Day 1 of orientation: spa day?!

Started off today bright and early and woke up at 7:45 which actually wasn't too bad because I slept so well!  I easily got 7 or 8 hours of sleep so that was nice!  Before orientation, our Italian community assistant Maria, took us all out to breakfast at the cutest place near our apartment.  We all got croissants and espressos (or "cafe's" as they call them) and sat in the window of the place and watched the people and cars go by.  We plan on going there often, it was such a cute glimpse of a typical Italian morning. On our way to the metro, we walked by the market in the street which is there every Tuesday and Saturday.  It's so cute and they have everything there!  We have to pass it on our way to the metro to our school so I'm sure I'll be doing a lot of buying there!  We had orientation at the Universita Cattolica del Sacro Cuore which is where I'll be taking some of my classes.  This place is beautiful!!  I couldn't believe this was where typical Italian college students took classes, it's straight out of movie.  Here's a picture of the courtyard in the center of it from my phone:)  I promise to post more pictures, too! It's just been a little gloomy here so I'm waiting for the sun to come out.



We had a 2 hour break for lunch, during which a group of us explored the area around the school.  We went into a few shops, I don't think they were happy to have a large group of American girls just looking around by oh welllll :)  We had another round of orientation after our lunch break and it was actually pretty interesting.  We're learning, both in orientation and from just living here, about all the differences in culture which is really interesting.  For example, all of the colleges in Milan (and there are 11) are located in the city itself whereas in the U.S. we make a concerted effort to place colleges outside of the city.  Everything here is so laid back, too... they said that firing an employee is considered second worst to homicide!  One of my roommates said so what's the incentive to work??  Which explains why everything here is so inefficient I guess.  Oh and they loveeeee to keep where they live really clean!  They recycle EVERYTHING, take the trash out everyday, and our community assistant is going to have a cleaning schedule for us! 

After orientation Maria took us on a neighborhood tour to show us some useful stores near our apartment and then we made our way to the spa.  The spa was unreal, they had everything from saunas to salt scrubs to water massages to jacuzzis and food and champagne for us to enjoy.  It was so nice to have some down time and just relax and mingle with the other students, although there was a nazi staff woman running around telling us to be quiet haha all in all I'm LOVING it here, it's such a cool experience and I can't wait to explore it more and plan some trips to other cities!