to...migrate to other parts of the bathroom. O well, it is still a pretty neat set up. Our living room is pretty big and everything is designed to fold down when we want more room but there is enough room already. The kitchen has everything we need to make our own food; everything from a small fridge to a stove, a microwave, and an Italian coffee maker which I've actually started to prefer over American coffee. Then we have a seperate room for our beds which is still pretty big. Sad enough, our room now is bigger than the room we had in our hotel in London; kinda crazy if you ask me. We have plenty of shelves for our books, they are brining in a fold away table for a desk to compliment the one that is already in our living room, shoe racks, and I know it's only been one night, but it feels AMAZING to not have to live out of a suitcase anymore.

Around our home we have a huge, well huge for Europe, supermarket, a pharmacy, a tabacchi place and our bus stop is pretty close. A tabacchi stop is where people go to buy first of all, tobacco, but also to buy bus tickets, put euros on your phone, and it is just kind of a utility shop for a city. We also realized that we are not as far from the center of Rome as we thought we were going to be which makes us very happy. The biggest park in Rome is only 5 min walk from our apartment and Jojo plans to run me to death as soon as I buy me some running shoes. Well that's all for now folks. Ciao!