Day one of classes! Was interesting cause we lost an hour last night… or gained it? I don’t get it. We woke up earlier whichever one that is. Haha but yeah. I had a class at 9:20, which would normally be perfect, but breakfast ends at 8:30 and the gym is closed from 7-8 for the faculty. So we have to wake up extra early to eat and NOT workout. My poor roommate has her first class at noon but she still has to wake up way early.

Global studies is the common course everyone has to take. It has the coolest book, full of happy pictures of stuff we will see, but the class is apparently hard (according to past SASers). It’s supposed to be about history in the Mediterranean and their cultures, but today’s class was pretty dry.

I can tell my Geohazards class will be uber fun. The prof is from the UK (I have the best luck getting foreign geology profs!!) and she seems super cool! I already love it and can’t wait for the FDPs (faculty directed practica: basically field trips we have to go on for each class in the countries) I have in Italy hiking Mt Vesuvius and visiting Pompeii/Herculeum.

I just got out of Anthropology and I think I hate it already. The prof is real annoying and assigns about 60 pages of reading A DAY. That’s right, a day. It’s completely ridiculous. And then we have to do 3 FDPs (normally it’s only 2) in addition to have 6 “case studies” where we have to sit in the same spot for 2-3 hours in a county and observe people and then write a 4 page paper on it. The real kicker is that we have 1-2 days between each country where we have to write these papers WHILE reading 60+ pages for her class and doing all the papers/readings for every other class! Stupid. It’s completely lame, but I think it’ll be real easy to BS and make up. Oh well, she can’t really expect us to sit still while we are in a foreign place. Idiot.

The sun here ROCKS. After tanning at a bed for 2 weeks and I got no tanner. But being here for 2 days and sitting outside for only a bit, I already have a mini watch tan. AND RING TAN!!! YUSSS.

This evening I met about 17,000 people from San Antonio after I had thought I was 1 or 8 Texas people, so that was nice. We tried to plan out our other trips and independent travels in all the countries and this is stressful. Because we have a total of like 1 hour of internet, it’s gonna be hard. I wayyyyy under prepared for this haha. Oh well, I guess were winging it!

Though, I think I have the greatest plan set for Italy. If I can convince Katie to ditch her roommate (who is being clingy anyways for trips in the countries) it’s gonna be golden. First two days in Naples for Pompeii/Herculeum and Mt Vesuvius hike FDPs, then a night train to Cinque Terre and spend the day there. Hike the towns from sunrise till about 4 then train to Pisa for a fast picture (since Pisa apparently blows!) and then a quick train to Florence. Spend a day there and then go to Rome for the final 2 days before we leave Italy. Then I’ll come back to Italy within the next few years… for a few months/years… and hit everything I missed. Perfection? Yes.