Falling in love with the Tuscan sun

Well I made it! Which I'm sure most of you know already.  These past five days have been the most exhausting, yet incredible days ever. So I'll take you day by day to share what I've been up to!

Sunday/Monday

The 8 and a half hour flight wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I got to my seat first (I sat in the middle section on the isle, it was perfect!), shortly after an Italian couple came to sit next to me.  I think they argued for about 5 minutes who was going to sit next to the weird American girl. The husband didn't win the argument, so I got to enjoy a long flight next to strangers who didn't speak a lick of English! I'm pretty sure about 25% of the people on that flight were not Italian. There was even a nun on my flight, so I knew I was okay :) 

I finally arrived in Rome, well really a half-hour outside of Rome. I got my bag just fine, and passport control wasn't as near bad as I thought it would be.  After that I was walking to the exit and saw the most beautiful thing, an OU in Arezzo staff member holding an OU sign. It was the most relieving thing yet. Since I was 1 of 5 early arrivals I didn't have to wait at all to make the drive to Arezzo! Around 2 hours later we arrived in my new home. Getting there was interesting, but that's for another story. 

The rest of the day consisted of finding wifi, finding an ATM, and finding food.  All of which I did on the street I live on, Corso Italia! 

Tuesday

In the morning a staff member came to our apartment to basically teach us how things work, nothing much different then normal apartments.  Afterwards a couple of my roommates and I walked around town and ran into someone in our program! We found a grocery store (the wrong one and more expensive one) and we loved it when they started playing Bruno Mars and Coldplay music! 

Later that afternoon we met up with our group to do a walking tour of Arezzo.  Kaydee, the Resident Advisor, showed us all around the town and we went to see the most amazing view of the city. I'll post pictures later :) The tour ended in our study center, where all of our classes are held.  The place is so pretty and it's just for us! For dinner, Lucio, one of the staff members cooked us his famous ragu dishes! Then we were off for our very first gelato! I didn't buy any myself, but one of the girls couldn't finish hers so free gelato for me! It was pistachio :)

Wednesday/Thursday

These days were full of orientations/filling out paperwork/more orientation sessions/more filling out paperwork 

But on Wednesday we had our welcome dinner at Antica Fonte Restaurant. It. was. delicious. Seriously one of the best meals ever. I could go back there and have a full meal with just the bruschetta.

Friday

This brings us up to today! In the morning we had our first Getting to Know Arezzo class where we went around the town to find places to buy meat, cheese, bread, chocolate, and then finally to the grocery store. We learned that you have to wear a plastic glove to handle the fruit, you cannot touch the fruit in the grocery store with bare hands! Afterwards we toured around the UNISI campus which is the local college in Arezzo. We can use their library to study in and eat in their cafeteria :)

Tonight we are doing a Faculty-in-Residence Progressive Dinner! 

I hope to post more then just once a week since there's so much going on! Stay tuned for pictures of my apartment/town!

Ciao!