Get Me Out Of Here

When I was first given my room assignment, I did not know what to think. I was excited and nervous, just like everyone else. I did not know anything about the structure of the building, what my room would look like or wheter or not my roomate thought negatively of Americans. All I knew was that I was going to be sharing a room.

When everyone met with the porter, prior to being shown are rooms, you could feel the jitters in the air. I wasn't even really worried. I knew that either way, it was going to be an experience and I should just go into it feeling calm, cool, and collected. I was shown my room last and chose not to look into any of the others because I wanted it to be a total surprised. I did not want to see the setup or layout so I just stood in the hallway. When the porter unlocked my room I was overcome with...with...nothing.

I don't want to sound like a spoiled individual but my room sucked. It was narrow and small as opposed to spacious and wide. There were two beds, two desks, and two huge dressers. But, because of the room's size, they were all touching each other. My desk touched my bed. My roomates desk touched my dresser which touched his dresser. I could have layed down in the middle of my floor and been touching the dressers and my bed. Thats how little space there was. Oh, my bed also was perpendicular to his resulting in little to no comfort space. But, hey, I could deal with this. I mean, everyone else's was the same plus I wouldn't spend all my time in my room.

But wait.

As I said hello to my roomate, Giuseppe, we breifly talked about hometowns and interests. I happend to notice that he was wearing soccer cleats and immediately was excited.
(In Italian)A: 'I see you have soccer shoes. Do you play soccer?'
G: 'No'
At this point I wanted to ask why the hell he was wearing soccer shoes but I chose not to. But I sure was baffled. He was just casually walking around the dorm in soccer shoes for the rest of the day. No Biggie. I guess.

I thought he would be asking me all kinds of questions but he wasn't saying nothing. I asked if he played any sports. 'No'. If he watched any sports. 'No' Does he know anyone who plays or watches sports. 'No'. What he liked to do on the weekends. 'Not much'. At this point, I told him I would be back and went to scope out other peoples rooms.

The others' rooms were nothing like mine. They had the more square shape with beds that were parallel to each other and had ample space in between. I was growing very frustrated. I took several deep breaths in the hallway and then returned to my room to unpack. As I was unpacking in silence, I began to think if I could really do this for 3 months. I told myself I had to give it a chance before I reached a conclusion.

When I awoke the following morning, I initally thought I had slept through my alarm. I looked at my phone and saw that it was 37 minutes before the alarm was to go off. I sat up and noticed that G-Sep (Giuseppe, but that was the nickname I gave him behind his back. Its not mean. Its just a nickname) was awake. What took place shortly thereafter would continue to happen every single day, at the same time, even on the weekends.

His routine is as follows:
1. Wake up without an alarm clock. Dont know how he does it but he does
2. Walk over to our tiny ass fridge and remove 'fitness yogurt' and place it on his desk
3. Get a placemat from the dresser and place it on the desk. Then place the yougurt on the placemat and enjoy
4. Go to bathroom and put on pants and shirt
5. VIOLENTLY blow nose while in bathroom. VIOLENTLY. Ladies and Gentleman, this is serious. If I did not know any better, I would have thought he was either trying to hurt himself in some fashion or sacrifice a baby goat. I understand when you blow your nose when you have a cold or allergies and you get the goods outta there but G-Sep was dry. It sounded so forced and uncecessary.
6. Return to desk and begin studying.

Now the breakfast, blowing of the nose, and getting dresked took maybe 10 minutes. He would literally study all day only to break for an occasional run around town or to bust out his newly purchased workout bench to do some sit-ups. He told me he wanted to be a veteranrian but come on. He was studying all the time. Most of our daily interactions would consist soley of 'Ciao'. We didnt dislike each other by any means, we just didn't click.

After conversing with my ma, I decided that I would make a request to switch rooms. I spoke with my director, Marcello, and the wheels were put into motion. All I had to do now was wait and see if there was any availability...