I've been pretty busy since getting here! We've had a mix of orientation meetings and classes- it's a pretty tight schedule for the first two weeks. But I am LOVING it! It's so nice having my friends here with me but I'm meeting so many other students as well. All of my classes seem really great- I'm taking Business & Professional Communication, Intercultural Communication, Travel Writing, Journalism Ethics, and Travelers Italian. And I really like all of my teachers! We've had some orientation meetings about the program and we also had a seminar on traveling- they gave us some really great tips and advice so hopefully we don't have another train catastrophe again! We also had a "Survival Italian" course on Monday with a lot of basic words and phrases so that was super helpful! Monday night we went to the little sports bar on our campus- we met some Italian boys and tried out our new skills... we didn't do very well and basically just ended up speaking Spanish hoping they'd be able to understand some of that. Hahaha! Luckily one of them could speak some English so he helped translate. But apparently, the stereotype that Americans are loud is true. One of the boys actually covered his ears and shushed us at one point while we were all talking at once! It was hilarious and none of us knew what to do but laugh!

Then, last night we took a bus trip to the nearest mall to pick up some things that we didn't pack- there are about 100 students on this program and the majority of us went so of course, lots of more staring our way! I'm thinking when we travel in smaller groups we won't be as obvious... maybe? Hahah probably not though.

I posted some pics of the campus! It is so beautiful here- some rain Monday but it's been great since then! We made plans to go to Venice for the weekend so we'll be there Friday to Sunday! Ciao for now! :)