THE BIGGEST STUDY ABROAD PROBLEM!!!!

So I initially planned to study abroad at the end of college because I thought that it would be a great way to end my college career.... Turns out that I have been liking it so much that I might not graduate in time.....

Long story short; I was notified last night after I was asleep that I needed to apply for graduation by the end of the day... Yes I should have known to look at this myself, but no, I didn't think that I would get a 4 hour notification on this.

Going to try and figure this out with my university as I WILL be done with school and ready to move on to the real world.

BIT OF GOOD NEWS: If I can get this resolved and graduate on time I believe that I will be coming back to Italy this summer to take a seasonal job here for 3 - 4 months!

A Day Trip To The Beach and an Eight Hour Return Trip!

A few weeks ago I went to Noli, Italy for a day trip to the beach with a few of my friends. Although it isn't the closest place to visit for us, it is down close to Genoa in the Liguria region, it is only a 22 euro round trip train ticket! It happened to be a really warm and clear day and so we decided that it would be a great excuse to get out of the city and switch it up for a day!

Orange tree in the city

Lemon tree in someones yard

The city of Noli is a really pretty place; it is a small beach town with houses that remind you of a more residential version of Florida's coast cities. There were a few homes that had lemon trees out front, and the heart of the city had orange trees everywhere. Although Noli was a small city, the pedestrian only zone inside of the city was actually rather large in comparison to the size of the city itself. It also had a really nice public beach access point which allowed us to get to the heart of the beach in a very short amount of time.

 The beach there was actually one of the best beaches that I have been on since I have been in Italy!

SIDE NOTE: Italian beaches are rocky, not sandy, and therefor your feet always hate you when you spend too much time at the beach. However, the beach at Noli was surprisingly not as bad because of the very small size of the pebbles, giving the feeling of it more like sand than rocks.

Our wonderful view for the day

Our spot on the beach

Marcus and I skipping rocks

Relaxing on the beach

The day itself was really awesome. Even though the water was SUPER cold we all decided to get in and take a dip. Marcus and I skipped rocks for a while (shout out to Cierra who also knows what she is doing!) and then we just relaxed and listened to music. We spent about 3-4 hours hanging out on the beach until a storm started to come through. We tried waiting the storm out, but after a long lunch and some more waiting we just decided to head home early, but we weren't so lucky........

So we waited......

And waited......

AND WAITED!!!!

Ended up being over and hour and a half that we waited at the train station. Luckily I was able to understand what some of the people on the train were saying, and one of the train stations on the way back to Torino had been struck by lightning and the wires there were down; making it impossible to cross as a train, and leaving us 2 hours from home for almost 2 hours!

Listening to Shout and having some fun!

Eventually they got everything fixed, and we managed to have a little bit of fun with it! The train that finally took us home was ABSOLUTELY the fullest train I have been on since I have been in Italy. In fact, we didn't even try to find seats, but rather we came across a little area between two of the carts that we all were able to fit in, and settled down there. Marcus pulled out his iPod and speakers, and we just listened to music and played some fun games to pass the 2 hour train ride home.


We got back home to Torino just after midnight (original plan was to be back by 6!) and had dinner just around 1am! Although the second half of the day wasn't exactly what we had planned, it was an absolute blast, and I really enjoyed myself.

Shout out to everyone back in Cincy!! Miss you all and see you soon! #mycity #rep

The Hard Decisions That Come With Studying Abroad

In the past couple of days everyone is getting situated here in Torino. This means that more people are going out consistently, everyone is starting to plan trips, and of course people are having to make VERY VERY tough decisions.

Having been here since September I can be sure that this isn't just a first week fascination, but rather consistently hard decisions that shape your study abroad experiences! These are what I would call "study abroad problems". Ironically I don't think my parents or anyone not studying abroad would think of any of these as problems, but here are a list of some of those really tough decisions that we have to face in the last couple of days;

     1. For that 4 day weekend in March should I go to London or Paris? Or maybe I will visit London and Dublin for spring break and Paris for Easter, so what about Rome?

     2. "Tonight for dinner I think I will have pasta, pizza, dessert, and then a kebab after! Or does that make me sound fat??" Thank you Joe!!!

     3. Tonight are we going to Lapsus or Rotonda? And where are you all going before for dinner?

     4. This weekend do you want to go to Milan and go to the Milan soccer game?

     5. We want to go watch The Bachelor tonight, but we have a test tomorrow morning... (we watched The Bachelor!)

     6. Do I get the OK with my parents before planning this trip to Prague for Marcus's birthday or book it now so it doesn't get more expensive?

The difficulty in these questions and other questions similar to these questions is that we only have a limited time here and we want to do as much as possible. I have recognized that sleep is optional here in Italy, and embraced it as much as I can (rather we sleep 4-5 hours a night and stay up socializing like Italians until 4am)! In fact I was talking with the girls that come over and watch The Bachelor with us today about this and they stated that having been here for 14 days and gone out (mostly with us) for 9 of the 14 evenings! We are going out again tonight to a club called Rotonda and we are going to dance to my single favorite song right now, leave the club around 3am, get a kebab, go to bed around 4, only to wake up at 8 to make it to class at 9 and do it again tomorrow!!;

AND YES!!!! I AM WEARING WHITE PANTS TONIGHT!