I’m going to attempt to condense the events from January 26th to February 9thish before my little guy laptop battery croaks. (Yes, I have a frog-powered laptop. No, you can’t have it. No I don’t remember where I got it. Yes, we can move on now.)

The 26th heralded the beginning of the Texas A&M Italy Study Abroad Spring 2008 program. That’ll be the last time I type out that monstrosity of a title, so from now on, just know that I’m in Italy because of it. Like any good college student faced with a deadline, I started packing at 2am that morning. I would like to note here that this is, in fact, a terrible idea. Something about a lack of sleep makes a day less…navigable.

I was shipped off from the airport in my city (Enigmatic, ooh.) to get to the airport in another city (Still enigmatic, ooh.) where the airplane to London-Gatwick was departing from. This means I woke up at 6am, was taken to the airport, was checked in all nice and neat style, was goodbyed by my family, was security checked, and was seated in the most perpendicular bed I’ve ever slept in.

I arrived in the correct city without delay or catastrophe. Of course, I still had a few hours to wait before check in for the next flight. So I sat. Actually, before the sitting, I called home to check on the family. Then came the sitting. I brushed up on a little Italian (and by “brushed up”, I mean “looked at for the first time”.) and listened to some music, of course.

The line opened, I checked in, and caught up with some of my friends also going to Italy. Once we got through security and all that jazz, we grabbed a quick lunch and then cheesed it to London.

We had about an hour? before our connecting flight to Rome departed. We were excited to be in London. We had no reason to be. In between flights, there was an hour long security check. So we waited. There were a few people who almost didn’t make it through in time. But they did, and we took off.

We flew for goodness knows how long. I slept. A lot. The people sitting next to me were starting to worry.

Enter Rome. We disembark, grab our luggage, and wait around like the bunch of American tourists that we are. Our bus finally shows up. We load up, and are driven to nifty little Castiglion Fiorentino, (Hence the header graphic, get it?)

Castiglion F.no is quite the little slice of interesting pie. You walk everywhere, which isn’t as bad as it sounds. The people are, generally speaking, patient with our “Come si dice…” ’s and “Non capisco” ’s. We get to roam around and terrorize all the quaint little shops while butchering the language and spending 3 Euros for a Coca-Cola. Did I mention dollars suck?

Every week, our whole group (50 people, tops) loads up and field trips to a different Italian city. The first trip was to Florence by bus. It rained and was fairly disagreeable the whole time we were there. However, we got to see quite a few interesting architectural relics.It balanced out, I suppose.

The second trip was to Arrezo, and by train instead of bus. The train is a fascinating device that we niftycool Americans should probably look into. (On a side note, when one of said trains passes through the stop you’re at going full speed, people jump. I thought it was awesome. That fantastic gust of wind…anywho…) Arezzo was pretty schnazzy, we saw a few interesting things, took some pictures, ate a little lunch, and then spent the afternoon being tourists. It’s more fun than I gave it credit for, actually.

The third trip was back to Florence, by train. It was a repeat, sure, but we saw a lot of things we hadn’t seen last time. And there’s still more to see. I took a bunch of great statue pictures that I’m calling “The Peanut Gallery”. Nothing quite like demeaning great works of art.

That brings us up to speed on the trips…

Speaking of trips, this is the first weekend that we’ve had free. The theory is that students travel on their own during this time. I missed the “cheapness” memo, and as such stayed here this weekend. Everyone else, not so much. So from now on, there will be trips. Oh yes, there will be trips.

Of course, I had to work on Saturday, so I had to be here anyway. I’m working as a kitchen aide sort of guy, setting tables, serving food, clearing tables, washing dishes, sweeping, mopping, trash, etc. It’s not a bad gig, even if the cooks only speak Italian and laugh when I try. (I get the feeling I sound like a retarded Spanish toddler trying to speak Italian for the first time.)

Okay, catching up pseudocomplete. Now for yesterday…

Pretty slow, actually. We (Me, John, Kris) woke up around 9:30 and started walking to the Coop. Thats the nifty little grocery store that’s a good walk away. It was dern windy, so we bundled up and scarfed up.

Did I mention I’ve developed an addiction? It’s to these little trinkets called Kinder Sorpresa’s. What they are: little milk chocolate egg shells hiding a - you guessed it - sorpresa! (If you didn’t guess it, try. It’s not too far off from English.) Within this little chocolate egg is a random toy! (I’m a nerd. Deal with it.) I guess it’s something about opening them that is too much fun to pass up.

It could be worse, I could be addicted to caffine like John. He bought 3 1.5 liter Pepsi’s for 2 Euro. That’s not where the ridiculous ends, however. He drank two of them yesterday. Yeah, he’s got problems. Not me. Clear?

After lunch we watched The Godfather for the first time. It was interesting, sure.

Anywho…

I worked dinner, as mentioned above. Then I set up this crazy WordPress thing.

Fin.

We’ll have to see how today goes. It’s John’s birthday, so we’re planning on doing…something. We haven’t quite worked out the logistics of it all. But we will, and it’ll be worth documenting, methinks.

I’ll catch up with y’all later,

Charles