Friends!

Today I got an email from one of the other people from my school that will be on the Lecce program this summer. He was asking what flights people were on so he could try to coordinate. From the ensuing thread of emails, I found out that another girl will be on my flights from Philadelphia to Rome and Rome to Brindisi. So exciting!!! Not only does this mean I will have company during my 4 hour layover in Rome (which isn't long enough to venture to the city) but also that I will have a companion when I arrive in Brindisi and am trying to find the bus to take me to Lecce. YAY!!!!

Getting Ready

Yesterday I meet with the coordinator of my program to go over some of the details. It turns out that there are only 3 other people from my school going on this trip - so almost everyone I'm with will be a new face. That's kind of scary, but I suppose it'll be a chance to make new friends. He still wasn't sure what the living situation would be for me - either in an apartment or a dorm, or possibly both. Mostly he just went on and on about all the cool things that I'll have the opportunity to do. Lecce is a smallish city and apparently the people are incredibly nice and welcoming to the students. Also, things don't cost nearly as much as they do in the bigger tourist towns :) The coordinator showed me a tentative itinerary for the first month and there are tons of things going on! We have class Monday-Thursday from 9am to 1pm and the rest of the time is ours. They have lots of activities available to us(movies, trips to the beach, trips to nearby cities, "extracurricular" classes in cooking, stone carving, etc) but they are all optional. For example, if I wanted to take a sleeper car to Rome one Thursday night and have a three day weekend to explore there, I could do it whichever weekend I chose. This guy is the coordinator of many programs that his university puts together and he said that he thinks this one is by far the best, and is half the price of the others.....fine by me :)

So, basically, I'm started to get more excited about this adventure, but I'm still quite anxious/scared.

The Language

At my music lesson this week, my professor and I spoke in Italian for the first 10 minutes. We didn't talk about anything musical, just what each of us had been up to since I hadn't seen him in 3 weeks. He said my Italian was good, which made me happy. It wasn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but I was able to convey what I needed to convey. It was a good ego boost for me since recently I've been getting pretty nervous about how I'm going to do when I'm suddenly plopped down in the middle of a non-English speaking country for 9 weeks.

80 days........

Tickets!

I just bought plane tickets!!!!

$

Well, I just got confirmation that my loan to pay for my summer adventure was approved. I suppose that's a good thing, since it means I'll be able to go, but it's also a bad thing since I now have that much more in loans hanging over my head.

I just have to keep reminding myself that I'll be saving money in the long run since I won't have to pay for another full year at NU.

So Expensive!

Holy crap - why is international airfare so expensive? And I'm not talking about flights to Canada. So sad.

In other news, I spent a couple hours on the phone this morning with various different lenders trying to figure out how I'm going to pay for this wonderful adventure. It doesn't help that neither of the schools involved want to have anything to do with financial aid :(

Oh, the nitty-gritty details that we all know and love....