Did someone really try to hand me a flier on communism?

The group for dinner, left to right: Chris, Me, Tammy, Maria, Sam

Today marks one week of being in Italy, and life is just starting to calm down. My feet are throbbing, and I think I walk on average 5 miles a day. No joke. This past week has been super crazy, with many ups and downs. I found an apartment after being here for 3 days, but am yet to cook a dinner in it. The apartment, at the moment, consists of a German girl, a Spanish boy and an Italian boy. My room is a double, and we are currently looking for another girl to live with me. It’s a nice place, with a bathroom, a large kitchen, and a large living room. My room is fairly large too. I over look the one of the main streets leaving the center of town, Via Matteotti, and I'm 2 blocks from the train station. Luckly the windows are double paned, so once they are shut, you can’t hear the hussle and bussle of the city below. There is also a small balcony that is through the kitchen and overlooks the courtyard.

Fountain of Neptune

To make my room homier, I embarked on an adventure to IKEA with several girls that I’ve meet over the past few days. My friend Tammy (a girl from Scotland) and I headed over to Piazza Malpighi to catch the bus to IKEA, and meet up with the others. In a way, this week has been like the first week at Carolina, with learning a million people’s names. The biggest difference is most of the names I can’t pronounce on the first try. The easy one is Hanna, a girl from Sweden, then there is Stephanie (but not pronounced like we would say it) from Austria, and Silke, Teresa, Luccia, all from Germany. We ended up missing the stop for IKEA, and had to get off at the next stop and wait for the returning bus. Then, when we made it to the correct stop, we had to walk for about 30 to 40 minutes to get to IKEA. Our adventure in IKEA was wonderful, and I ended up dropping about $120 (80 Euros) ouch! Oh well, I need the blankets, sheets and pillows anyways.

Walking back from the park, Hanna (left) and Tammy (right)

In the morning yesterday, Tammy and I also went grocery shopping, which was actually a lot of fun. Italian grocery stores are amazing! Absolutely amazing! I got two quart or so sized containers of olives for less than 2 Euros, sliced prosciutto and salami for about 2 Euros each, good olive oil and balsamic vinegar, 3 types of cheeses, bread, stuff for salads, pasta and breakfast food. All of that plue shampoo and conditoner was under 35 euro!

For dinner the past two nights, we cooked at Tammy’s, which has been piu economico! (Very cheap!) It will be my turn to cook Wednesday, before we head out to a garden party.

Dinner at Tammy's, Maarten cooking!

Sunday was also a fun day full of adventure. During the afternoon, I meet Maarten, a english and spanish student from Germany, and several other Germans for un gelato and a late lunch. I think I might be learning for German this year than I expected, because most of the people I’ve meet have been German! Later, Chris (the London bloke) met up with us and we headed to Giardini Margherita, a large garden in the south of the city, where we chilled for most of the evening.

Saturday was the Erasmas Student Network (ESN) beach trip, which was a blast. (Erasmas is the program for all E.U. students to have the chance to spend a year in another E.U. country studying, but other exchange students like me join the group too!) We arrived in Ravenna via bus around 1:30, and spent the day in the sand. It was a bit too windy and cloudy for me to go swimming, but I put my feet in the water just to say I’ve been in the Adriatic Sea. The trip cost included 2 beers, but we found out that that really meant we got two 3 Euro coupons and if you wanted something else, you could get it too. Around 9 or so the disco started up, and we danced the night away on the beach to techno. After a long day, we got back in Bologna around 3am, and I’ve never slept better.

The other days this past week have been a blur, filled with appointments, lots and lots of walking, and trying to understand the city and the language.

Basilica di San Petronio

Today I’m taking it easy, study some Italian, send lots of emails, and let my feet recover a bit. Tomorrow will be another crazy day, with my language class starting, so I’m going to take another deep breath and continue trying to adapt the Italian lifestyle.

Le Due Torri