Milano thus far...

Ciao tutti!!

This is my personal blog di Milano!!  Hope all is well with you.  Everything over here is fantastico!  You're going to have to get used to the Italish...  mi dispiace.

Well first of all, I arrived in Milan 2 weeks ago.  I can't believe it's been that long!  I live in a 2 bedroom (if you can call it that) apartment north of the city center with a girl from UT (Ella) and a boy that goes to Bocconi from Naples (Antonio).  Both are very nice and our living conditions have worked out fantastic!  Hopefully Antonio will help me learn more Italian, although I think I've just been helping him with his English.  This city of Milan is very NYC.  There are little stores, bars, restaurants, cleaners, etc. on every block.  There is no grass, and every building touches each other.  Besides hearing Italian, and seeing the beautiful Italian architecture, you'd swear I was in NYC!  I take the tram and subways everywhere, which is really nice except for when they go on strike.  Speaking of... the first strike was yesterday.  If someone could please tell me what the point of these strikes are, I'd much appreciate it.  They announce the strikes a day ahead of time, they only last for a certain amount of time, and they only involve certain lines as opposed to the entire metro itself.  So yesterday they went on strike from 8:45 am to 3pm.  So everyone just went to work earlier.  And at night the trams 7 and 13 went on strike, so I just took the 11.  Really not inconvenient, and to me rather pointless. But it's Italy, so apparently there have been strikes, there are strikes, and there always will be strikes!  

I live right about a bakery... bad idea.  The pastries are amazing!  The woman and I are becoming best friends.  Unfortunately I can't say more than "Vorrei un brioce con cioccolata" and then when she still doesn't understand me, I'm forced to simply point.  But at least I get the message across and at least she's found her new best customer!  Besides the AMAZING pastries, the pasta and pizza are to die for.  Seriously.  I may die when I come back to the states. Even the bread of the pizza is seasoned to perfection, and the delivery is NOT Dominos.  We ordered cheese pizza the other night.  It was the freshest, thickest, most amazing mozzarella I've ever had in my life.  And it was the same if not cheaper than Pizza Hut.  Che fantastico!!  Besides eating, drinking is definitely different here.  I bought a ridiculously large bottle of wine from the super market for 3 euros.  That's $5 for a great bottle of wine.  A large bottle of water cost me 4 euros.  Oy.  Can you imagine if it were like that in the US.  Never.  Also, lots of girls have had their fare share of problems ordering coffee.  Cafe= espresso.  Cafe con latte= espresso with a splash of milk.  Cafe macchiato= our normal lattes.  Cappuccino= more or less a latte with a little more foam.  And if you get a mocha... the chocolate is not sweetened... ew.  And besides all these wonderful fattening foods, if these weren't enough, we have gelato.  How amazing.  I won't even go into detail because I'll end up talking myself into going downstairs and getting one. MMMMMMM.

I don't start classes until February 18th, but we've been having a crash course in Italian since i got here.  It's 4 hours a day, 4 days a week, and is pretty intensive.  But I'm learning a lot, and it definitely keeps me busy until school actually starts.  Hopefully I'll learn enough to become a little more fluent as the semester goes on.

The weather here as been pretty nice.  It's overcast a lot, but most it's been party cloudy around 45 degrees.  Can't really complain, most of you are in the snow!  The only thing that sucks is that we want to go travel but most of the places aren't as beautiful yet.  We were going to go to Cinque Terra this weekend, because i've heard it's the most magnificent place in Italy, but it won't even be green yet, since it's still winter.  Unfortunately I'll just have to wait.

Other than that, everyone I've met is really nice.  I hang out with mostly Canadians, Minnesotans (I know how funny), and Norwegians.  Although there really are people here from all over.  Should be interesting when classes actually start and the rest of the exchange students who didn't want to do the crash course get here.  A little overwhelming I think.  I'm glad that I came and got to know Milan before school started.  Phew.

Besides Italy, I did get my summer internship with Target Sourcing Services in Manhattan so NYC here I come!  But I can't even think of how amazing that will be, since I have all of Europe to discover before hand!

Ciao e vi vigglio bene!!

Alli