All articles by favial

It’s been almost a month since my last update and I’ve fallen behind on my entries. These last few weeks have been the busiest in the semester so far, and it has left me little time to write. Fortunately, my poor memory has been saved thanks to the little “Italia” notebook Adrie bought me at
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Tales from Italy ch.13: Endless Studies and… Kittens??

Last week and this week in my life I have been utterly consumed by studying. It seems endless and a burden- not to mention all my exams (and their study materials/ books) are in Italian which takes me twice as long -if not longer- to read. It’s a slow and difficult process, but I’m chugging through
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Tales from Italy ch.12: Couchsurfing, Police, and Patty (Padua & Ferrara)

This past Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, I spent my time with Laura and Sonja in Padova (“Padua”) and Ferrara. When I left, I didn’t really know what to expect from the cities, but Sonja said like Urbino, they are famous Renaissance cities. While we were there, we also had our very first couchsurfing experience, meaning that
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Tales from Italy ch.11: Work, Study, Feasts, and Deep-Sleepers

Since coming back from Paris, I’ve become overwhelmed in studying and work. Exams are coming up soon, and all my books are in Italian so they take forever to read. Sometimes, I read at work when I don’t have students come in. (By the way, I work at Urbino as a TA for English. Sometimes I
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Tales from Italy ch.10.2: Paris- Proud to be a Yankee

Day 2 of Paris began more optimistically- it’s pretty hard to top Day 1. However, first things first, we still had to deal with the left overs of the previous day’s experiences. So, Laura and I both woke up on top of the blankets. During the night, I had managed to grab my coat and
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Tales from Italy: ch. 10.1- Day 1 Paris Misfortunes

Study? Nah, let’s go to Paris! PARIS, The most visited city in the world. Of course it was a fantastic trip, but saying it went smoothly gives it too much credit. By the time Day 1 of our trip had ended, Laura and I had succumbed to uncontrollable laughter from the myriad of misfortune and
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Tales from Italy ch.9: Your Elephants are Polar Bears.

Did you know it’s possible to visit a whole country in a day and still get back in time for dinner? Well it is! Small city-states qualify as their own countries and are easy to get to. When it comes to Italy, the most well-known city-state would be Vatican City, home of the Pope, Roman
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Tales from Italy ch.8: SPRING BREAK! Part 4- Cardiff, Wales and London, England

The day we were to leave Ireland, Janelle and I had an early flight to Bristol, England. We caught a taxi at 4:30AM and were in the air by 6:30. Since I had been sick with congestion the last few days, our flight was easily the most uncomfortable flight I had ever been on and
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Tales from Italy ch.8: SPRING BREAK! Part 3- Dublin, Ireland

40 minutes is such a short amount of time to sit on a plane. Normally, the only reason I’d ever consider flying anywhere is because it is too far to drive. Ah but you see, the good old Irish Sea makes it okay to not care about short flights. Janelle and I arrived in Dublin in
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Tales from Italy ch.8: SPRING BREAK! Part 2- Chester, Liverpool, and Manchester, England

The day we were to leave Durham, England, where we were staying with my friend, Kirsty, we made a stop at Sainbury’s to do a bit of grocery shopping for lunch and had breakfast. Janelle and I had a 6 hour 20 minute bus ride ahead of us, and I couldn’t possibly imagine going for
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Tales from Italy ch. 8: SPRING BREAK! Part 1: Scotland + New Castle, England

As I’ve said before, I really love how easy it is to travel while in Europe. Ridiculous fees and ticket prices that are all too common back in the states are unheard of here. And thank God too. So, with my friend, Janelle and tickets in hand, I boarded airplane #1 on it’s way to
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Tales from Italy ch. 7: Rimini, Florence and Siena!

Since coming back from Sicily, I have spent my non-class days traveling to cities that are a bit closer (I’m still following my goal of traveling every weekend, be it nearby cities or far away places). Last weekend some friends and I made a day trip to Rimini. Rimini is a beach town on the
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Tales from Italy ch. 6: SICILIA!

Being sick away from home is such an uncomfortable and hopeless feeling. That’s how I felt earlier this week when I woke up with a fever of 100.4 on Sunday. Being bed-ridden is enough to ruin anyone’s day, but despite my illness, I had a reason to be thankful. After all, I would much rather
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Tales from Italy ch. 5: Avventure future (Future Adventures)!!!

Oh, Blog! There’s so many exciting things going on right now!!! To start, I’ve discovered two new fun facts: 1- Monika and Ryan can dance! And I don’t just mean dance randomly, but I mean they can professionally dance! A few days ago when they discovered that the other knew how to dance, they got up and
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Tales from Italy ch.4: Sorry, I’m American.

What up, Blog, how’s it going? So it’s been almost a week since my last update, but in that time I’ve started to get a better handle on things; routines are forming and I’m becoming more comfortable as I begin to get so accustomed to everything. Of course this doesn’t mean that I’m now a
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Tales from Italy: ch.3 Carnevale and …classes?

Oh my goodness what a busy last few days!! To start, my life has been suddenly consumed by making class-decisions. Honestly, at Urbino it is a difficult process (not to mention classes started today and I just redid my entire class repertoire and must now repeat the following process -_-). Unlike the New Paltz system that
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Tales from Italy- ch. 2: Erasmus

To start, some things I forgot to mention in my last post: 1- the first street Alex and I decided to walk down since coming to Italy we discovered was called Via del Morte (Street of Death). What a welcome! 2- The oranges here are produced by a company called “Oraninja” and their sticker is
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Tales from Italy! ch.1- THE BEGINNING

I got to Italy on Saturday February 13th. For me, it still felt like Friday, February 12th since my night consisted of about 4 hours. I had left my house at 11am, got to the airport at 1pm, took off a little late by 430, arrived in Frankfurt, Germany around 520am (1120pm to me with
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