Milan and Lake Como

The first weekend trip was most definitely a learning experience. Our flight, booked only a week in advance, was more money than I would have preferred to spend on a small trip, and the 3:15 am wakeup to catch a taxi and spend hours traveling on planes, trains, and buses was a little much but overall, there were many lessons learned, and many beautiful sights seen.

Milan is in northern Italy, and we may have slightly overlooked the fact that it would be COLD there in January! (again, not South Bend cold, but still uncomfortable). We explored their beautiful gothic Duomo - the second largest church in Italy and third largest in Europe - and walked through the impressive and ritzy Galleria, complete with Louis Vuitton, Prada, Swarovski...and of course, good old Mickey D's. At night, we fell in love with Yguana, a bar with a great atmosphere, awesome music, delicious drinks, and (the best part for poor starving travelers) a free buffet that we literally stuffed ourselves with for two hours (dinner, check!)! I'm not sure I would recommend Milan as a destination on its own, especially with the slightly higher cost of our trip, but it was definitely useful as a starting point for Lake Como.

Como is absolutely beautiful! The sun was shining, the lake was sparkling, and we had a gorgeous hotel room with heated floors and a lake view! The lake is nestled in the mountains, reaches Switzerland, and is home to the one and only George Clooney. We spent the afternoon soaking in the incredible views (we took the funicolare to the very top of the mountain as well) and had a great dinner and lots of fun just hanging out that night. Sunday was spent traveling home and overpaying for many forms of transportation. I have to say that coming back to Rome already feels comforting, and on our taxi ride home from the airport we drove along stunning ancient roads that I can't wait to explore.

We've just booked a trip to Florence next weekend, and then we'll have a weekend at home before heading to Venice for CARNIVALE (!!!) on the 13th. As always, thanks for reading!

Baci,
Katie

Chrissy, Natalie, Laura, Anne, and I outside the Duomo in Milano.

inside the Duomo

at lake como...so beautiful!

another Duomo...in Como!

view looking down at the lake from the mountaintop

I Forgot It's Called "Studying" Abroad

Hello again!  We started classes this week, and while the walk to school is getting more managable, my feet and knees have been aching, so figuring out the bus route to John Cabot was a big success.  We still walk a lot of the time, but it's nice to have the (sometimes unreliable, but at least there are seats) option, especially when it's chilly out.  I'm at school Monday through Thursday (finally, long weekends for the first time in my college career!) from noon to 6:30, so by the time we leave it's dark and colder outside - although balmy when compared to lovely South Bend, IN this time of year.  I certainly do not miss walking down South Quad with my head down to avoid the freezing wind gusts.  No, I'll take strolling past the Vatican, along the river, and through Trastevere, thank you.

Why do I have to go to class? Why can't I just frolic around Rome and Europe all day? Oh well.

My classes are:

Intermediate Italian II (I definitely need a brushing-up after 2 years of leaving my Italian to sit idle in my brain)

Econometrics

Italian Politics and Society

International Economics

Intermediate Macroeconomics (Having 3 economics classes is going to be okay, right? Keep telling me that...)

As of now, everything at school has been going well.  I'm getting used to the two campuses (and by campuses I mean very small buildings), and falling back into schoolwork mode...sort of...while at the same time planning trips and looking for internships and subsisting off of turkey sandwiches and pasta to pay for said trips....it's a little overwhelming and I hope the semester falls into place soon.  Maybe once we start to travel, things will be exciting and fresh and I will have much more exciting blog posts to send home.

Speaking of traveling, four of my roommates and I will be heading to Milan and Lake Como this weekend!  Planning and paying for this trip has definitely already been a huge learning experience (don't book flights a week in advance, even on discount airlines), but I'm going to do my best to go with the flow and benefit from all the new experiences I'm getting.

Sorry for a very boring post! I'll be seeing many more noteworthy things soon, hopefully! I did see the Spanish Steps today, and we've explored more of the city, and even stumbled on some ancient ruins while wandering through some back alleys (completely safe, mom, I promise!)

Vi voglio bene! (I love you all!)

Tiramisu :)

on one of the many bridges of the Tiber

Il Teatro di San Marcello, commissioned by Caesar, that we literally happened upon while wandering through the Jewish Ghetto neighborhood.  No big deal.  (I thought it might have been the Colosseum at first...oops!...still have to visit that!)

Roma, My Feet Hate You

So. Much. Walking. By unofficial calculations, yesterday we walked 15 miles, 5 of those in uncomfortable shoes.  I've passed through the Vatican and St. Peter's Square at least 8 times so far - it's on the way to basically every place we go - and I've made the resolution to always stop to appreciate that I'm THERE every time we walk through...whether day or night, the setting is spectacular.  I hope they never take that Christmas tree down!

We've already covered a ton of ground in Rome - always on foot, can't wait to finally try the very unfamiliar bus routes - but there's still so much to see!  Yesterday, we found Piazza Navona and the Pantheon, learned the route to our university here (an hour walk each way), and cooked a delicious suitemate dinner of pasta with both tomato and pesto sauce, a wonderful caprese salad (I've never had mozzarella so fresh or tomatoes so delicious), and of course lots of vino to go around - story of this semester?  We decided to go out that night, but a group of 30 American students clueless about directions with no knowledge of the bus system - thus forced to walk for hours - did not exactly bode well for our chances of all fitting into Scholars, an Irish pub near Piazza Venezia.  After five minutes of trying unsuccessfully to move anywhere, the group split and we ended up in Campo dei Fiori, which by day is a bustling market square full of street vendors, and at night is filled with people enjoying the multiple bars.  I can't wait to be able to find our own places that will hopefully be less crowded and stressful, but for now I'm still enjoying my legality.  By the time we returned home from the night, everyone's feet were in shambles.  Plenty of band-aids were shared and many foot massages would have been greatly appreciated (where's my boyfriend when I need him?)

This morning, we had to once again endure another hour-long walk through the Vatican and across the river to meet our program coordinator, Aida, who mostly works with the ND architecture students there (their program is based elsewhere in the heart of the city, which is why we had to walk there), and she took us out to a full three-course italian lunch consisting of risotto, pasta in an artichoke cream sauce, lambchops with gravy and potatoes, and TIRAMISU.  Anyone who knows me knows that that is absolutely my favorite dessert in the world and I was in heaven.  On a side note, I'm also convinced that I have eaten there before with my Res friends on our trip, maybe it was real deja vu!

In the afternoon we headed back to John Cabot to continue with our orientation activities.  Arriving there extremely early, we got a chance to explore the area of Trastevere that the University is in, and it's amazing - full of little shops and boutiques and restaurants all squeezed into narrow cobblestone streets and full of character and charm.  Why don't we live there, again?  The Medag is nice, but the neighborhood is not exactly exuding romance and history.  While at JCU I got a second charger for my phone, and that charger, like it's ill-fated predecessor, has also stopped working.  The woman told my I didn't need a voltage converter, and I asked "are you sure?" about 5 times.  She was sure, but she was also wrong.  Pretty sure I blew out that charger.  Let's hope the phone company is still there tomorrow so I can try a third charger - awesome.  On our way home, I finally conquered the Italian grocery store - learned how to weigh the produce, figure out what type of food to buy (mostly just fruit, cereal, yogurt, etc.  And wine, of course.), and managed to carry out the transaction when the woman who rang me up spoke no English.  I want to get more confident about using my Italian in interactions with people, at least to the best of my ability.  Maybe finally taking an Italian class again for the first time in over two years will help with that.

For now we're starting to tackle the giant problem of figuring out where and when we want to start traveling - the possibilities are endless, and there's so many things I want to see (while still having a savings account when these four months are over!)  Speaking of things I want to see, if someone locates my best friend who is also studying at JCU in Rome this semester but living far far away, let her know I'm wondering, "WHERE ARE YOU CARA?"  We'll meet up soon enough at school, though, and I can't wait to hit the town with her!

Time to take some advil, rub my feet, and get ready for another day full of walking.  Maybe tomorrow's the day to learn the bus system? Yes?

Buona notte, amici e famiglia!

The Stereotypes Are True

Greetings from Roma! After an entire day of travel without much sleep (ok, more like any sleep) which blended into another straight day of arrival activites, everyone in the program is more than a little exhausted.  We wandered off from the plane bleary-eyed and confused, and our whole experience at Fiumicino consisted of 30 American kids shuffling blindly in a herd through the airport in our North Faces and Uggs and Notre Dame apparel..."here come the students, it's that time of year again..." Also, does Italy even have customs?  And by customs I don't mean the one man who stood in the middle of an aisle while everyone rolled their suitcases right past and out the door.

My re-introduction to Italian culture wasn't necessarily the smoothest transition, as the morning was essentially one giant exercise in patience (of which everyone knows I have none) and inefficiency which left me and my fellow exhausted travelers standing out in the rain for ridiculous amounts of time at more than one location.  More than once the thought of how much smoother any of the morning's tasks would have been in America occurred to me, but by the afternoon we were settling into our new home.  I'm living with six other girls from the ND program, and our apartment is uncharacteristically spacious, especially by Italian standards, and chock full of decor that was right at home in the '70s.  After a day of walking more than three miles throughout just a small section of Rome, being great tourists at St. Peter's Square at the Vatican (it really was even more spectacular than I remembered, and I get to make that walk every day as a part of my trek to school), and finishing up some legal paperwork, we finished it up with, of course, take-out pizza for 4 Euro a piece.  Before you start comparing this to my Sbarro tendencies at ND (ok, it's a fair point), I promise to step it up in the Italian cuisine area from here on out, or once I'm no longer jet-lagged and just want to lie on the couch all day.

So, in regards to the lessons learned...

-Italy is loud. I can hear literally every word of conversations being yelled on the streets as well as cars honking as clearly as if the window were nonexistent.  Which reminds me:

-Italy has crappy windows.  My roommates and I have been wearing our sweatshirts and winter coats, and I pathetically holed up on the floor in the dining room next to the radiator. It is absolutely freezing in this building.

-Italian men are perfect caricatures of Joey from Friends, right down to the "How YOU doin'??" that we received twice today.

-Vespas will kill you.  Ditto for Taxis.  And probably also true for our bus driver today who narrowly missed umbrella woman.

-Rome is absolutely beautiful.  There's a reason it has been so romanticized and glorified - it deserves to be.  And I can't wait to experience more of this city, country, and continent every day for the next four months.

 Piazza di San Pietro

View from the Basilica out into the square - including the Christmas tree - on our second time through.

the Colonnades of the Pantheon

Il Tevere, from near our campus

See ya, States

So after months of planning and excitement, my Trevi Fountain coin toss from '07 is bringing me back to Roma! I've been packing like a madwoman the past few days - hopefully everything ends up fitting into my two measly suitcases - and now I'm down to my last day in America until May! It's so strange that everyone is back at ND already, and I'll definitely miss both the place and the people this semester. As much as I'm sure I'll enjoy traveling around Europe, I'll be thinking of my home under the dome all the time (and of course my home under the....skyscrapers?...too!)

I leave the house bright and early (6 am, ugh) tomorrow morning for an epic day of travel, and I can't even imagine what my life will be like living in Italy. Stay tuned, I'll do my best to keep you all updated, and hopefully this blog allows me to keep in contact with my family and friends! I'll miss you all!