Today we had to wake up earlier than normal to make it to the bus on time or we would be left at the palace for our field trip on our first day in Rome. For the field trip today, we started out the day with a visit to the catacombs of St. Sebastian. During the tour of the catacombs, if you can imagine 23 American girls walking through small dirt trails surrounded by ancient graves—it was pretty interesting. Most of the girls that were in the group didn't real...

Tuesday May 17th: Today we had our very first quiz of the summer semester; it covered the Italian culture and the many (mostly confusing) ways of the public transportation. After we had our quiz we then started in to another long day of class. We began with a Roman Architecture lecture from Prof.Francesco Petruci. This was actually very interesting to listen to. After we had class we were left for a break which was 4 hours for lunch, in Italy lunch takes anywhe...

Monday May 16th: Today marks the second week of our study abroad program in Italy. Most of us are still waking up and saying "is this real life, are we really here in Italy?" To start off the second week of this program, we began with a local visit to the fresh market with Cinzia. Once we got what we wanted at the market we then were introduced to the field trips that we would partake in during this week. Once that brief meeting was over we went to meet w...

Sunday May 15th: For the past couple of days it's been shocking and culturally challenging to get by the definite language barriers. Most of the Italians that the other girls and I have met so far can understand a little bit of English so hand gestures have become very useful while we are trying to communicate with them around the towns. To start off the many wonderful experiences, they told us the best way for us to get ourselves comfortable with the culture i...

Saturday May 14th: Being in summer school can sometimes be harder than usual. But in reality being in summer school in Italy has been amazing so far and it's only been a couple of days. On the weekends (typically Friday-Sunday) we get the days off to do any open travel that we wish. We have the entire world at our finger tips. For the first weekend we were encouraged to stay around the neighboring towns and explore the little pieces of hidden secrets. And that ...