I cannot believe I am here in Italy; it seems like just yesterday I was finishing up my finals. Today (and yesterday) had its great and not so great moments. Yesterday morning at 8:00 we filled the bus with a bunch of anxious excited students ready to just get to Italy already. We took a short flight to Newark airport, and then we had to fill the 5 hour layover in Newark airport. My good friend Ellie and I passed some of the time by watching the Titanic. Because we were so excited, the 5 hours flew by and soon enough we were getting on the next flight to Milan. My goal for this flight was to sleep as much as possible so that the time difference didn’t hit me so bad when we landed at 8 am. I started the flight off well by sleeping for the first hour and a half but it went downhill after that and I wasn’t able to sleep too many more hours.

By the time we arrived in Milan everyone was so excited that they push all of the exhaustion out of the way as we took the hour bus ride to our hotel. This part was so cool because we were able to experience some of the things that make Milan and the united states both similar and different. For example, I found that the roads and many nearby things looked like they do in the United States, but the street signs were totally different, and all of the houses and buildings had a red roof or something else red about them. We also noticed how the people tried to include plants in many ways outside their houses and apartments. We were not able to check into the hotel right away, so we went off to find a bank and then to lunch. Our first Italian meal was delicious. The people from the restaurant were extremely accommodating which I found nice. They even made special meals for those who were vegetarian. After lunch we were able to check in, and I took a well needed powernap. Afterwards we had our safety presentation, and we were on our own for the night.

Ellie, Catherine, Hallie, and I went to the shops that were a few blocks away to go shopping. There were stores that we thought things were very reasonably priced but also stores that we couldn’t believe how expensive things were. It was interesting to see such a mix on one block. After that we went to the street behind the shops and noticed a lot of people gathering for a festival. We walked through this and then realized it was time for dinner. We looked up a pizza placed and ended up having a great meal. When we first got there, we noticed how much harder it was to communicate than we thought. The few words we did know weren’t very helpful when trying to read a menu and ask questions. We ended up getting by and had some great pizza. We topped the night off with some gelato and headed back for some much-needed sleep.