Tutti la Fruit

We've only been here two days & already so much has happened! I don't even know where to begin...

And yes the title is a quote from Friends.

Our flights went perfectly, so that was good. I sat next to a really nice German girl on the first flight & had my own seat on the second flight. I got lucky & got all my luggage but there were about 12 people who didn't get theirs :( including Lo (my roomie) but it came the next day luckily! So we are waiting for our luggage & that's when we meet Claudio! He's our Resident Director and we all fell in love with him instantly, he's just our very Italian dad for the next 4 months. He was wearing a bright orange & blue Illini Chief coat when he picked us up!! So we all get dropped off at our apartments & mine is adorable! There are a few things that will definitely take some getting used to but it's so quaint we love it! One luxuray I will miss: hot showers & shower curtains. But I'll manage! We also have the cutest balchony in our room. And we live next to a huge, beautiful church so that's our guide home because you can see it from really far away.

We've already started finding our favorite places! So I'll take you through my first 2 days just for a taste of the unbelievable life I am living right now...

The first night we unpack then have dinner at 9:30. There are 7 Americans in my building so we all left together around 9 just to be safe. Only not....we got REALLY lost & ended up being almost an hour late & Claudio even had to get his car to come pick us up...so embarassing. Everyone was waiting for us but dinner was amazing & so we quickly forgot about that. We had bruschetta, pasta, wine rizzoto, pork, lamb, potatoes, some coffee type dessert, cappuchino, and of course water & wine! One great thing about Claudio: he likes to have as much fun as we do! So then we went to this restuarant. Lo & I get very excited because we walk in thinking it is the Italian version of Dos. So clearly it's going to be a great time. Only to find out we are idiots and its actually a German Oktoberfest type restaurant...hah oops. But still a great time. We tried all kinds of beer then went to get drinks from the bar, where we made our first local friends! We met an awesome group of people who told us what drinks to get and we chatted with all night. Desie and Gary are actually Albanian but have been studying here for like 7 years. And Garrett the bartender is from here I think. It was so funny talking about European/American differences. We told Gary to say something with an American accent, so he says..."Chug it hooker." Needless to say we died laughing because apparently Americans are vulgar to them haha. We also told them about icing out & Desie said "we do something different, we order without ice." That was entertaining too. By the way my new favorite shot is Baby Guiness, Kahlua & Bailey's yumm.

The second day we got up to meet in Piazza Bra (the main Piazza, which of course is beautiful like everything else here & still lit up/decorated for the Holidays!!) at Ippopotamo for breakfast. We just call it the Hippo. Then we went on a walking tour of the city, which would have been perfect except for the pouring rain that drenched us & made us freezing. Some people didn't have umbrellas even. But we saw some of the most amazing places that I can't wait to go back & visit very soon. Some of my favorites are Juliet's house (shocking I know) where I plan to buy lots of stuff from the gift shop, Dante's statue in one of the Piazzas, the Roman ruins the entire city is built on top of, Castel Vecchio & Piazza Erbe which is our favorite so far. But there are many more places to visit & adventures to come! After the tour we stopped at Cappa Cafe for Spritza, which of course is an alcoholic drinks because Italians basically drink 24/7. I also ordered by myself for the first time....hot tea! Cause I was so freezing. After drinks we headed to lunch, which was again amazing even better than dinner. We had wine & water, a really big plate of 2 kinds of pasta, turkey (best I ever had) and potatoes, and I know there was more but I can't remember now! Then the survival scavenger hunt began, which Lo & I contributed absolutely nothing to. We followed our group around until we got back close to Hippo then we just went & sat with Claudio and a few others.

Then home to nap. In case you were wondering my bed is sooo comfy, I love it! Then we met up for dinner last night at this amazing pizza place. It's connect to this really old church but it's very modern inside & they played music from Grease and the YMCA and other random American "classics." We had the best pizza ever & beer & wine. Then we spotted some locals drinking what looked like gelato. We ordered sorbetti, which is basically sorbet with alcohol in it. Possibly one of the tastiest things I've ever drank. Then Claudio said its time to drink! And we left to go to Campus, which we would love to be our new Kams except for that it is VERY far from where we live. It's an awesome bar with a really young crowd there. We experiemented with all these diferent kinds of beers. By the way if you've never had a red beer, you don't know what you're missing! Then we ran into our friend from the night before! They introduced to all of their other friends, including these 2 girls from Scotland who are teaching English here!! We planned to meet up at Campus for Crazy Wednesday, a one day promo thing, and on Thursdays, which is their big night!

Today we got up early for orientation at school. It's really close to home so that's good & like everything else it kicks ass. We got student cards & found out about all of our planned trips to places like castles, Venice, a weekend in the mountains in Asiago, etc. We also signed up for a ski trip in the alps on Jan. 23!! And best of all 4 Italian cooking classes & 3 wine tasting classes. I'm coming back refined & talented. The classes I'm taking here are Italian, Business (for the awesome fieldtrips), Photography, & Cinema. I'm pumped to start class tomorrow morning!

So that is what I've been doing this weekend. But really there's no way to put in words the experience. I have not stopped smiling once since I got here, it's blown away all of my expectations. We have the best group & we've all been spending all our time together. Everyone has been excited the whole time so it makes the experience that much better. I don't think I've ever been this happy in my life & I've only been here two days. I can't wait for everything that's going to come. I'll be sure to write again soon because there is just so much that I can't even begin to convey how amazing this experience already is.

I love you all & sorry but I don't miss you (I'm counting that as a good thing though). CIAO!

PS feel free to comment :)

<3 Kalyn