Friday, January 24, 2014

Visitate (viz-i – tar – A) – to visit

            …well today was a busy exciting day of not doing very much…and for the most part everything I did revolved around our trips for the semester…
            …after class the major point of the day was our meeting with the police for the first step toward out Permits of Stay…basically we paid the police some money to file our paperwork, showed our visas and then wait for our day to be finger printed…but it is pretty amazing that soon I get to be a resident of this city…like seriously, I may not be becoming a citizen but I will be getting a card that says I am a resident of a foreign country and that is pretty amazing J its so cool to think that I live in Italia…that this gets to be my home and will forever be a place I lived…and one day I will be telling my kids to be a part of that 1% of college students that study abroad, because their mommy did…that’s a pretty amazing thing to think about…
            …today was also a day that most of the USAC students spent trying to book trips abroad for the rest of the semester….we are all trying mostly to book the out of country trips in order to get train and plane tickets, and hostels for the cheapest possible…for me that means booking tickets to Paris in March with a girlfriend this weekend, and then this week I will be booking London in February, Rome the week after Easter, and then a trip backpacking through Cinque Terra, Pisa, Florence, and Siena, over Easter weekend….its so funny when we sit back to look at the amount of weekends we actually have and then try to book them, you realize how short the semester really is…a lot of the USAC kids are off to Dublin for St. Patricks Day, one of my friends, Rebecca is even getting to celebrate her 21st birthday, in Dublin, on St. Patty’s day! Now that is a memory she will never forget!....i have chosen to see other things and spend travel funds in other ways for things that are higher on the bucket list J
            …its so cool to look at tickets and realize that soon I will get to be there and see the sights, like when we were looking at Paris….its amazing to think that on that weekend, I will get to see the Effell Tower, Mona Lisa, Notre Dame and more! Things most only read about in books….ahh this trip is such a blessing,….and even though it is at times, stressful or I get homesick, or missing people from home or feeling like it is so hard to find my group here…I have those people who are still at home, that talk me down off the ledge, so to speak…always there to remind me of why I am here, and that’s why they are my people, and my loves….and that’s why I can be confident in why I am here….and that’s why I can always remember how much I love it here J
            …one more funny story for tonight…so tonight I left the house at about 7:30pm to meet up with my friends Kristen and Devin to go do apertivo tonight…if I haven’t explained that before on the blog, apertivo is done here in Turin (and around Italy, but more regularly in Turin) every night from about 7-9pm, and since the Italians don’t eat dinner until about 9 any ways….but anyways at Apertivo, you buy a drink (alcoholic or not) and then you are allowed to partake in any of the antipasti (appetizers) that they have set out…its really fun J….
            …but anyways, I left my apartment tonight to head out and meet them at their house, so I headed to the metro…now this morning the transportation had been on strike (which apparently happens really often around here) so everything was shut down, until about 3 and then it was miraculously all over….very odd I know….so I didn’t think anything of it…so I get to the metro and walk downstairs, buzz my pass and start heading down the escalator, which is stopped…now that’s kind of normal because some times the elscalators are moving but other times they aren’t…but I got the the landing before the platform and it seemed darker than usual…suddenly it dawned on me that NO ONE ELSE WAS THERE…. So freaked out I ran upstairs and saw a metro officer looking at me confused and told me I had to leave….at 7:30 on a Friday night!!...but I went to leave and the gates were closed….I had to take an elevator just to get out….so add that to my list of awkwards Italian situations….ahh the memories right?

            …well tomorrow it is off on our first day trip….tomorrow around noon we are taking a 30 minute train ride to a small town on a lake, west of here, called Avigliana, it is supposed to be very pretty J….there may not have been pictures of my adventures for today, but there will definently be some from tomorrow!....Buona Notte, e parli a domani!! (Goodnight and talk to you tomorrow!) 

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