Sorrisso alla Marmalate

Despite our slight delays this morning due to a malfunctioning alarm clock, most of us successfully made it to Italian class this morning for another fun filled day of learning. It actually is starting to sink in! This style of learning is totally different from what we normally have at Clemson, but I already feel fairly comfortable with Italian, and it had definitely sparked my curiousity to learn more. Our hope is that by the end of the semester we can also speak Italian fairly well, at least enough to communicate and understand, we are by no means expecting fluency.

Lunch today was bowtie pasta with tomato sauce and artichoke hearts-- molto squisito -- hot dogs and potatos.

After lunch we had some more Italian class, and then the half of students that didn't get their phones the day before went to the vodafone store. Turns out they were out of the phones that we had the day before, so they gave them phones that have a camera and mp3 player in them for the same cost as ours. Va bene though b/c seriously I don't need any of that and my phone makes a really cool sound when I open and close it. Totally worth it.

While they were away, Heather and I (yes the two heathers) took the funiculare to the top of the mountain. After a little hiking and some potential trespassing,,, we managed to get some really good views of Genova, the port, and the surrounding mountains. It was extremely windy and we were walking around rich houses on one side and abandoned castles on the other. We stayed up there until dark, so we got great sunset pictures, or the best we could do with the crazy wind which kind of messed up our steady hands. Then we headed back down, and as a reward for climbing 14 million stairs on the way back to the villa from the station we stopped at la Pannifico for some treats. I got a cookie called a Smile (Sorrisso in italiano) which had a smily face carved out and marmalade in between the two cookies. It was delicious and totally made me climb the stairs.

We had our normal dinner made by ourselves, and are currently just hanging around again, potentially another movie night, despite the approaching lateness of the hour. Actually we are going to watch Stranger than Fiction. Tomorrow we start actual studio class, so we will see what we are in for this semester. A presto!

~Heather