Monday May 16th: Today marks the second week of our study abroad program in Italy. Most of us are still waking up and saying "is this real life, are we really here in Italy?" To start off the second week of this program, we began with a local visit to the fresh market with Cinzia. Once we got what we wanted at the market we then were introduced to the field trips that we would partake in during this week. Once that brief meeting was over we went to meet w...

Sunday May 15th: For the past couple of days it's been shocking and culturally challenging to get by the definite language barriers. Most of the Italians that the other girls and I have met so far can understand a little bit of English so hand gestures have become very useful while we are trying to communicate with them around the towns. To start off the many wonderful experiences, they told us the best way for us to get ourselves comfortable with the culture i...

Saturday May 14th: Being in summer school can sometimes be harder than usual. But in reality being in summer school in Italy has been amazing so far and it's only been a couple of days. On the weekends (typically Friday-Sunday) we get the days off to do any open travel that we wish. We have the entire world at our finger tips. For the first weekend we were encouraged to stay around the neighboring towns and explore the little pieces of hidden secrets. And that ...

Friday May 13th: This was our second day of official classes in the Palace. We started out the day by walking around the towns with Cinzia and being informed about how to use public transportation in Italy, it was very interesting to hear about because the only ways to really get around is to either: walk everywhere, use the train, or the cotral bus system. After we walked around learning where the train and the bus stations are we had our first visit to look i...

Thursday May 12th: Today was our very first field trip; we went and visited the area of the Castelli Romani. On our first field trip we traveled to CastelGandolfo (which is the popes summer house), we went to Frescati, Genzano, and we finally went to Nemi and ate a wonderful lunch that was prepared for us by a guy who thinks that he is Elvis, he had the complete look from the hair to the side burns and the giant glasses. It was amazing food, since we didn't rea...