TGIF, wait I have every Friday off!

Thursday I had one class because my second one was cancelled, and I then got home went for a run and got a salad that I love from Locanda! Oh yea, I went to lunch at the cafeteria and this is what I had:

It was pesto pasta, quesadillas, and carrots and string beans! That night I began reading 50 shades of grey and could not put the book down until 3 am, at that point I knew I had to go to sleep or else I would be up all night. I am currently on pg. 290! 

Today, Friday, I have no classes, and I don't have any Friday that I am in Italy! How exciting?! Well instead of going to classes today, Rachael and I got to finally pick up my METRO card! YAY! I don't think you know how happy I am to get that little piece of plastic! It is going to save me hundreds of dollars on transportation, and it only took them a month to get it to me! Anywho, after that, we went to the Duomo, the big, old church here in Milan. We walked down some pretty nice streets and got a little lost only to find ourselves in the most amazing park ever that Rachael has been to before, so we were not lost! This park was breath-taking and it was right next to a castle! My favorite!!! Here are some pictures since words cannot explain this place:

streets surrounding the Duomo

A pinocchio store, its funny because I am currently reading this in my Italian storytelling class!

A big horse statue, thought of you Meshul!

The castle!

And the fountain in front of it!

Love it!

Inside the castle square!

How beautiful is this!

The entry/exit way

Look! I spotted a cat in the moat!

The amazing park!

And me in it!

Part of the castle

It was such a gorgeous day!

And some leaves are even changing! Just like Vermont!

This is where the moat used to be to keep intruders out of the castle, but now its just really green grass!

I spotted another cat! The king and queen must love cats :P

After we had a long day of walking and searching for concert tickets, we decided we had enough of the Italian lifestyle of shopping, eating, walking, and more shopping, so we went home. We grabbed some bags and went out to the grocery store. When we got back, I was famished and made some dinner. I made pasta with oil, garlic, onions, zucchini, and cheese. To top it off I had some homemade sangria with it! It was so good, maybe because I was so hungry or maybe I am getting good at this cooking thing!?

Yum! After my tunny was full, I figured my brain needed to be as well so I kept reading Pinocchio that is due on Monday. I am on pg. 143 out of 192, so I am almost there, and surprisingly my brain isn't exploding. It is actually a very intriguing novel, quite scary to think that parents read this book to their little children! Anyway, I thought I could use blogging as a distraction from reading, but I know I have to get back to it! How else will I get a good job in the future? :) I will tell you all about my day tomorrow because you all know where I will be at....the FLEA MARKET!

“What's meant to be will always find a way.” 

Until Tomorrow,

<3 Lauren

School, school, school

Okay, so I know I promised more pictures, but it seems that here in Italy, your professors do not like you taking pictures of them while they teach. How weird is that!??!! So I sadly only have 2 pictures for you and guess what they are of!? FOOD! you got it!

But before that, let me tell you about my classes. I am enjoying them so far, lots and lots of reading, but there are also lots and lots of outside the classroom activities which I think will be really educating and interesting. I did end up dropping my history class because it turned out to be more political than historical and I could not keep up with the professor. But my other 4 classes (psych, sociology, art, and screen writing/literature) are so far so good. I now have 2 classes a day Monday-Thursday that last 2 hours each. And Fridays I am a free woman!

Good news, I booked my flight to Germany with Michele! YAY, so happy to be traveling with her, and we are still waiting to book our trip to Denmark to visit Ms. Becca Webb! Oh how I miss that girl!

Another good news is that I met the kid that I will be babysitting/speaking English to and he is the cutest kid. He is 5 years old and has sort of a longer very blonde hair! His dad is a professional golfer here in Italy so he tells me he wants to be a golfer when he grows up and let me tell you, his swing is bomb! (bomb is a new word that I have been using because my roomies Anne and Elyssa always use it and now I cannot help myself and I end up saying it also, oh well). For a 5 year old, this kid has an awesome swing and he is going to be in a golf tournament in the states in December, so he is probably really good! The parents are so nice, and the boy Giovanni (typical Italian name) is so mature that I think this job is going to go very well. So we shall see and I will keep you updated...and now for the pictures!!

Last night, my roomie Marissa made us all dinner! It was so nice of her to do that and it was delicious!!

This was my break fast meal! I made garlic bread with mixed veggies and some tomato, mozzarella and balsamic! And also a mug (not glass because none were clean) of wine with fruit. YUM, my roomies tried some and they said it was good. It makes me happy when people are happy eating something I cooked! Maybe I am in the wrong degree and I should be a chef? hahaha, nah! I will stick to leisure cooking!

Lastly, side note, today when Giovanni and his mom and I were driving back to their home, there was this little old couple walking across the crosswalk. At first I thought, "this is the most adorable thing ever, an old couple still in love, holding each others hand, taking a stroll".....until 4 minutes later and they were still crossing the street. No joke, it took them almost a minute for every step they took and this cross walk was not long at all. Me and Giovanni's mom looked at each other and just laughed, but it seemed like it was one of those scenes straight out of a movie where someone in a car is in a rush to get somewhere and out of nowhere this old person starts walking across the cross walk for a good 5 minutes, which at that point the person in a rush is either dead or caught by whoever they were running from, but good thing we had all the time in the world, otherwise that old couple might have been road kill. Just kidding!! So enough about my intriguing life here in Italy, I want to know about everyone elses, so please leave a comment or email me your own blog! Love to all, and goodnight!

"You know you must be doing something right if old people like you."

Arrivaderci,

<3 Lauren

First Day of Classes

Today was the first day of classes. My friends and I were going to walk to school today but it decided to rain today, oh well, there goes more of my money to the metro! We got to school, and I had my first class which is sociology, its called reading Milan and Italian cities. I have a feeling this class is going to be super fun because our teacher is super nice and cool, and we get to do a lot of observations outside of the classroom. Then I rushed down to my next class because my classes are one right after another. The next one is called Creative Italian Storytelling and this class is going to be a lot of literature and film. I kept thinking about Erik because my professor said she worked in LA at Universal Studios for a while, which is where Erik is interning right now. ERIK...I am going to come back from Italy knowing more about film than you do! Watch out! The class ended and again I went over to my last class, The Great Age of Italian Cities. This class was not as good as my first two and I decided after about 10 minutes of sitting their confused as heck looking like a deer in headlights that I was going to drop this class. Sorry but history is not my strong suit.

After classes, Adrienne and I waited around campus to get dinner which opened at 7. The cafeteria was dead, there was maybe 4 other people there. It was pretty weird considering lunch is a mad house there. I forgot to take a picture because I was soooo hungry, but I had baked risotto with chicken and zucchini with a dessert of mixed fruit! It was amazing, but I did not expect anything less than that. We got home and I checked my mail and all that fun stuff. I kept telling myself to go do a workout, but my body said no. So instead I showered and got ready for tomorrow. I am meeting with a mom who needs a babysitter and someone to speak English with their 5 year old son, which is perfect for me! So wish me luck, I am nervous and excited to meet her and to see what the job entails. She even told me that I could travel with them outside of Milan on the weekends to the countryside, which should be nice to see how a true Italian family lives and spends their weekends. I will let you know how that goes, but now I am going to watch a show and get to sleep. Sorry that there were no pictures today, I will try to be good and take some tomorrow! But for your pleasure, here are some more photos from Switzerland yesterday:

Love, hugs, and kisses all the way from Italy!

"Be happy with what you have and are, be generous with both, and you won't have to hunt for happiness."

Night,
<3 Lauren 

Switzerland on a Sunday!!!

Today me and 3 of my roomies and Kristin who lives downstairs ventured off to Lugano, Switzerland. We got up around 7 am to catch the 8:39 train. It was a connecting train, and on the second one, two scary men came into our compartment and asked a lady sitting next to us for her ID and passport and they made all sort of calls to check that it was legit, and then he looked at us and said something we all could not understand and we must have looked so stupid, but I finally snapped out of it and told him we spoke English and he asked for our passports, and we gave it to him and all was good! Although we were all bummed they did not stamp our passport. But we arrived in Lugano!

We weren't quite sure where to go from there because we had not planned anything so we started following the crowd, and soon enough we came out to this view:

It was amazing, and as we came out I heard people speaking all different kinds of languages. Anything from Italian to English to German to French. The cutest thing that I saw by far (no, it was not a baby, but good guess) was a young man run over to his girlfriend when he got off the train to hug and embrace her as if they had not seen each other for years, but it does not end there. He had brought two little bears that could fit in the palm of his hand and he...got down on one knee and proposed right there in the train station! 

Okay so maybe I exaggerated just a little. There was no proposal, sadly, but he did bring her the bears and it was just tooo cute. 

Anywho, enough gushy stories. We had to exchange some money because we were not sure if they took Euros. And this is what Swiss Franks look like:

Everything was going well and I was just so happy to be in Switzerland. 

We went to look for a map in a little store and the greatest thing happened! I saw my first Ben and Jerry's ice cream in Europe!!!!!

I immediately thought of UVM and Meshul and wished she was there with me!

The map we were looking for was too expensive so we decided to be voyagers and explore without a set route. We walked down a ginormous hill with the beautiful landscape and views surrounding us.

I even saw what looked like one of those telephone booths in the UK.

We stopped along the way almost every minute because there was no way that you could not take a picture of everything there!

That's me and my friend Catia, she is from Portugal.

This is Kristin and me! She is from Milwaukee!

Here is a house that has a bridge to get into it!

And even the rocks here are beautiful, I just could not stop taking pictures...sooo let the madness of pictures begin:

They had these little dog poop bags all over the place, which is nice so no one has to step in dog crap.

Feast your eyes on this!

Real Swiss chocolate! 

Unfortunately it was closed, but that may be a good thing in my case because I may have bought the whole store! 

A little water refill station!

An awesome fountain that smelled like the sea!

And me in front of it

This was a walkway along the lake where you can sit and relax and take in the scenery.

So of course I had to take this and show everyone that there is a McDonalds in Switzerland!

And this is the inside of it! Probably one of the nicest I have seen!

And of course only in Europe would they have their own section called McCafe with coffee, brioche, and other yummy looking pastries. 

We saw a little train go by that brought people around to tour the city. 

But we decided we were hungry and we ate some lunch sitting next to the lake. We had made our own lunches, so I had my panini, tomato, mozzarella and balsamic dressing on foccacia bread which I had gotten the day before from a bakery near my school. It was huge:

Anyway, after lunch we got on a boat that stops at different towns and also lets you take in the serene atmosphere around you.

Catia and I!

Some of the views on the boat

ME!

How amazing!?

A cool water fountain in the lake.

Me and my crazy hair from the wind of the boat ride.

A cool house on the top of that mountain

The view from behind the boat of the town we started at (Lugano)

Pulling into town #1

I took a picture of me at every town.

It was named crotto san rocco

Town #2. caprino!

A view from the boat!

Town #3, grotto del pescatori

A lonely house just hanging out in the mountain, George Clooney probably lives there for all we know

Last town before we got off!

Grotto Teresa

The Alps!!

Just so picture perfect!

I cannot believe I was there!

We got to our last stop, Gardina, where we would get off and hike back to Lugano where we started.

Here we go...

Look at the views we had during this trek

The lake

We had some ups and downs

But nothing was better than what was sitting right next to us the whole time

Down the stairs

All my companions!

The blue water

What an awesome photo shoot!

I swear every second I was taking a picture

The huge hotel that we passed! Easily costs 500 a night probably...but we thought..

If we won big here, that we could live big in the hotel! I also took this because it reminded me of my Dad! It is the first casino I have seen in Europe!

How cool, a big life sized game of chess on the side streets

We cannot forget that this is chocolate capital of the world, so I got some chocolate gelato and it was the best I have had this whole trip so far.The chocolate was just perfect! I also bought lots of chocolate so if you want to reserve your spot on line for receiving the gift of chocolate from me, sign up now and FAST!

Oh, we casually bumped into George again, he seems to be following us from Como to Switzerland to who knows where next!

His big Nespresso brand that he said we are welcome to come to anytime!

And as we were walking around, I found this person! She was quite kind and let me take a picture with her! :P

And last but not least, to end on a good note, we all had an amazing time as usual. Europe does not stop surprising me and amazing me with all its beautiful scenery and architecture! Its only been 3 weeks, and I cannot believe my eyes, and my camera cannot believe that I have taken almost 1000 pictures so far. I cannot help it people, this place is unimaginably amazing!

We took our train ride home totally exhausted and pooped. We finally got home, and I made some dinner. It was so good, I made pasta with olive oil, onions, garlic and zucchini!

I enjoyed my dinner and prepared for my first classes tomorrow!! I am excited and nervous all at the same time, but wish me luck, and I will keep you updated on everything that goes on. I had such a great time in Switzerland today, it made me think about how much I can see myself living in Europe in the future. I have so many places left to explore and they all just seem to be getting better and better, lets hope that streak continues! Love you all and miss you a lot! Stay classy America, night!

"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams."

Love always,

<3 Lauren