Gratzi, Torino-Prego

Attention Readers: this blog post is a little rant-y and a play-by-play of my whole weekend-sorry it it’s boring!

First off, I want to start this off by saying traveling is seriously the best. It’s the best form of learning about not only yourself but also about cultures, language, food, and other people. I think in one weekend of traveling with two of my friends to Torino, Italy, I learned more than I could have possibly learned in at least two weeks of school.

Italians are not high on my list of likable people right now. It has been quite the weekend! As I’m sure all (the seven of my followers-lolz) of you know, my plans were to go to Rome this past weekend. Well, I’ll tell you right now that did not happen. Me and Lauren and Thea set out on Friday evening to take our train to Rome-little did we know that the universe had other plans. Due to the Italian train workers striking, there were no trains leaving until after 5am on Saturday morning. This would have put us in to Rome at about 4 or 5pm and we would have had to leave Sunday night, so we decided to cancel the trip (so sad!). We sat in the waiting room at the train station and moped around with the homeless people and ate ALL of the snacks we had for the train ride. After we were done wallowing in our sorrows we decided to take action and do something else fun for the weekend! We practically ran home with our adrenaline pumping to plan a new trip! We searched the map and the train schedules and decided Ibizza was too far, Barcelona was too far and Paris was too expensive. We settled (HA-HA) on northern Italy (rough life, I know). We decided we would leave on the 7am train to Torino (home of the 2006 Olympics and the birthplace of Nutella!). Here's me in Torino:

 After a few hours of sleep, I woke early and reevaluated my already packed back pack. I removed my umbrella and searched frantically for my gloves. Running late, I decided I would have to do without my gloves. We walked briskly to the train station and caught our trains just in time! Unfortunately, we got fined for not stamping our ticket. Did anyone mention that we needed to stamp our ticket? The moderator “cut us a break” because we’re foreign. Maybe he should have NOT CHARGED US AT ALL!

The problem with cancelling the Rome trip was that I had already charged all five of our return train tickets to my credit card. When we arrived in Torino we went straight to the tickets office to try to get a refund or a date change for the return tickets. Three of our friends made it to Rome because they left on Thursday night, so ideally we wanted to keep three the same and change two of them for next weekend. The first issue was the guy behind the counter (and apparently everyone else at trenitalia) did not speak ANY language but Italian. We tried English, French, Spanish, and German, but no, the Italians are similar to the Americans in this (rash generalization!).  Luckily for us, he appeared to understand our needs and started printing out three of the tickets. Gazes of horror struck all of our faces as we realized this was the LAST thing we wanted. Because once he printed them out, our friends in Rome could no longer use them, and therefore they were useless and still charged on my credit card. Ugh. Stress. At this point, we’ll call him Andrea, goes to recruit a few other idiots to try to help the situation. One girl who speaks a little French and English starts telling us that it’s impossible that our friends can use those tickets now since they’re in Rome-thank you captain OBVIOUS!

Moral of this rant is that I finally was able to apply for a reimbursement but with the language barrier, I’m unsure if it will go through because they didn’t even have me write down my credit card number. Whatever, 274 euros. It’s no big deal (yes it is).

Anyways, moving on to the more exciting stuff. We leave the trenitalia place and bop around a little bit looking for wi-fi so we can notify our friends that they will need to purchase new tickets, when we realize it’s raining. Remember that little part at the top when I mention I removed my umbrella from my luggage? Yay. So we stayed in the train station and went over to McDonalds to see if they had wi-fi. We were desperate for communication so Lauren went up to this girl with English on her shirt and an American flag hat on and asked her where there was wi-fi. The girl had no idea what Lauren was saying (classic). Luckily we found our way to the tourist information office and literally found our savior of Torino! The lady spoke English and she gave us 2 hostels numbers and a great student friendly guide to the fun stuff to do in Torino. Feeling satisfied, we decided to brave the weather and finally leave the train station to start exploring Torino.

Because of the rain, we opted for finding a place to stay for the night before exploring the city. Mind you, it was only about noon. We walked in to several hotels and walked out rather quickly after hearing the price for a night. As we were getting cold and wet and miserable we saw a sign for a 3 star hotel called Hotel Napoleon. We trudged up the stairs and walked into a charming little lobby with a guy (NAPOLEON!) standing behind the counter who (YAY!) spoke French!!  He gave us a great deal that included wi-fi and breakfast so he showed us to our room where we dropped our stuff and regrouped.

After a snack of bread and cheese, we hit the city.

Because of the rain, we stopped inside little shops to browse and warm up every now and then. In addition, the city of Torino has at least 18km of porticoes which helped us stay dry when we were walking in the main areas.  This is the point where we stopped to have our first cup of Italian coffee (YUM!)

After that we shopped around a little bit where Lauren bought an umbrella (yay Lauren!) Shout out to Lauren for being my personal savior and lending me all her warm clothes because I literally didn’t even bring a sweater.

Our next stop was this rally which frankly we had no idea why they were protesting and I got yelled at in Italian for taking this picture:

Then, unintentionally we found ourselves at the beautiful church where the shroud is held where I WOULD have got yelled at for taking this picture if I wasn’t an undercover spy with great sneaky camera abilities:

We departed from the shroud only to find it was snowing. Big, white, beautiful chunks of snow! After some more walking around in churches and museums we stopped for yet another cup of coffee:

Then we stopped by the store to pick up a few essentials. I bought a big, glass, beautiful bottle of lemoncello for my dad as well as 10 pastries from a vendor (all 3 of us split them-it was 10 pastries for 5 euro).  We started heading back in the general direction of our hotel at about 6pm. We started glancing into restaurants only to notice that for a Saturday night there was NO ONE eating! We were a little alarmed but decided it could be because of the snow. After several minutes of walking in the freezing cold snow, my bag broke and the beautiful (and probably yummy) bottle of lemoncello fell through the bag and CRASHED onto the side walk dousing my boots in lemoncello and glass. What a great day. I was just so lucky!

We made it back to the hotel and covered the radiator in our clothes hoping that they would dry:

We also ate bread and cheese and drank 2 bottles of wine (no disapproving looks-it had been a pretty tiring and stressful day). 

After we finished the bottles, we decided we were ready for dinner (it was about 10:30) and ready to face the world again. We asked Gaspacho (my made up name for the guy working the desk-Napoleon must have been asleep!) for a good pizza place and he had to call his friend who spoke French to tell us how to get there. To our satisfaction (because it was snowing rather hard) it was a one minute walk from the hotel. The place was hopping (Italians eat late-DUH!) and we each ordered our own pizzas, and dang-they were delicious:

We finished at about midnight and took a casual stroll back to the hotel. We were all so exhausted that we laughed at ourselves for the ridiculous day and then passed out!

Lauren’s alarm went off at 6:30 and she informed all of us that we had 10 minutes until we needed to be up (what a joke!). I was just laying there thinking how silly she was to think I was getting up. She woke up ten minutes later and told us all to get up (again-yeah right, not happening!). Luckily for us, she fell asleep (haha) and didn’t wake up until 8:45. We all agreed to get up and get ready. We opened our balcony only to find we had been hit hard with a snowstorm:

Then we enjoyed a yummy breakfast that good ol’ Napoleon made for us! What a good guy!

Summary of Sunday: walk, walk, trudge through snow, brave the cold and remove my hands from my pockets to take pictures, walk, hike up a mountain, go into museums and churches, shiver, get splashed by big bus. Then more coffee: (my first espresso!)

Then we found the Cinema museum housed in the Eiffel tower of Torino. It was actually a very interesting museum and there were so many rooms and so much information and the best part was that it was warm. I got a picture of the actual masks from Star Wars:

SWEET!

Then we caught the train home and arrived back to menton (land of the French-never been so excited!) at about 10:15.

And that was my crazy weekend. I have some pretty negative stereotypes of Italians right now just because the few that I happened to meet were not that friendly or accommodating (besides Napoleon-great!). I’m sure there are plenty of great Italians, but as for now I will keep my prejudices confined to this blog.

High points of the weekend: we learned lots of Italian! We made it a mission to learn phrases and try them out while we were there. If you’re looking to learn Italian, look no further. I will teach you the one and only most important Italian word: PREGO! You can use it in ANY situation. Just bust out your Italian accent and shout it to the world-PREGO!

With that being said,

Bonjourno and prego!

Siyesouinahm?

Languages. I feel like I don't speak any of them. I have no language. I have become the infamous "blah" (note: previous blog post) I went to Arabic class this morning fully expecting to be fluent (joke), and I was wrong. I had absolutely NO idea what was going on and when she called on me, I would say the answer in every other language possible before I finally could utter نعم. I have come to terms with the fact that a teacher makes a large difference in the kinds of things you learn. Even though it was the same language, I was so lost because of her accent, her handwriting, and a lot of vocabulary that I had never heard of. I think after a few days (and hours of reviewing and practicing) I will start to feel more comfortable! In addition, my Arabic teacher is a badass. She is Egyptian and is working on rewriting the Egyptian constitution (sweet!). The "problem" with Egyptians is that they pronounce Arabic letters mildly different than the standard dialect.  But keeping with my positive attitude-it's a great experience!

In other news: Wednesday was fantastic! I woke up at around ten and made breakfast (2 eggs-over hard, baguette with jelly, and an orange)! Then I went to the pharmacy and picked up my inhaler (I have no idea what's in it or what purpose it serves). I then took a casual, sunny stroll along the boardwalk and ended up at school. Then I had Arabic class (low point of the day-but positive attitude!). The best part though, was belly dancing class! It was incredibly fun! My hips and abs will most definitely be sore tomorrow. The coolest part is that it's taught by a student who grew up with the culture and we are actually going to get to do performances (and she lent us all those fun hip decorations-that's definitely not the right word for them)! 

Food news: yes, there is more food news, there is always food news. The thing with European culture is that you can only buy as many groceries as you are able to carry home. In reality this is probably not a European rule, but I would like to generalize it as one-for now. This rule might seem straightforward and fairly simple, but it's not! Even just shopping for one person, I always end up having to drag my milk carton behind me or stash it in a bush and come back later. Food is heavy! Especially since i'm trying to shop every other week. who knew?

P.S I finally figured out how to add a picture, but I didn't have one relevant to this entry-but this is a pretty window! Also, my first day of school photo is completely awful, so I'm going to have to accept bribery to put that one up.

Now for the best part of my blog: I'm going to Rome this weekend! It still doesn't seem real that I can just take a casual train ride and spend the weekend in Rome, how freaking romantic! I will bring my journal with me so I can remember the good, the better, and the best and report back! Wish me luck!

Starting school in paradise :)

I snapped my first day of school photo this morning, by myself, because my roommate was already gone. That's definitely a photo for the books. I can look back on it and remember how I didn't have any friends. JUST KIDDING! (I hope...)
After my photo shoot, I went to the school to speak with the French teacher to see if I could audit her French class-she was very sweet and said I could. She then proceeded to tell me that her class periods are Monday mornings from 8am-10am and Tuesday afternoons from 2:30-3:30. I am now wondering why in the world I would give up my days off (Tuesdays) and my mornings off (Mondays) to take a class that I will not get credit for. Holla if you feel me.
I just keep telling myself that it's worth it for me to take TWO extra classes a WEEK to learn the language.

After that, I walked to the doctors office and desperately tried to communicate to the receptionist that I would like to make an appointment with the university doctor. I made one successfully-I hope! I will be going tomorrow to get my cough checked out-I think i'm driving my roommate crazy by waking up in the middle of the night and coughing all 6 of my lungs up.
Then I met up with some friends for lunch. We ate at this totally american place called Frites-City where everything is fried. I took one step inside the place and decided my stomach might burst if I ate there-so I grabbed a paninni (is this a fake word because spellcheck is freakin?) from the place next door and sat with my friends outside!

Then I went to class at 2:30. I was very nervous for this class because the director of the school said if you have never studied the Middle East it would be very hard (blah blah, etc). My friends and I and say blah blah a lot when referring to French people and their sass. But the teacher ended up to be totally chill! He is originally from Lebanon and he is freaking baller! He had a few rules like no chatting, the usual. But just in one class period we covered so much material (kind of intimidating). But the funny thing is: he literally said if we have never studied International Relations or the Middle East, we would be totally fine and we would emerge from that class a lot more intelligent. The only downside is that a lot of the material we covered today I have learned in a different IR class from back home. But I think we will delve deeper in the Middle East and that will be relatively new to me! So as i'm listening to him speak about levels of analysis (blah and blah!) I realize that all I see outside the window is the sun shining brilliantly onto the Mediterranean sea (are YOU KIDDING ME??) How in the world can I concentrate when the school has a front row seat in paradise island? These are problems to be solved at a later date.
Further into the lecture I start to realize-well, it hits me, that i'm being taught a class by a man who does not speak English as his first language. Can anyone take a stab at how much of an idiot I felt that I was being taught exciting poli sci concepts by someone who had to master English and then IR and then master IR in English?? This is when I solve the problem of having heaven outside the window. This inspired me to buckle down and hang onto his every word (at least for the next 15 minutes).

I got home from class and made dinner and now am attempting to tackle my long to-do list of things. I was able to cross off one of those things which i'm almost too ashamed to say. But I think it's important to share this tid-bit just in case anyone else was thinking about doing it-DON'T......I literally just washed about 9 pairs of underwear in the shower. And in case you are thinking how stupid I am for attempting this, keep in mind that I will never do it again and it was a living and learning lesson for me. That is all!
A bientot!

Morning in Ventimiglia.

This morning I popped onto a 15 minute train ride to Italy. I wish it wasn't that long, but who am I to complain? (JOKING). On Friday mornings, there is a huge outdoor flea market type thing that people from all over the world go to. There is a large covered food area where locally grown fruits, vegetables, cheeses, breads, and much more are sold! If this isn't enticing enough, throw into the mix that it's ridiculously cheap! I got some apples, oranges, strawberries and kiwi for about 2 euro! and oh my gosh-they're freaking delicious! I also bought some mozzarella balls and just made some pasta with bell peppers, tomato, and the fresh mozzarella. Yum! After shopping around a bit we decided to buy some lunch-y foods and eat outside. I bought a large piece of focaccia bread for .80 centieme. And a chocolate croissant for .50 centieme. We indulged ourselves in our purchases before perusing the rest of the market. While walking along the sidewalks, one could casually glance to their right and see the expanses of the Meditteranean sea folding and glistening in the sun: I posted this status to my facebook when I returned: 


"I think the way the waves in the Mediterranean sea swish around and fold over each other


 mirrors the cioccolato gelato I had in Italia this afternoon. #mylife"


As the quote would hint at: we got gelato after our market experience. I got chocolate
 and it came in a little cone and it was absolutely TO DIE for. 


In addition to the great food, I also picked up my first Italian words! How exciting. I don't know how to spell them, so I guess I can't exactly share them with yall-too bad, you should hear my accent. It's lovely!


I just think it's absolutely incredible how everything is so beautiful here. I seriously feel like the luckiest girl in the world to have this great experience. Classes start on Monday-so that will be very interesting and probably consume a lot of my time. Here's the funny thing about classes. I am taking three. THREE! and everyone else (the full time non exchange students) are taking anywhere from 9-11. Is that real life? Am I a slacker American? I tried to sign up for more but the director strongly advised I didn't-I guess he thinks American's are too stupid. He legitimatly asked me if I had ever studied the Middle East before. Why would I be here if I had never studied the Middle East? weird....whatever: more free time for me! yay!


Sorry about the weird font problems in this post-I don't know what's happening....Oh I also meant to explain that I have cheese problems. Besides the fact that i'm actually obsessed with cheese, I have other issues. There is this really popular cheese here called Camembert and so I bought some and it's GREAT! It smells terrible, but that's part of the experience. Anyways though, it's BIG and I have issues trying to eat the whole thing. Like I guess it's not mandatory that I finish it in a certain amount of time, but I still feel so strange that I have this whole wheel of cheese just for me. Resolution: I told my dorm mates that they could have some. Every problem has a solution. Good thing i'm a smart American and can solve the hard ones! 


Thanks for tuning in and feel free to comment on any of the posts with reactions or questions! Ciao Bella!! (I know how to spell that)


PS I'm trying to figure out how to post pictures on here for those viewers who don't have Facebook (mhm cough cough dad cough)

When in Rome...Anchorman style.

Bonsoir! I am now going on my sixth night of being on my studying adventure and I must say...it feels like I have been away for years!! I guess it is because I have been doing so many things and meeting so many people that each day seems to be at least a month!

I have met an enormous amount of people and I think it's safe to say that when in doubt-call her Meryiam! I swear, there are like 25 myriams (different variations) at our school! In addition, it was unbelievable that I now know people from nearly everywhere in the world! It is so neat to be able to walk down the hall and meet people from Tunisia, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Algeria,Sweden, Egypt and much more! There is such an abundance of culture here and I am truly so fortunate to be surrounded by it!
Last night, all of the students returned and we had a little get together so everyone could reminisce about the break and it was both overwhelming and interesting to meet everyone and hear seriously 5 different languages being spoken at one time.

I guess thoughts of competition in the business world are ever-present and i'm curious how I can possibly compete with some of these students who are fluent in so many languages and educated about so many topics. But for now, I am happy that I can meet and befriend them and engage in conversation.

Today I met up for coffee with some friends! I ordered a cappuccino and I am obsessed! I am slowly realizing that I am going to return to the US broke and addicted to coffee. Fair warning!
Now i'm off to take a shower in a "community" shower where I am sure I will turn into a Popsicle on the walk back to my room. It's cold here all of a sudden! Not cool, what happened to the living on the Mediterranean thing?

xoxo-
your coffee addict American citizen

Wait, they speak French here?

Bonjour a tous! This post is relatively random thoughts because things pop up in my brain and then I write them.

I have finally finished unpacking! My roommate is definitely happy that I no longer have my huge duffle bag lying on the floor. -And of course it feels more like home now that i'm not living out of a suitcase :) home...wow, that's a bit strange.
Anyways: last night me and some girls from my dorm went over to the boys dorm and we sat outside on the beach and drank some beer and wine and smoked hookah (I didn't smoke because i'm not into hookah). But I hear it was pretty good! It was so beautiful and peaceful sitting on the beach looking out over the Mediterranean and looking backwards out over the town. Pretty surreal. Then I ventured home (mom don't read this part) slightly buzzed from my first EVER wine purchase and got to Skype with my bf Luke-shout out to lukey bear!
This morning me and some friends  caught the train to Nice early to go exploring. The train ride was breathtaking-all you could see was coast line and rolling hills-wow! We arrived in Nice and there were people EVERYWHERE. I guess there are a lot of sales going on in the stores. We walked along the side streets and then along the boardwalk. I was slightly disappointed that we didn't see anyone famous-but it's only a 20 minute train ride so there will be more opportunities for fame!
I am forcing my perfect french speaking friends to teach me at least a few phrases of french per day. I know the title of this post may seem like a silly question. I mean, don't get me wrong, of course I knew they spoke french, but i didn't expect to be THIS lost. I feel like i'm a little infant and I can't go anywhere alone without a translator. But i'm realizing it's a blessing because it's inspiring me to learn the language quicker!

In addition: I just realized that there are a few churches all over town and they all have bells that go off on the hour and since there are so many churches there is ringing for like 10 minutes straight. It's actually quite cute!

Today I ate a lychee! It was delicious, yum yum! Possibly new favorite fruit. I need to research the background and see if it can successfully be moved into the top 10 favorite fruits.

Alright- bon nuit! A bientot!

Arrival!

Bonjour! I arrived in menton yesterday and all I have to say (and can say-literally) is wow! I have never been more overwhelmed in my life. The journey here was long and a bit crazy. At the Paris airport there were French army men walking around with machine guns-at the ready. That was my first dose of culture shock-followed by people approaching me and hitting with with rapid French. After lugging my 100 lb bags all over the airport-I finally found the place to check in for my flight to Nice. I realized one of the pockets on my checked bag was open-i'm just hoping nothing fell out! I went through security and was only yelled at once in French-which didn't phase me because I had no idea what he was saying. At this point I was sweating from head to toe and utterly exhausted. It was about 10:30 am Paris time-2:30 am Arizona time. So i looked down at my phone and it said 2:30, so I started freaking out because my flight was scheduled for 1 and I thought I had missed it, so I ran to my gate-only to figure out my phone wasn't connected to wi-fi and ergo hadn't changed times yet.

So I took a bus from the Nice airport to Menton and it was incredible! The views were so beautiful! After arriving at the bus stop-my friend Samir picked me up and showed me where my dorm was. The "guardians" of the dorm only speak french-so that's only a minor issue. I haven't checked in yet but I have my key-i'm going to ask my friend to help translate so I can get all checked in today.

My room is incredible! It's a triple but there are only 2 of us in here-my German roommate Elizabeth and I! We have a patio that looks out onto the town and the hillside. On the downside, people tend to race by with incredibly loud engines at odd times of the night.

I'm feeling major culture shock because for 1. I don't speak the language and 2. Everything is different, this may seem obvious but like seriously-everything. I nearly set my blow dryer on fire this morning-actually I did set it on fire and then quickly turned it off, so it went out. The pillows are a little strange-kind of lumpy (my roommate says i'll get used to it!)

Now for the best part: the town! It's absolutely adorable, so charming and so ancient! It's unbelievable! I got here late last night and didn't get to see it too much during the day-but i'm going to go out soon and explore and try to get all of my paperwork done!

So far it's been a crazy experience-but i'm sure it will settle in more once my body has time to relax and get used to the time difference ( i couldn't fall asleep last night- but now i'm exhausted). Figures.
Hope everyone is having an awesome day (or night!)