Saturday, May 24, 2008

Arrival in Italia...

After hours and hours on planes and in airports I finally arrived in Torino Italy!

We took a bus from the airport to the "Hotel Roma" in downtown Torino. After resting for a little bit we went to this crazy Italian pizza place where they served us toasted bread with tomatoes on top and then pizza. The pizza was pretty good, the bread was pretty bad...

Tomorrow we are moving into the apartments. Students in USAC are placed all around the city, either near the school, in "midtown" or in downtown. I'll be living in downtown Torino, just a few blocks away from the hotel that I am at now. I don't quite know what to expect from the apartment, it will probably be small but it will be in Italy and that will be all that matters. To get to school each day I'll have to take either a bus or a above ground rail train, I haven't quite figured out which or how long it will take yet. I'll probably do that tomorrow after getting settled in the house and getting my bus pass from USAC.

So far everyone from USAC has been really nice, the program director and her assistants are very knowledgeable about they city and about the program, they seem to be real organized. It's a pretty open program as far as I can tell, they treat you like adults and give you the tools to have a good time. I haven't found very many students that are taking the Intermediate Italian, but I haven't met everyone yet. Hopefully there will be a good number of people in that class. Something I've found pretty interesting while talking to some students is that many aren't even taking an Italian language class. I met a couple people taking marketing classes and other business classes. Which I guess makes since because this University has a really high ranking business program. Hopefully they will learn enough Italian to get by for the term.

I don't know how often I'll be able to update this blog, the USAC people said that the University has Wifi so hopefully it's easy to access. It just means that I'll have to go to campus to get on the internet, which isn't too bad. Right now I'm using the WiFi at the hotel.

Overall, as far as I've seen the city is beautiful, and I've only seen about 1o or 12 blocks. There is an interesting smell (I know, it's a weird thing to say) that is everyone, I think it comes from the food. All the buildings are huge and the streets are paved with bricks, it looks like a Roman city.

3 comments:

Carole said...

Great pictures, Taylor. I'll look forward to reading your adventures and seeing the pictures!

Love you,
Mom

Anonymous said...

yay :)
<3

Anonymous said...

by the way. the toasted bread with tomatoes on top is bruschetta :)