June 11

Today was another day with lots of school. I keep forgetting that is what I'm here for and it's harder and harder to get motivated. Oh well, we had a long day of classes, a few quizzes here and there and then headed back home a.k.a. Medaglie D'Oro.

The night consisted of an attempt at homemade Gnocchi, which turned out to be disastrous and then some peanut butter and jelly to follow. After that we studied a little for our Ops test the following day and played some Euchre with our guy friends.

June 12

Ops took up most of the day today from 2-7 but this particular Tuesday night was unique in that it was actually somewhat American feeling. My friend Dee and I went out to eat with her brother Walter and about 6 other guys at a restaurant near the Spanish Steps. Dee and Walter's mom and sister are in visiting from a wedding and met up with us to eat and even paid for our meal! It was so nice of her. Afterwards about 6 of us went to the local movie theater and after a short search found a place that was playing movies in English! We decided to see Oceans 13 in English with Italian subtitles, which wasn't even bad at all. The only weird thing was the 2 minute intermission in the middle of the movie. There are definitely a few cultural differences here.

June 13

Today was a little more relaxing than the other days. We got up early for another Ops class and then bought our train tickets to Cinque Terre for the weekend. Afterwards, Annette and I were going to go to the water park but we decided it was too much money and considering the end of the trip is near we decided to be smart about our decisions. Instead we spent the afternoon laying out on our balconies and trying to get tan that way. We worked out a little that night and then got ready to go out to a place called the "Ice Bar." The whole pub was actually made of ice, including the bar, the glasses and even the stools.

June 14-17

We started off our weekend on Thursday this week after a little bit of class. We came back Thursday night and some of the boys who are studying abroad in Augsburg, Germany came to Rome to visit us. It was fun to have even more UD students around for a little bit and we compared the differences in our programs.

Friday morning was an early rise for me, Annette, and Sara. We woke up to catch a 7:30 train to head to Cinque Terre. That in Italian literally stands for "Five Towns." We have heard it was a beautiful place so we were pretty excited. After about a four to five hour train ride we finally arrived on the northwest coast of Italy. We checked into our hotel and then headed for the trails. The most famous thing about Cinque Terre is that each town is connected by a walking/hiking path and it is the most gorgeous place to take pictures of the shore. It takes a while to hike the towns, for example 2 hour to get from the first to the second. But as everyone always says, the views are definitely worth the hike. We spent the rest of the day hiking and stopping in the small towns. My favorite was Monterosso. At night we went back to our hotel and were exhausted so we ate dinner in our hotel and called it an early night.

Saturday was the most relaxing day I have had in Italy thus far. The three of us laid out at our hotel pool which was nestled right into the hills of Moneglia. It was beautiful and so much fun to just relax after all the walking we did the previous day. At around 5 pm we decided to get ready for another night out and headed to the town of Monterosso by train. When we got there we went to a cute little restaurant and then walked around the streets for a while. There was a party for the Genovan National soccer team and everyone in the town was really excited with jerseys and everything. Even free food!

Sunday we woke up early again and got on a morning train back to Rome. The train ride was long and would have been longer if we would have gotten on the wrong train (like we did at first) but after a while we made it home safely. We got back home and hung out with our friend's playing cards and then my friends Annette, Lauren, John, James, Billy and I went to dinner at our favorite restaurant right next door. It's hard to believe we only have one week left!

Happy Father's Day!

Steph