On tap for next weekend.... Prague!

Today my roommates and I booked our flights to Prague for next weekend!  We have off from our Italian class, which happens 5 times during the semester, and we decided to try to go somewhere farther away for those weekends because we'll have more time then.  Prague was the cheapest of the places we were looking to go and we've heard that it's beautiful there so we're so excited!!  I've never been there, either, so I'm excited to see what everyone is talking about :)  We leave Thursday evening and come back Sunday and in the mean time we're going to look up some cool things to do there!

The past two days we've slept in pretty late (finally! this week definitely caught up to us) and spent some time out and about in Milan.  Yesterday, Meredith, Lindsey, and I walked around the area near our apartment and discovered lots of little places to grab food, some cute shops, and a few pubs/bars.  When we got back, Ann and Kasia were back from their adventure in the city and we all headed down to the pizzeria near our apartment.  We all ordered pasta and of course wine and it was delicious!  There was an adorable little kid sitting across from us who could barely see over the table but was drinking wine out of a wine glass haha once he noticed we were watching, he chugged the rest of his glass. It was so cute!  We definitely couldn't believe it though since he was so little! 

Afterwards we got ready to go out and went to a party at the apartment of some Ecuadorians we've befriended  through a mutual friend who's in our program and then we went to a bar called Murphy's Law.  It's funny how much American music they play here!  Even the alternative/more chill music comes up a lot, like Mr. Jones by Counting Crows; I almost fell over when they started playing it at the bar and everyone was singing along! 

The Ecuadorians were a lot of fun and it's really interesting talking to them and seeing the differences in cultures of people our age.  Their lives have been so interesting so far...most grew up in Ecuador, attended school in the U.S., and then are either continuing their education in Italy or working in Italy. It was also funny because one of them has friends at Penn State and when I told him that I go there, he said Oh state college? happy valley? canyon pizza? It was so weird to hear those things because I hadn't heard them in so long and they're such iconic aspect of Penn State; plus I was hearing them halfway around the world  from an Ecuadorian! Crazy.

Today we decided to go to the Duomo area (the center of Milan) and do some shopping.  We all feel like we need so many things because everyone here is so stylish!!  The Milanese take their shopping very seriously and it's pretty overwhelming at first.  There were so many people in the stores and the stores themselves (at least the ones we could actually go into and possibly purchase something from) were huge!  We each ended up getting a few things and then decided to get dinner at a nearby place. The menu had pictures which was great, since we spent about a half hour deciding what we wanted the night before because we didn't know what the names of the different dishes meant!  We're learning, and trying each other's food so we can explore it all!  After our meal we ordered hot chocolate because it looked delicious, and it tasted even better than it looked!! It was by far the best I've had and I'm so glad my roommates share the same affection for chocolate as I do :)

Here are some pictures of downtown Milan near our schools; I took them after our Italian class on Friday when we walked around the city!

And here's one of us after the tour we received of the Duomo area

On another note, Meredith (one of my roommates) and I have our first Italian date on Tuesday night!  Haha Mom keep breathing it's okay, nothing to worry about.  The Italian guys we met on Thursday night want to take us out for some good food and wine on Tuesday, how could we say no?!  We're excited, it should be interesting!

Tomorrow we begin another week of our intensive Italian classes.  It's hard to believe that tomorrow we'll have been here for only a week!  We decided we were going to celebrate our one week anniversary with some wine :)  Any excuse to drink wine is a good excuse. 

Ciao!