School Life

Hello there followers,

I apologize for not having blogged in awhile, I've been pretty busy this week with the first week of classes getting under way. So let's see, classes went alright. Monday and Wednesday nights I'm taking Italian201, it will probably be the most challenging course but since I'm in Rome, I should pick stuff up quickly which will hopefully make the class easier. I was switched up into a more intense section after the first class so hopefully I handle it well, my teacher, Della, seems very nice though.

On a related note, I'm signed up for the Extreme Language Project as part of my UNIV269 course that UMD is requiring me to take online from here. It meets every Thursday night from 730-930 at a pub in Trastevere where I'll be paired up with Italian youth trying to learn English. I help them learn English, they help me learn Italian. Everyone wins. It sounds cool.

The Garden - where we eat lunch/hang out

I'm going to have to drop another class or else I'll have no free time to have fun and travel on weekends (that's priority #1). Getting back to what I intended this post to be, I've got 6 classes currently. The aforementioned Italian201 class, and UNIV class, then I also have ARCH200 (Bodies and Burials), BUS200 (Business Law), POL306 (Security and Defense Policy in the EU) and POL312 (Political Philosophy of the Renaissance). I love the other courses I'm taking, although they seem like a lot of work (UMD told me that these classes would have little to no work outside of class, Lies. I have just as much as I would back at College Park). My POL312 teacher is boring to death though, so to cut my course total down from 6 to 5 I might drop that class and just deal with doing more work another semester, I'm a Sophomore, plenty of time.

Gli Archi

Okay so more about AUR. It's a small university, only around 500 students, with 400+ of those being study abroad students. It has only one academic building which is located at the back of 'the garden' as it is called here. This area is normally crowded with students hanging out on a nice afternoon between classes and seeing me relaxing in there became a classic sight throughout the semester due to my long breaks between classes. Love it.

Outside are the ancient Roman archways marking the entrance to the city. Right next to them is a small cafe where all the students hang out and get lunch. Great paninis for a good price. I tried my first espresso there on Tuesday (I have class straight from 9am to 6pm) to give me a boost for the day and it tasted terrible but boy did it wake me up (they grew on me throughout the semester - now I miss them everyone morning I get up for work).

Gli Archi Bar - so many great memories there

Okay, I could go on about some neat things we learned in class this week but I've written enough and I want to start blogging about the rest of my week. Stay Tuned.