Orientation

I spent three days in Milan with other students from across the U.S., Canada, and Australia. We stayed at a Hostel a little ways from the Duomo of Milan. For every meal we would walk to the same restaurant; which would have only been bad if the food was terrible, and it was not!! In fact, the food was AMAZING!! There were so many things I wanted to try and so little time. Of what I can remember this is what I ate over the three days in no particular order: 4 cheese pizza, lasagna, croissant with custard/creme, gnocchi, salad, and or corse gelato!!! We spent the mornings at the hostel talking about the BEC rules, the program, our host families and some general things about Italy. The first day after lunch we walked to the duomo where we then got onto a double decker bus and took a little tour around Milan. Once that was over we returned to the duomo and walked to this castle not far from there. We had and hour to walk around the castle and return with the group. There was not much to see unless you went on a tour of the inside or went in the museum. We did not have much time so we walked through the court yards of the castle and walked back to the front. The second afternoon we walked around some more and found Vittorio Emanuele II gallery, a very famous place in Milan right next to the duomo. Once we walked through Vittorio Emanuele II gallery and got to the duomo we had three hours to walk around, shop, and do whatever. I stayed with Stephanie and Edith for our free time and we set on an adventure!! We wanted to get gelato, but not just any gelato, gelato from Grom!!! We heard Grom was the best in all of Milan so we just had to go. We could not remember where it was so we asked about ten people along the way and finally we found it. We walked so much and in a circle, but we found it!!! That was the first time I had gelato in Italy on this trip and it was delicious. We walked back the way we went and once we reached the duomo we just sat and rested our tried feet.

Our next task was to find Stephanie a scarf from Milan. We went back into Vittorio Emanuele II gallery and started looking around. We went in maybe two or three shops before Stephanie found one she liked, that was not over 100 Euros. From that store we stopped in an AutoGrill, which sells drinks and snack. There I bought a Gatorade, and yes it tasted different, but not in a bad way. We walked back to the duomo and found others from our group and just sat there. Others started to arrive and then our reps from BEC arrived; Valentina and Claudia. We walked back to the hostel and then went out for our last dinner in Milan. The next morning we woke around 7:30. We had to be ready by 8:30 for breakfast, except one girl Samantha who had to leave at 8:30 to catch her plane to Sardinia. After breakfast we had a few minutes to gather our things and then we were off to the train station. Luckily the only thing I forgot in the hostel was my shampoo.

At the train station we sat as a group and waited around till the first group had to leave. I was part of the first group, the Naples group. There were 9 of us, 7 going to Naples, 2 going to Rome. We walked to platform 15 and then to car 9. The train had a small isle and I had a hard time getting through with my luggage not to mention people were trying to pass me, but there was no room!! Jonathon helped by putting our things in the above compartments and we finally took our seats. Only one person had to sit by himself. The woman wanted to trade seats so she could sit with her friends and the guy from our group did not mind switching with her.

The train ride was very fun talking and laughing with the other students going to Naples. There was one girl, Lani, who was going to stay in Maddaloni, which is only one town over from mine. Everyone else was not too far. I tried to take some pictures while on the train because the scenery was so beautiful. We went right through Tuscany and the rolling hills, farms, old Italian buildings; truly something amazing. We finally arrived in Naples four hours later and now came the big event, meeting our host families!!! We all unloaded from the train and started walking to the station, one by one families came and meet their exchange students. My family had a big yellow sign with my name on it :) I said goodbye to my friends and went with my host family to their car and headed to Valle di Maddaloni.