"Borientation"

          That’s my little combo word of “boring” and “orientation” you like it? Because that’s exactly what this morning was. The most boring orientation. We got to a big conference room at 9:30 and we were there until 12:05. It was all the professors in the GIF program talking to all of the students about their backgrounds and what they teach. They were trying to get us to sign up for their courses and there’s two problems with that. 1) It’s literally impossible to add or drop anything at this point because basically all classes are full. So there’s no point in talking to all of us about a class that no one can take. WASTE. OF. TIME. 2) There were like 15 faculty and they all gave speeches. IT WAS SO LONG, and essentially pointless.

            Once we were finally outta there, we ran into Dean Burke and even he was bugged about it! He was like “We aren’t doing that next time, way too long, and no more speeches.” I’m like heellllllloooo buddy, I’m pretty sure you’re the one that planned this thing!? Hahah oh well, it was a waste of a morning. The only perk is that we were inside where it was cool for a couple of hours, so that was nice!

            After that I walked with Nancy (my roomie) and Cammy (a girl that lives in Gallo) to get something for lunch. We got paninis for 2 euro and they were great! Then we came back to Gallo for an hour before going to campus to meet up with two professors for a guided tour of the city. The tour was a good insight to the city because the professors live in Florence. So they showed us some local places to eat and hang out. It was cool to get the inside scoop. The tour lasted prob like 90 mins. It included going to all the highlights and touristy areas of Florence. I saw basically all the areas I visited in 2009 with the fam, so things are for sure beginning to look a bit more familiar!

            For dinner I met up with Robert at the Duomo at 6. It's super crazy and unreal to see someone from home here. Makes it seem like I'm really not that far from home at all, it's for sure comforting! I walked from Gallo to there by myself (I’m such a big girl!! ;)). We walked around the Ponte Vecchio and then got dinner near by. Then after dinner we walked around some more, I got to see more of the city and everything seemed way cooler at night! We then were searching for this place called “Grom Gelato” that everyone is like obsessed with. People say its got tons of great flavors! We were in the right area of Grom, but couldn’t seem to find it. While we were searching for it, we came across another gelato place (shocker I know, they are literally everywhere you go) called Festival del Gelato. It’s HUGE! So many flavors and the place is real colorful! So we just decided to go there instead, I got chocolate and cookies. It was SO good!

After that I made it back to Gallo. I am now getting ready to go to bed because tomorrow I am going to Cinque Terre with Robert for the day. Our train leaves at 7am, but first I’ve got to get up and get ready, and then take a 20 min walk to the train station. I’ll be getting up nice and early! :) Should be a fun day there and super hot! I think lots of people have the same idea for the weekend, everyone wants to be near the water to cool off with this 90 plus degree weather!

On Sunday I’ll hopefully post some pics posted to the blog, I know I keep saying it but haven’t done it. It’s been a struuuggllleeee! ;)  I’ll get to it!!

Al