New Friend, New Adventures

I was awoken early this morning by the maid, coming in to clean. I mean, who cleans at 8:00 on a Saturday morning? Why is anyone even up that early?

Since it was pointless to go back to sleep, I went out and got some groceries... meaning lunch meat, cheese, and more chocolate croissants for breakfast. The maid was still here when I got back, and I think she was here for at least 2 1/2 hours... I mean, that's kind of ridiculous, right? The only one who's been here all week has been me, and I've cleaned up after myself. So I'm not sure how she took that long. But I digress.

Following a relatively uneventful morning, I did go out and meet Alex this afternoon! It took a little while for us to find each other on the crowded piazza, but eventually we succeeded. We went looking for somewhere to eat lunch, which is to say we wandered around quite a lot until we found a good place. Actually, the first place we went was a bit out of our price range, which we discovered after receiving our menus, so we awkwardly left before the waiter came back (explaining to him on the way out why we were leaving). But next door was a restaurant whose menus were trilingual- Italian, English, and Russian. Since she's Russian, we decided it was a sign! (Also, it was considerably cheaper.) So we had a nice lunch there before discovering that we were utterly lost. We walked around a bit more and eventually stumbled into Villa Borghese, which was super awesome because it was gorgeous! We strolled through the park taking pictures of the beautiful flowers (and lots of selfies) and also got gelato, because that's really important. From there we managed to find a bus that took us back to the Piazza Venezia, where we could both catch buses that would take us home. I don't know if she managed to get a bus, because for some reason the police had blocked off all the nearby roads, and I didn't think any buses would be coming my way. So I ended up walking home, which I only managed to do successfully because it happens to be the same route my bus takes to school in the mornings and I actually recognized where I was going. Still, that's a big accomplishment for me!

I had a really great time because, aside from just having a friend to hang out with, we spoke Italian all day (even though she knows English) and I got to have a totally casual conversation, not one prompted by a teacher. I think that's the first time that's ever happened!

After several hours of being out in the warm sun, I was glad to get back to the apartment and sit in front of my fan. A shower felt even better, and soon I was all set for a nice relaxing evening. It's also my last evening by myself- my roommates are supposed to come tomorrow! To quote Frozen... "There'll be actual real live people, it'll be totally strange. Wow, am I so ready for this change!"

After an appropriately-priced lunch.

My favorite of our Villa Borghese pictures.

Gelato!