Rome Week One and the Saga of the Permit of Stay

9/7/2007 12:39 PM

    It has officially been one week since I moved into my small apartment facing onto the PIazza de Renzi in Trastevere. The bus ride from Perugia was smooth and comfortable, as was the slightly less smooth but still comfortable metro ride to Termini. I found a cab very easily and made it to the apartment quickly, even though I really had no idea where I was going. The cab driver even warranted a tip for helping me unload my luggage.   My roommate and I stowed away the luggage at the apartment and almost immediately had dinner and went to bed. All in all a good day of traveling.

    On the second and third day of my semester in Rome, I found that 4 of the guys in my architecture and humanity classes live within a 3 minute walk so we all meet up and had a wonderful Chinese restaurant. The meal was wonderful and cheap, cheap, cheap. We explored more of Rome and discovered some amazing vistas of Rome including the Piazza dell Popolo. After truly getting settled into Rome and locating a good place to get GELATO and a good supermarket, we started classes at the Arkansas Rome Center.

    The first couple of days at the Rome Center were amazing, we took three long orientation tours around the historical center of the city. On the first day, Davide and Emilio led the entire class to some amazing churches and interesting local sites including: Piazza Navona - Saint Agnes, Saint Ivo, The Pantheon, Saint Maria sopra Minerva and the Bernini Elephant/Obelisk. On the second orientation tour Davide continued walking us around the old city and saw the Capitoline Hill, the Palletine and the Palaces and Farnese Gardens, the Coliseum and the entire Forum including the Arches of Constantine, Severus and Titus as well as the Temple of the Vestal Virgins and the Senate House. The Second tour was even better than the first, but after walking from 8am until nearly 5pm, we were all tired and crashed almost immediately when we arrived back to our respective apartments. On the the final orientation tour, Emilio took us on a tour of Trastevere and some of the more important local landmarks that we would be studying in his class. Then, we visited the site for the Architectural Studio class. It was an old Luigi Moretti building from the Fascist period of Italian history. It was an amazing modern space that has been sadly used over the intervening years from the overthrow of the Fascist regime in Italy. The site is quite amazing in that it highlights not only restoration problems, but also problems of maneuvering through the political history of the Italian state.

    After all of the exciting new places that we visited, we were again geared up for more adventures this morning. We did indeed have an interesting morning when we tried to get our Permits of Stay from the Italian government.

Before I go into the comedy that was 5 hours of our morning let me just say that we are now all permitted to stay and perfectly legal. However, most of the morning I wondered if we would ever get done. All of the congratulations and praises go to Samia, who was faced with enumerable difficulties and one very angry postal official but never lost her patience. The morning started with a quick meeting at the School on Via Vitorrio Emanuele II. While at the school, Samia checked everyone’s paperwork and made sure that everyone had what she was sure to be the appropriate copies of relevant documents such as passport, visa and consulate letters. After assuring that all paperwork was in order, we headed for the post-office for what we thought would be a quiet meet and greet and signature party that would result in our permits of stay, all in about an hour- we had even planned a mid-morning cappuccino break near the school. Once we arrived, we meet the rather unhappy postal manager who proceeded to become livid that we had not copied every single page of our passports, even the blank pages that were not relevant to any paperwork. We finally decided that the best course of action was to head back to the school and copy every page of every person's passport. We accomplished this, using up another hour of the morning, and finally were allowed to enter one by one and have our application stamped and sent. What made the whole situation laughable were the jokes we had previously made about possibly having to give them copies of every piece of paper we own, and our first born child to get to stay in the country. Apparently the copies of everything we own was right on the mark (good think they weren't looking for dental records!). In the end, we accepted every challenge and with the wonderful leadership of Samia, were able to walk out of the post office after 1pm with our official receipts for our Permit of Stay. I hope they have an easier time next semester, with many more people to deal with.

However, apart from the intense post-office paperwork war..... the Architecture of the City is amazing. I have started to sketch every moment I can, and I hope by the end of the semester to improve my sketching skills immensely. Now, I hope you enjoy some pictures from our orientation tours:

St. Ivo

Bernini's Elephant and Egyptian Obelisk w/ Pantheon

Arch of Titus

Temple of Saturn at the Roman Forum