About JFRC

The John Felice Rome Center, or J-Force as it is affectionately known by students, is Loyola University Chicago's Rome campus, located in the neighborhood of Balduina on top of Rome's highest hill, Monte Mario.

I believe JFRC campus used to be a monastery or convent because our library was formerly a chapel. It is a circular two-story building with beautiful stained glass. On the lower level is the cafeteria, or Mensa, which serves lunch and dinner daily. I eat breakfast at the on-campus cafe, Rinaldo's, usually a cornetto (croissant) and cappuccino.

My room mate, Marta, is one of 15 Spanish students from Universidad Loyola Andalucía in Sevilla, Spain. The students in her international business program will spend one semester here and then a full year in Chicago starting next August.

Here is a picture of Marta and I in Spoleto during our class trip to Umbria that I will post about soon.

We get along very well and I love spending time with her and the group of Spanish students. They are shocked we go to bed so early- for them a normal night in the summer is dinner at 9 or 10pm and then going out dancing with friends, sometimes getting home at 8 or 9am when their families are making breakfast!

Here is a picture of our room; we have bunk beds and two built-in closets as well as two desks, a small refrigerator and sink. It's a bit of an adjustment going from living in an apartment back into the dorms but it's kind of nice living more simply.

I chose to study abroad here at JFRC for the ease of transferring credits and scholarship money as well as the fact that we only have class Monday through Thursday, which makes it easy to travel around Europe on the weekends.

This semester I am taking 12 credit hours, which is a bit of relief from my standard 15 credit hours in Chicago. I am enrolled in Italian 101, which is a required class for JFRC and meets three times a week.

My other three classes meet once a week for either two and a half or three hours. My honors history class is called Encountering Contemporary Europe and will cover social and cultural trends over the course of the twentieth century.

I also have two on-site classes, Art in Rome (which counts for my major) and Writing in Rome, both of which meet at various sites in downtown Rome, about a 35 min bus ride from JFRC.

Check back for more posts on these classes soon!

For more information about JFRC check out this link...

http://www.luc.edu/rome/