The beginning

 

So today was my first day of class after an incredibly long break. It was kinda sad but nice to be in a routine again. I only had one class this morning, and should be heading to another one right about now, but it isn’t starting until next Monday. This morning was History of Science, and it really does sound like it’s going to be interesting. Plus, we get to go to Pompeii so I can stick out the semester for that kind of opportunity if my initial opinion is wrong.

When I signed up for this trip I had no idea I was signing up for fat camp. We don’t get breakfast unless we have a field trip that day, our lunches are usually pretty light, and dinners are organic, healthy, and delicious. However, we have to walk a lot on majorly steep hills. To put the hills in perspective for those of you in MSC FISH who went to Costa Rica- Imagine the hill at the front of the Soltis center that we had to take breaks while walking up.. The hills here are not as long, but steeper. I feel like I am always panting  and catching my breath whenever I am walking in town, and I am pretty sure I can already feel my calf muscles growing. Also, I am a work study here so I am working in the kitchen. I have zero arm strength and now I have to lift heavy trays of dishes and tubs of water, so I am excited to leave here with some arm muscles too.

The Italian people are more friendly than I expected them to be. Just this morning I had an Italian man shake my hand and tell me his name and ask mine just because. The people that work in restaurants that we go to sometimes know English and teach us how to order in Italian so we’ll be able to order when they don’t speak English. There was a little incident just last night that did cause us to see the impatient side of the Italians though. For some reason my room and the room next door are so incredibly hot. We always open up the window to air it out so we don’t sweat. Well, last night our room and the room next door had our windows open and my room and I decided to throw something into the window of the next room. It was obviously really funny so we were all laughing pretty loudly. We kinda forgot that the next house was really close to our window and that they were probably sleeping since it was 11:30. Sure enough, an older Italian woman opened up her window and started yelling at us, so we immediately closed our windows and our shutters. Oops. We felt bad, but it was and is still pretty funny.

Another thing about our room is that we somehow always here a cat outside of our window. It always sounds like it’s saying hello and that it is on our window sill. That’s impossible though because we are on the second floor and there is nothing near us that the cat could perch on. Courtney woke up screaming last night when the cat came around 2 AM. We are determined to find it.

I haven’t taken very many pictures, but here are a few:

This is the view from our window

  

This is our room

The next few are for Tommy:

 The top 2 are from a pizza shop in Arezzo. The cheese sandwich thing was NOT good. The last one is from a lunch here. I always forget to take pictures of my food so I only  have a few. oops. :)