Classes began for me this week! Luckily, I didn’t have any assignments or quizzes on the first day, so I was able to make a day trip to the Cinque Terre on Sunday. It was absolutely beautiful! My friends and I traveled there through a program called Bus2Alps. It is a convenient and cheap way to travel around Europe, considering they plan and organize all of your activities on your excursions. If you are studying abroad or plan to, then you should definitely use this program. We stopped at three of the five cities, and had different activities at each one. We took pictures in front of the colored houses, ate pesto where it was invented, and swam in the clearest water I’ve ever been in. The Cinque Terre was a perfect first trip out of Florence.
The night before school started, I had my first American meal since I’ve been here: the one and only McDonald’s. It may not have been the healthiest option, but I needed to eat something other than pasta and pizza. Before I left for Italy, I was warned by many people about the “culture shock” I was going to experience. Originally, I didn’t believe them, but it is definitely a real thing. Italians are very different from Americans, in good and bad ways. Eating chicken nuggets and fries was a way to cope with all of the change taking place around me.
Classes at FUA are much different from USD. Most of the classes are once a week for three hours. At first, I thought they would drag on forever, but they actually aren’t so bad. On Monday, I had intercultural communication and social media. My social media professor does not speak English very well so it’s going to be an interesting semester. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday I have Italian at eight in the morning a half hour way from my apartment! I already know I have sleep deprivation to look forward to this semester. My other classes are women and religion and ancient western philosophy. Nothing seems too difficult, so hopefully I can make it through these upcoming months without too much stress.
We decided to celebrate the completion of our first classes by going out to Red Garter again. I don’t think singing karaoke and dancing in front of strangers will ever get old. This upcoming weekend we are traveling to the Amalfi Coast! I’ll let you know how it goes in my next post, arrivederci!