school, school & more school

My computer won't recognize that my memory card is plugged in, I have 80 pages of reading to do for class in 7 hours, and I still need to pack for Cinque Terre this weekend....This has basically been the story of my life since school started 2 days ago (it feels like weeks ago). I may have to use this blog post to vent for a bit, because I am currently running on 8 hours of sleep in the last 2 nights, and am buried alive under homework/reading. So when I signed up for this gig, I knew that taking two classes would obviously be part of the deal. And I knew that getting 6 credit hours in 18 days was going to be intense- but HOLY LORD I didn't think it would be this intense (and thats coming from a student who loves school). My first night's homework in my Italian Journeys (English class) was reading 98 FREAKING PAGES. It was inhumane at best. I am a good reader, but it still took up 3 hours of my night...I didn't end up going to bed until 2:30am. School here is definitely a main focus of the program too; they take it very very seriously. If you miss one class, your grade drops half a letter grade. If you miss two, it drops a whole letter grade, and three you are shipped back home. So, it's not like I can just sleep in one morning if I feel like it- no such luck. But, all of that being said, as I was on my 45 minute break from 7 am-5pm today, I looked up at the snow capped mountains in the distance and thought, "Wow, I am blessed..." I can already feel myself becoming one giant stressball, but if I just take a minute and look around, and I realize that I am a giant stressball in ITALY, and thats kinda cool.

I have some pictures that I wanted to post about my view from my new room and some general pictures on campus, but unfortunately my computer hates me at the moment, and I just don't have it in me to fight with it tonight. As for plans this weekend, I am headed to Cinque Terre. It is a gorgeous town on the west coast of Italy, right on cliffs and beaches. Look it up for sure!! The weather was in the 80s, and dropped down to the low 60s, but I think it will be 70 this weekend, so hopefully I can break the swimsuit out! I am going with the other girl RAs- Ashley, Janani, Emily, Abbey and Emily's friend. We have a 5 hour bus ride to get there tomorrow, and we'll stay there Friday and Saturday nights and come back Sunday by 9pm. I have two papers due Tuesday morning, so I will be hitting the books hard as soon as I get back. I am sorry this is such a short blog post, but I promise I will have lots to share when I get back this weekend. Buona sera!



This is the town I will be staying in this weekend- WOW!