My First Few Weeks

So, I have been here for about three weeks now and I thought that it was about time that I stopped procrastinating on my blog and just go ahead and write it. :) So I'll just start from the beginning and go from there.
After an extremely long flight, of around 14 hours or so, in which I got no sleep, I finally arrived in Florence. We were bussed to the Villa and actually got to it around 7 pm. We were all so exhausted and only wanted to eat and go to bed. That however was not the plan for us. We were allowed to eat dinner, the best ravioli I've ever tasted, then we jumped in another bus where they took us to Piazza di Michaelangelo. This has a breathtaking view of Florence, but we were all so tired we kind of just wandered around like zombies until they let us get back on the bus. After that we headed back to the Villa to go to bed, but of course that wasn't going to happen. We somehow gained tons of energy once we returned to house and so we stayed up until 2 am. :) It was fun. Oh and once we got back we had to figure out the room situation. I was put into the tiniest room ever with someone, but then he switched. Then madness occurred, people's feelings got hurt, and then everything was ok. I didn't room with the person that I had originally planned to room with, but God put someone great in my room. His name is Michael and he was in my dorm last year. He lives in Russia, speaks Russian, and is awesome man of God. I'm glad he's here. :) That day began a series of days where every single person in the house was completely exhausted. They got us up early for the next three days and made us sit through hours of orientation. It was so boring. We looked forward to free time, but it never came. There was activity after activity. I know they were trying to acclimate us to the time, but it was terrible.
Anyway, I got through that and then we started intensive Italian. That means that we are split into three groups, alphabetically. I was in the first group and so I had an Italian named Leonardo teach my class. He was really cool, but he spoke so quickly. So the schedule for the next two weeks was going to Italian 6 hours a day. I would wake up around 7:30 am, eat breakfast (which I can't go without anymore), and then sit in class from 8:30 am -10:30am. Following that i would have a half hour break and then we would go into town for two hours. We had three guides (Coraddo, Matia, and Stefania) who would take us to different places to practice our Italian. We could only speak in Italian and they would only speak back in Italian. I loved these outings. They were so much fun. My favorite guide was Coraddo. He was really cool. They took us to places like a farmacia, a mercato, a libreria, or a bar. We would have to go in, ask questions, and buy things. It was really good practice. After that we would have lunch, followed by two more hours of Italian class. It was really intense, but fun. :) I have learned a lot.
Over the course of those two weeks I had free time on the weekends. The first weekend was orientation, then I went to Cinque Terre with my friends Michael, Chelsey, Jeff, and Katie. We took a train up north for about two hours to get there. It was so beautiful! They are five sea towns built into the mountains. They are very small, very beautiful, and considering we couldn't find a room anywhere, very busy. We went swimming, ate pizza and focaccio bread. I took a few pictures as well. There are trails going from each town and some are pretty strenuous. It took us about an hour and a half to get from the fifth city (Monterosso) to the fourth city (Venazza). They were beautiful hikes. We walked through the grape vines and through the trees. The view was amazing. Then we had dinner at this restaurant, that was built into the cliffs. We ate cheese and salami as we watched the sun set on the ocean. It was gorgeous. It was a great first trip.
The next weekend we went to a vineyard where we had the chance to pick grapes for a few hours. It was so cool. The grapes were so juicy and delicious and it was fun being out and about. We go to hang around there for a few hours, eat lunch, and lucky me, step in dog poo. It was gross. No one wanted to sit by me. :( I smelled quite bad. Then then next day, Sunday, we went to the program director's house. She lives about twenty or so minutes away in a really cool little house. When we got there, there were a bunch of people in these weird costumes. They had flags and they did a show for us.
They threw the flags and twirled them around. It was really cool. Then we got really good food. Oh, and they had chips and salsa. I was in heaven! :) That ended that weekend and thus real classes began.
So this week has been the first week of normal classes. I am taking Italian, religion, a history class, and sociology. It's a lot of work, but I'll be ok. This weekend I'm off to Munich and Salzberg . It'll be awesome and I'll fill you in on that trip later!