Catching up

Hello to all back in the States!

This is my first blog entry and before I get started I would like to let my audience what to expect. First, I would fully expect many grammatical and spelling errors during the duration of the blog, but I will do my best to avoid them. Second, I will make my blogs as humorous or as serious as need be. However, I tend to do things on the humorous side haha! So to start I will walk you through from pre-departure to now, which is September 11, 2009.

Per-Departure

I woke up on the morning of September 6 and I had started to feel a little nervous. I had the normal fears everyone has traveling abroad the first time, where do I go in the airports, what if the airlines lose my bags, what if….well, there were many more questions in my head but I will leave it at that. I got to the Chicago airport around 3:15 PM for a 5:25 flight. I got my bags checked and said good bye to my parents and headed off on my own. I made it through security and to the gate just fine which was a relief. I was waiting there by myself until Jake and Rachel showed up (two other Iowa students on the trip). We sat around and talked for a little bit and then we realized that there were a few other college looking kids and quickly found out we were all heading to CIMBA!

Traveling to Paderno!

The flight went from Chicago to London and was a very good flight. They had many great movies to choose from, good food, good wine (free!), and fairly comfortable seats. I sat next to an old Italian couple who did not speak any English, so I had to ride basically alone. Our group of CIMBA students then had a brief layover in London before flying to Venice. I thought that once we got to Venice we could take our time to get to the train station and maybe see the city a little. I soon found out this was not the case. We arrived at Venice at 1 PM. We immediately bought bus tickets to the train station which Jessica (an RI here at CIMBA) was waiting for us to arrive. We then bought train tickets to Bassano where we would then have to take a bus to get to the CIMBA campus in Paderno. So to sum it up, we got off the plane, took a 20 minute bus ride to the train station, then an hour long train ride, then another 30 minute bus ride to Paderno. We arrived around 5:30 and immediately went to Orientation and check in. After orientation I went on a brief tour of the campus which is when I was finally allowed to take in what a beautiful campus this really is. It’s amazing! Mountains in the background, old Italian buildings, trees, just an amazing place to be. For any who have seen the University of Colorado’s campus in Boulder, just take that times 100 and that’s how awesome this campus is.

I’m here now what?

So it is now September 7th and I had been awake for more than 24 hours and I was pretty tired, but of course I wanted to meet people so I went out to the local sports bar with everyone. Now, when you’re an American and you hear sports bar, you think TV’s with games, memorabilia, that sort of thing right? I thought it would be like that also but with soccer or something instead of football and basketball. Well I get there and find out it’s nothing like that at all, it’s just a fairly decent bar/restaurant, and so I was wondering why they call it a sports bar. I found out that night it’s called a sports bar because there is a soccer field right behind it where the town’s soccer club practices and after practice they sometimes stop in for a drink! So I mingled with a lot of really nice people that night and got to know everyone I could. Since I was tired I went to bed fairly early that night as I had class at 8 in the morning. The classes the next day were typical first day classes in that we just went over the syllabus mostly because everyone was extremely tired. Usually this is because we (the students) are not looking forward to another semester of school. However, this time it was due to everyone being extremely jet lagged!

After a few classes Tuesday, I started a program called LIFE. This was one of the most challenging, but rewarding things I have done in my life. However, that is all I am allowed to say about it in this blog. To my friends and family not interested in studying abroad through CIMBA, please ask me to describe it to you when I get back. To students interested in studying abroad in CIMBA, all I will say to you is for sure take part in this program! I don’t want to ruin anything for you so that will be all the information I will give you on it. If it tells you anything about the course, CEO’s take it and I could write 30 pages describing it, that’s how good it really is. The LIFE program started at 4PM Tuesday afternoon and went until 12:30 am that night. We then had to met at 6:45 am on Wednesday and that day we went until 12:00 am. Thursday we met at 7:30 and finished up the program around 3:00 PM if that tells you anything about how intense of a program it was.

So at this point I was kind of feeling like I had not had any time to email friends and family and update my blog so for that I apologize. So I called my parents and friends to tell them about the amazing experience, then went to celebrate the end of the LIFE program with all of my new friends. The next few days I used to get to know everyone a little better, swap stories, and just hang out. I have gotten to know so many great people already and I can’t wait to find out what the next few months will bring. Well not much else for now, I have plans to hike Mt. Grappa, which is right behind our campus. We have a fairly sizeable group going so that will be fun to hike it with everyone. I will update you on whether it was a successful hike or not later but until then Ciao!!