Rome!

Day one. Done and gone! It took forever to get here, but it's totally worth it. Jared and I met up at the airport, which worked out perfectly seeing as we shared the 75 euro taxi ride (about $116) to the city center. These high prices are due to the fact that gas is at about $12/gallon. And we thought $3.69 was bad! I thought that having a couple grand saved up would be enough for 7 weeks, but it's looking like that might not be the case. Anyways, when Jared and I arrived in Trastevere we went to his hotel to check in but we were too early, so we went to mine. It's get better because I had the wrong address so I missed the guy the first time (who I was renting the studio apartment off of) and had to wait 3 hours to meet up again. So Jared and I went to some little cafe and had lunch. Food was cheap. A meal cost me $3, which is nice considering traveling around town is not cheap at all. After that, Jared and I decided to take yet another taxi to the Stadio Olimpico and watch AS Roma play Atalanta...which they won easily 2-1. On the way back from the game we saw some guy riding a motorcycle get hit by a car and slide a pretty decent distant. After he got up (bruised and hurting) he got into an argument, all in Italian, with the other driver and then asked Jared and I for our opinions about calling the police/ambulance and about the accident in general. Of course Jared and I don't speak great Italian (read: no Italian) so we just held the bike up for him while they argued, then we left. Unknown to us, we were walking in the wrong direction for a good 40 minutes. As you can probably guess, this led to yet another taxi ride and another 15 euro trip. Anyways, we went back to Jared's and just hung out, then I walked back through a bustling Roma night! Lot's going on outside. Random spickets are placed throughout town that flow all the time with fresh water, so it seems as if they turn into social spots at night, as well as the bridges and Piazzas and other gathering areas. So that does it for day one. Tomorrow is when everyone else arrives and we start getting things going.