I usually have three classes a day. I start off with either Italy Today or Learn to Travel, followed by upper level Italian, and ending the day with Art History. Italy Today occurs on Wednesday and Friday mornings and is taught by Sara Andreni, a local resident of Sansepolcro. In this class we learn about Italy’s history, their culture, and current events. Later in the semester we will also have a service learning project were we go into the local schools one day a week and help the teachers teach English. I also have Learn to Travel, Travel to Learn on Tuesdays and Thursdays taught by Dr. Webb, our director, and her husband John Rose. In this class we learn the ropes of traveling: reading bus schedules, making reservations, organizing trips, and more. Dr. Webb and John Rose are frequent travelers, so they always have great tips to help prevent us from getting frustrated while traveling; not that traveling is ever unpleasant. Currently we are planning our future trip to Firenze on the 20th. After those classes, I have upper level Italian taught by a local professor from Perugia. Even though I have had three levels of Italian, none of them can compare to the intensity of this one. On our first day, I sat down in class, and our professor immediately says, “Solo Italiano.” Next thing I knew, she was off speaking miles a minute in Italian. If that wasn’t intimidating enough, there are only two people in the class including me, so there is no place to hide. We then go to our remarkable two hour lunches cooked by our astonishing chefs. This is followed by a one hour break to recuperate from our lunch. I then have Art History with Dr. Bailey, a professor from Meredith. The interesting thing about this class is that it is completely over Skype. If you are unfamiliar with Skype, we use a video camera in class, so she can see the students; and there is a video camera on her side of the world, so we can see her. We project her video feed onto the wall so we can all see her clearly. In class she lectures us and holds up pictures to the screen for us to analyze as if we were there in person. After getting used to a virtual professor, I’ve really started to enjoy the class. She gives us assignments that require us to explore the town for various art works to analyze. She also has assigned us to take lots of photographs of various buildings and bridges to create book containing all the different influences on Italian Architecture that we have learned in class.
Twice a week I also have what we call “language lab” taught by Bekah. She is our Residence Director and has studied abroad twice in college, once to Sansepolcro for a summer and once to Siena for a semester. So as you can imagine, her Italian is quite good and she is incredibly helpful. During this time, we meet up to learn basic survival Italian. We go into town and interact with the locals, we practice bargaining in the market, or other activities that help us use our Italian. Since I am also taking conversational Italian, I meet with Bekah for additional hour twice a week. During this period, the purpose of this meeting is to have me speak only Italian with Bekah for the entire time. The goal with this lesson is that I will become more comfortable with my Italian so I can speak more clearly, relaxed, and with a more extensive vocabulary. Even though I have had a year and a half of Italian, nothing can prepare you for having to speak on the spot and use the various verb tenses appropriately. The only thing that can help you is practice, which is what I try to do whenever I can.
During the first week here at the Palazzo, Dr. Webb and her husband John Rose kept teasing us about a surprise trip on Sunday where we didn’t know the destination. The only clue they gave us was that we would need rain boots, and of course, none of us complained at a reason to go shopping for new shoes! We had a lot of fun going into town on our own to explore the city. We went into almost every store we could find looking for the best deals and the most comfortable boots. We eventually all found appropriate shoes that we all enjoyed for reasonable prices and were ready for our surprise!
On Friday morning in our Italy Today class, we learned about the Italian tradition, il Carnevale. It occurs up to two weeks before lent and resembles Mardi Gras in the New Orleans. At this time, everyone dresses up in masks and costumes, eats traditional pastries, and throws confetti on each other. During our professor’s presentation, she briefly mentioned that the best Carnival in Italy was in Venezia, and that’s when we all started to get suspicious about Venice being our surprise destination. After class, Sara treated us to some of the typical delicious pastries. My favorite were le chiacchiere, a flaky sweet cracker drenched in sugar and honey.
Once Friday night arrived, we were all imagining going out on the town; however, jetlag and the exhaustion from the week led us to enjoy the wonderful movie Notting Hill and some delicious pizza from the little shop downstairs. I had the Pizza Alberti which was fairly unusual but extremely delicious. On this pizza, there is olive oil, melted mozzarella, prosciutto, zucchini, and sliced potatoes. I can guarantee I will be ordering this again in the near future! 
On Saturday we had a lovely walk around town exploring more unknown streets and shops. As it grew dark and our stomachs started to rumble, we quickly searched for a restaurant to eat. Being used to our delicious lunch meals always being prepared without a worry, we had completely forgotten about the possibility of needing a reservation. Fortunately, Hilary and Kelsey, some very nice girls from the program, found a restaurant that would seat us at 7:30 without a reservation because Italians tend to eat dinner starting at 8:30 or 9:00 and will stay all night. We had a fantastic dinner at Il Ristorante Florentino, one of the top restaurants in town. I couldn’t have enjoyed this meal more. We all shared a bottle of the house white wine. I ordered stracciatella soup, which consists of egg, parmesan, and nutmeg; and the cortelli di zucca burro salvia e noci, which are squash ravioli with butter, sage, and walnuts. It was absolutely delicious and I scarfed it down incredibly fast. I regretted this later because I would have preferred eating it slowly and enjoying the taste more. All the other girls who joined us for dinner had leftovers, but I didn’t even leave a walnut for the compost. I highly recommend this restaurant to everyone because it was high quality and original food for a decent price!
We were all extremely excited once Sunday finally arrived. We woke up bright and early to board the typical Italian mini bus at five in the morning. The destination of our bus was still unknown. I came prepared by bringing my pillow, so as usual, I was fast asleep. I woke up two hours later to a wonderful surprise as I read the road signs passing by that read Venezia 50 km. After that, the secret was out! We briefly stopped at a gas station for a quick chocolate croissant and a latte, and it was back on the bus. Once we arrived in Venezia, we parked outside of town and road a boat into the middle of Venice. Dr. Webb surprised us all with cute little masks so we had to take a group picture to commemorate the day.
After our photo, we were on our own, to burrow through the crowds and soak up as many memories as we could. As we walked towards Piazza San Marco we encountered a medieval band processing towards the square, and that was just a taste for incredible costumes and parades we would experience throughout the day.
Once we made it to St. Mark’s square, we were surrounded in large crowds consisting of all sorts of costumes ever imaginable. We saw a parade of all the different Italian royally dating back to what I imagine to be the years of Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome. We also recognized many traditional costumes that we had learned in class on Friday. Even though the costumes were beautiful, the crowds started to become a little over bearing.
To escape the crowds, we started wandering the streets of Venice to enjoy all the beautiful hidden canals and squares. We grabbed a few sandwiches from this lovely deli on one of the streets. I had this amazing sandwich with tomato, brie, fresh greens, and prosciutto. If only fast food restaurants would offer sandwiches of this sort, we would always be in heaven!
Venice was just as beautiful as I remembered. Every corner we turned, we stumbled onto a hidden court yard or gorgeous bridge. We paid no attention to a map or street name because we didn’t want to waste any time looking down at a piece of paper. Getting lost was not a concern because there were always small groups of people moving towards St. Mark’s square. The trip overall was more than I could have ever imagined, but everything was incredible. I feel so fortunate that I was given the opportunity to experience this once in a life time event. Hopefully, since I’m still fairly young, I will find myself back in Venice for the Carnevale because there was too much to see in one day. Since Venice, we have experienced snowy weather and traveled on to Arezzo. More on this soon to come!
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