Update! Orientation, Leaking Toilets, Heat.

Here are a few pictures of my room (in Trastevere, on the west bank of the Tiber), a chair in an alleyway near our residence, and a view of the river outside William and Jacob's window.  Today was very busy, and involved a lot of orienting.  We met up with Prof Clarvoe at 8:30 this morning after getting a little rest and walked to one of the Pantheon Institute's buildings, where all of the other American students from Penn State and Tulane were waiting.  There were pastries and espresso (I choked down an entire large cup, mistaking it for coffee).  The program director, Romolo, spoke to us for a while, and we met a few PI architecture professors, but a lot of the information was specific to the architecture/landscape architecture programs.  We took a break to go see the Pantheon, and then went back to pick up our Italian cell phones (my new number is: +011 39 06 335 714 6930...I think that's how the country code/city code work).  We bought some lunch ingredients at a market near the Pantheon, and made sandwiches with cheese, prosciutto, and fresh pesto.  The few of us who have some Italian language background had to return to the other Institute building to take a quick placement exam.  It's about 90˚ out, and I'm still a bit thrown off by the jetlag, so we're all back cooling off in Trastevere right now.  We're getting our first food stipend today and we're on our own for dinner!  Hopefully we'll be starting to do more exciting things for me to tell you about!  I found a fan in one of the other rooms and stole it to plug in next to my bed which is really great. And there seem to be leaks and various other malfunctions everywhere in this building, which is pretty old itself and is attached to a church built in 1059.  Our toilet leaks when we flush it, the sinks run water when they feel like it, and the floor around the night entrance was partially flooded just now when I walked through.