Blogs from Europe - page 13924

Seems summer is definately over ... here in Italy. We've been having dark ominous skys with the occassional thunder and lightening storm. Today is Friday which means meeting up with friends and going for a long walk/hike in the Castelli area. We ended up at our usual Lake Albano. A crater lake that is 10K when you go full circle - it's been very windy today and walking around the lake you get a sense that maybe we should have remained indoors because there are fallen trees and smallish boulders along the trail. Started at the Spiagga Verde (Green Beach) for cappacino then began our walk even if the hostess of the cafe warned us to stay out of the woods. ... read more

so, i feel better. i'm still pretty confused and aggrevated frequently, but i don't want to just sit and cry anymore. i went to the post office today all by myself, dealt with the shame of not knowing what was going on, and actually got some help from a couple of nice italian ladies. i have discovered that two of my classes should really be renamed sight-seeing 101 and sight-seeing 102. we just walk around and look at all this super old fancy churches and learn crap loads about them. pretty neat, especially now that my blisters have finally died. kim--your italian count comment seriously made me laugh out loud. funny stories 1 so, our bathroom is probably the most disgusting one on earth. our washing machine is located here, and it has a share in ... read more

I think it rains every day here. but its like florida rain. it rains for a little bit then clears up and then rains and clears up. i only got stuck in the rain once walking home from school without my umbrella. now i carry it everywhere. Anyway, we were supposed to go on a tour of the Colosseum but Keri and i walked over there in the rain and when we showed up, Davide told us that the Colosseum was closed for "technical reasons" and he didnt want to make us tour the Palatine Hill in the rain so we're going next week sometime. Last night we went dancing at a disco. That was a lot of fun and i was dead tired when we got home. Yesterday, in Architecture of the City, Davide took ... read more

The end of my first week in Russia. It's been a good experience; I expected to feel a lot more anxious, but it's only yesterday and today that the culture shock and the feeling of being 4000 kilometres from home has caught up with me. I haven't made any Russian friends yet - I didn't want to introduce myself by stuttering and making mistakes as I tend to at the moment - but I am going for a walk with Chris J tomorrow to take some photos, and hopefully we will meet some people then. And then a celebration. It won't be a huge party, just a meal and a couple of bars if we find them, because we're all so tired. Relaxing is definitely the plan for the weekend. Fish for tea, out of a ... read more

Today was the second day of meeting with other IES students, so I’ll backtrack a little to yesterday. Thursday I slept until 10:30, got ready and straightened up my room a little. I took my first metro ride (by myself!) to get to IES. It’s actually very easy because it’s just a five minute walk to the station and then six stops down the line. It takes about 20 minutes total to get to the center but my commute is much shorter than most other peoples are. Yesterday they gave us a bunch of practical information about insurance, evacuation plans and cell phones and then a quick tour of the center. We met only in a group of 30 so I still didn’t get to meet everyone. I met some girls afterward who wanted cell phones ... read more