be witty!

hello to all of you from sunny roma! we have indeed arrived safely, more safely than i expected personally, mostly due to the paranoia i developed due to my choice of travel literature... specifically "alive" - throughout the entire flight i was wondering who i should eat first, caitlin or christine, after our tragic crash in the andes. anyhoo, here we are, still alive, and the closest ive come to eating human flesh was the pickled artichoke and cheese sandwich they fed us on the plane... i think i would have preferred a tasty person. iàm also supposed to mention how we watched "just for laughs gags" on the plane... a little slice of home to go with the strange strange food...
so anyway... not much in the way of rome stories to share, seeing as weàve only been here a few hours. howsoever, so far, i love it! letàs not kid ourselves - athens was a scum hole. frankly, rome is too, from eye level down... graffiti and garbage abound. but when you look up, all else is forgiven. tonight we ate gelato in front of santa maria maggiore, which is a big amazing church... the first of many big amazing churches weàll see, iàm sure, but at this point, the novelty certainly still exists. the buildings are really cool, too, just what i imagine europe to be. i feel a bit of photo-mania coming on.
its also interesting that our hostel is in the italian version of chinatown. strange to see such a mixing of foreign cultures... although its pretty much the same thing as chinatown in calgary, or at least what iòve seen so far. incidentally, our hostel is fantastic. its very clean and safe feeling, which makes it alot easier to leave the safety of our tour group.
tomorrow were going to see the ancient city which im really excited about - running out of time so must sign off!