Groups are assigned

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Hi All,
After the walk and the stairs and catching the lungs we are in class.  We waited around for several hours while they gathered more and more Italian students and kept reassigning groups.  It ends up that we have eight groups of students, the size varies from  3 - 5 americans with one italian student.  I am working with Seth & Cathline.  Our Italian counterpart is Claudio.  He seems nice but better yet he has AutoCad and a lap top - which is essentail for cutting our working time down so we scored.  Some groups are not so lucky and have to do everything by hand.  I feel for them.  But that would not be my problem.  I though getting a smaller group would be good but we spend more time 'discussing' then we do working.  Which is ok but I am more productive alone.  It seems the italian schools have groups all of the time.  They never work alone - which is opposite of how our studios are set up.  Most of the Italains seem to be closer to my age the to my classmates which I thought would be good.  But I will soon discover they party just as much and as often as my  classmates.
Well as Claudio informed us, he was not working this weekend.  They do not have to start projects till monday.  So the Aimee and Beatrcie just adjusted the schedule and found another setching assigment for us to work on together as a studio group.  We also had a lecture by Massimo, one of the directors of the school.  He did his undergraduate work at OSU.  Funny so did Beatrice.  Guess that is the common thread with were go.  We like to keep our Alumni's employed.  
We also had our first Italian lesson today.  I still remember a little from my Italian class but it is so hard to speak it.  I freeze up I am infront of someone.  But mom would be proud I am learned the politness of Italian and remeber to say at least thank you and please in their langauge.  I have stareted a cheat sheet I can take with me to make it easier to communicate.  So. 
I have been eating later lunches and skipping dinner all together - unless I go out with a group.  You can not beat the prices here a very big slice of excellent pizza for 1€.  Not bad.  Well I must go I have class starting shortly.  I will finish my updating tonight.  It is friday night and they all will be partying and I will not drop the kind of money they do on booze.
Talk to you later.

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