From Texas to Paderno Del Grappa

So I am a little late on starting a blog, but better late than never.  The adventure to get to Italy had a rough start, including torrential downpour on the way to DFW, one of the entrances being shut down due to an oil spill, a 3 hour delay, and a full 7 hours of sitting in the London Gatwick airport (I did A LOT of people watching).  I finally made it to my hotel outside Venice around 12am Sunday, after a terrifying taxi ride I might add!  The Italians definitely don't care about speed limits, that's for sure!  My hotel room was strange.  You had to stick your key into a slot in the wall or the lights would randomly turn off, and my shower/bathtub had no curtain or door.  Oh, and it took be about 5 minutes to figure out how to flush the toilet.  Apparently in Italy, instead of there being a handle on the toilet, there is a large button-type thing on the wall that you press.  The elevators were extremely tiny.   The capacity was 8 people, but I would be surprised if you could fit 4 into one.  On Sunday I went into Venice and wandered around the city aimlessly for about 4 hours.  It was very pretty and I took tons of pictures (don't ask me of what because I have not a clue).  I purchased my first gelato of the trip while in Venice, and it was delicious!!!

Monday I headed to the Istituto Filippin, located in the lovely city of Paderno Del Grappa at the base of Mt. Grappa!  The campus is GORGEOUS!  Heaven on Earth!  The only problem is no air-conditioning, but I have managed so far.  There are also Italian boarding school students staying here; we share the campus.  It is quite entertaining to watch them all race outside every break they have to smoke as my cigarettes as possible before they have to return to class!  I have a single bedroom, which is how most of the rooms are.  I got very lucky because I have an actual shower in my bathroom, whereas almost all of the other rooms in my building have a shower head, drain, toilet, sink, and mirror all in one square room with nothing dividing them!  I might ad that I also got one of the best views from my room/bathroom!  Monday night I went to the campus bar (and yes this does mean that there is an actual BAR ON CAMPUS) with some girls I met on the bus to campus.  Almost all of the CIMBA (that's the program's name) students were there, and it was very fun to meet people!  Everyone has been so friendly!

Classes started Tuesday.  I am taking Entrepreneurial Strategies and Intro to Marketing Strategies.  Both my professors are great and make class fun!  It's a lot of work though.  Each class is an hour and a half long and in the afternoons, twice a week, we have a long 4 hour block in one of the two classes.  I already have a test tomorrow and we have been attending class for 3 days, but I guess that's what happens when you cram an entire semester into 4 weeks.  Tuesday evening some of the students went to the mall in a neighboring town.  It was so strange; one side had stores you would normally find at a mall and the other side was a Walmart-type place, with groceries and household items.  I purchased an Italian straightener (since my transformer decided to stop working the second day I was in Italy).

Tonight (Thursday evening) I am going into the town of Bassano with some other students!  The CIMBA program is great because they set up a ton of little bus trips to different neighboring towns, like the mall trip and the Bassano trip tonight.  I also took "Survival Italian" this morning (another thing set up by the CIMBA program) to learn a few key phrases that should make it easier to communicate with the Italians!

This weekend I am traveling to Florence with 7 other people in the program! We leave at 1pm tomorrow after classes! YAY YAY YAY :)