I arrived in Rome, Italy back on August 27th for my semester studying abroad. I have never been to Europe before, so it is easy to imagine the nervousness that was built up in me. The first thing that came to my mind was how would my apartment be with some roommates I have never met before. Our apartment is about a 20-25 minute walk from John Cabot University. At first that seemed daunting to trek everyday, but the public transport in Rome has made it a very easy journey that only takes about 10 minutes.

The apartment SAI provided for me was very nice and extremely spacious for my four roommates and I. The apartment is actually two floors. There are 3 bedrooms and 3 full bathrooms for 5 of us in our apartment which makes it very easy to get ready quickly in the mornings. We have two rooms that are doubles and one room that is a single. I live in one of the double rooms which includes two twin beds along with a pillow, sheets, and a blanket included. There is a desk in all of the bedrooms that allow for extra storage space or a place to get some work done. Also, by each bed is a nightstand that comes in handy to keep your phone on or other things. Each room is accompanied with a large amount of closet space, so there is plenty of space for anything you may have brought abroad.

Our bedrooms are extremely spacious and provide a good place for us to get homework done or just have some alone time.

Both of the double rooms we have in our apartment are connected with a full bathroom, and our single room is truly only two steps away from our third full bathroom. Each bathroom includes a sink, shower, and toilet. The bathroom counters give a good amount of space to store any hygiene products that you will use while abroad which is helpful in keeping things cleaned and organized. Although there is a limited amount of hot water to be used, the weather in Rome is pretty humid and hot, so I rarely take a steaming hot shower.

This is the bathroom connected to my room that offers plenty of space and a comfortable shower.

Our living room has two small chairs and a nice couch that allows all of us to sit in the living room easily at one time. We even have a piano in our living room that one of our roommates plays. Connecting to our living room is the dining room which SAI has given us a table that seats 6 people and can be useful if we ever eat dinner together all at once. Along with our dining and living rooms, we have a small kitchen that has all your basic kitchen supplies in a fridge, oven, stove, and sink. We do not have a dishwasher, but it became relatively easy to wash dishes with all of the roommates chipping in their fair share. In the kitchen, we also have a washer (dryer’s are not found in Italy very often). To dry our clothes there were drying racks which worked surprisingly well.

Our living room is spacious and allows to have time to chill out and get to know each other better.

The part of our apartment that has made it an amazing place so far to stay is our balcony. The balcony in our apartment is absolutely huge with amazing views because we are eight stories up. Almost every night my roommates and I eat dinner out on the balcony and socialize during the beautiful Roman nights. Despite our apartment being a little bit far from campus, it gives us a great amount of space and one of the biggest balconies I have seen in all the apartments.

Our balcony gives us a place to entertain people and to relax during the beautiful Roman nights. This balcony makes our apartment one of a kind.

Dwight is a fall 2019 Rome student from St. Norbert College.