Boungiorno! Bonjour! Good Morning!

The title comes straight from my mornings at work. No lie…I mean, I know, it’s kinda ridic. This is how the story goes:


I am the only American in my open space at work, and of course the people who walk by know. So…first they say good day to the Italian girls, then hi to the French lady, then good morning to me. It’s funny to note that the people who say good morning could then carry on a completely fluent conversation in any of those languages. Here begins my lamenting of not taking French. I feel like I hear more French at work than English. Why didn’t I learn French?!

It’s a new week and a new beginning for more adventures. This past weekend was lovely fun. Saturday another intern (who has been here for 5 months) took me around the center of Rome (the SUPER historic district). It’s all relatively close to me, thus we met up by my place and walked. We walked and walked and walked. It was fun to finally have someone else to go on an adventure with. The girl who took me around is super sweet too and we had a fun day. It ended with thunder and lightning so we both ran off at the end to get back to our apartments as soon as possible.

Rome is like…Florida?! Not really, just the weather lately has been reminiscent of the times I walk to campus with it super sunny and gorgeous outside and then come out of class to a thunderstorm. It’s been like that here the past few days. Sometimes it only threatens to rain, and then other times it does. Today was one of the latter days. Luckily, despite the cold and clear weather I had this morning during my walk to the metro, I had packed my umbrella.

The cold mornings are an interesting topic which surprisingly I have forgotten to mention. With all the talk of sweltering Rome summers I had hear prior to leaving the states, I hardly packed any warm clothes. However, the mornings and nights have been cold! It’s funny, because really it’s not that bad. It’s cool on the walk in the morning and I look forward to getting on the metro; however, to the Italians it is super cold. They walk around in coats and scarves!! Oh my have I seen so many scarves. Some people at work mentioned how I was not bundled up, we all just laughed. It’s worth it though to be dressed for warm weather when it comes to the lovely weather at lunch time!

Lunch time is a time I look forward to everyday. The food isn’t that good, it’s the company. All of us interns and young workers meet up for lunch. Part of it is generally spent outside and oh has the weather been fabulous. The others are all so sweet and it’s always fun to talk with them. Hopefully we can all hang out some more soon. Since everything is still all so new for me I’m still trying to get into a routine of things and I haven’t had the time to try and organize something. Hopefully this week things will swing into action.

Although I am still trying to get into a groove, I already feel homey here and LOVE it here. I love night time walks. One time I went to walk around 10:30 thinking that would be late, but no! That is when I saw ALL the Italians. All the tourists were mostly gone and all the Italians were out. Here it was like a secret I have been missing the whole time. There were more people out during my 10:30 walk than my 8:30 walk!! I saw bunches of friends meeting up for dinner and super cute old couples; cute old people walking around Rome late at night! It’s the whole late night dinner thing that I need to get into. One of the higher up people at work today said he didn’t get to sleep till 1 last night. I was shocked (early work mornings). He said it was because he went out to dinner with friends. My boss had even said one day that she didn’t get home from dinner till midnight!

Thus that is something I need to get on!! Late night gatherings! Hopefully some of the interns will want to get together one night.

Speaking of people at work, work has been nice. I love the people there. Everyone is so great. Today I got to sit in on the Kenya portfolio review meeting. The meeting lasted 3 hours, but it was definitely my favorite part of the day. It was interesting to hear about Kenya, the projects going on there, and especially the finance and economics side of it all. None of these projects could happen without the finance and economic side of things. Too bad I think I like the project “planning planning” part of it better. It’s all still interesting.

Other than meetings, I still have been reading a lot to learn about everything. I also have been told about what I will be doing. I will be helping with the portfolio reviews with the equations, and surprise finance side of it (not a surprise at all, obviously my boss is the Financial Management Officer). I’ve started to work on it; however, it is a slow start because the meetings are still taking place and such.

Well, it’s “late” for me now since I am working and have to get to bed early for my long work day (wake up at 6:30, get home at 6). My roommate just got home and says “hi” to everyone. (The whole housing thing is still working out fabulously!)

Special note to all my Gainesvillians (is that what we are called?): MISS YOU ALL and hope you are all having fun! Thanks for all the support and love. Ciao e buonanotte!