Benvenuto a Milano!

10957997_10153107012508921_5835893846868267034_n

Found this on the wall of my room in Milan, I knew it was where I was meant to be

I was so excited to get to Milan!  I got off the airplane and there were so many other people waiting to be picked up by the housing service to be taken to our individual apartments.  I met a lot of other girls from SUNY Albany!  It was cool that even across the world, I still had some fellow SUNY sisters.  We were divided up into cars, and taken to our apartments.  I was supposed to be the first drop off, however, they had the wrong keys for me.  I did panic internally a little, especially because I was the first person to arrive to my apartment, but I was calm knowing my housing service didn’t leave me alone.  Everyone else was dropped off, and then I finally got in my home.  Later that day though, my roommate Ashley from Buffalo State came home, so I was no longer alone.  We napped, thus messing up our sleep schedule, but eventually we got the hang of the new time difference.

My school id card!

My school id card!

Right away the next day we had to go to school for Orientation.  I had no idea how fast paced everything was, and how much we had to get done within our first week in Milan.  We got the hang of the metro very quickly considering how we constantly had to run obscure errands all over Milano.  We met so many people, in such a short amount of time!

Fellow SUNY sister Sarah and myself at orientation

Fellow SUNY sister Sarah and myself at orientation

The first week was jampacked, and our first weekend was that way as well.  But I was so happy to finally be home =)

Welcome to Universita Cattolica del Sacro Cuore!

Welcome to Universita Cattolica del Sacro Cuore!

Exploring snowy Milan with my roommate Ashley, and housemate Bethany

Exploring snowy Milan with my roommate Ashley, and housemate Bethany

 

Huddersfield Has A Lot of Mini Coopers…

And I attempted to count them all today. I stopped after about ten, when I passed by an uncountable number of them parked in a parking lot and couldn’t decide if they were worth counting anyway. It’s all fine by me though, as my dream car is the Mini Cooper.

So today, I got up at about 7:45 and got ready for a 9:30 orientation, the first of many that will be taking place throughout the next two weeks. Lauren and I made our way over to the Central Services Building (which, for all you New Paltzers, is known as “CSB”, so we felt right at home) where all the international students were told what would be happening as far as class enrollment and activities for the next few weeks goes. We found out that we don’t begin classes until the 27th instead of the 20th, which is when I originally thought they began, so I’ve still got a lot of time before I have any schoolwork to do. After waiting in line for a while for our Visas to be scanned—this was somehow the process for “pre-enrollment”—Lauren and I went into town to get a couple of things, signed up for day trips to York, Manchester, and Liverpool. The trip to York is on Sunday, Manchester is the following Saturday, and Liverpool is just the day after!

A little before 17:00 (5:00) we made our way back to campus for a meeting of the International Students society, which met in the Coffee Bean in the Students’ Union. I was expecting it to be led more formally than it was, but what wound up happening was simply that international students trickled in and sat with each other at tables, randomly. Lauren and I became friends with Berit, a woman from Denmark whose 33rd birthday happened to be today, Lucie from the Czech Republic, and Rizwan from Pakistan.

After talking for a while in the Coffee Bean and having small conversations with some of the staff members of the Students’ Union, who are students and recent graduates of the University, the five of us went out to dinner at a place called The Cotton Factory, where we had really good pizza (though it was not like New York pizza) and a couple of drinks. We then went back to the Students’ Union, where there was yet another International Students event—though it wound up being populated with pretty much every kind of student—at the bar on campus, The Graduate. We stayed there for a few hours before splitting up and going back to our respective homes.

Tomorrow we have enrollment, and the rest of the day free. Hopefully we’ll find something fun to do like we did today!