When the birds are as psychotic as the ones living above my balcony, they are much more trustworthy of an alarm clock than any 1992 Nokia cell phone I can buy for 40 euro. And if that doesn’t work, apparently on Sundays you can be woken up to the tune of “Here Comes the Bride” playing during a wedding taking place in the garden below our balcony. But hey, I wake up to the same cell phone noise every day at Penn State, and this way is already a great improvement.

Last week, I moved into my humble abode of the next 6 weeks of my life. It is so much cooler than I’d imagined. There are 5 of us living here, and we have a sweeeeet apartment. If the balcony overlooking one of the most beautiful scenes I’ve ever witnessed isn’t enough, how about the large bedrooms, the spread of food the school left out for us, and not to mention all of the awesome friends I’ve made in this building. And I’d also like to take the time to give a shout out to how incredible the orange juice is here. When we moved in, they’d left two gallons in the fridge for us, and I think I’ve had like 5-10 glasses a day since. It is some seriously fresh squeezed quality product. Sorry, I had to fit that in here somewhere.

Anyway, my first days here have been nothing short of amazing. The school took all of us up to a town called Fiesole on a hill overlooking Florence about a 20 minute bus ride away. The view from Fiesole overlooking Florence and its surrounding hills was hands down the most incredible view I’d ever seen in my life. It would be an impossible feat to accurately put into words how it felt to stand where we stood and see what we saw in Fiesole on Friday. If this Internet connection allows me to, I think I’ve posted a picture of me in Fiesole with Florence in the backdrop.

Sorry if the picture at the bottom is enormous, I didn’t know how to reformat the size.

Anyway, I had a great weekend. Caught the end of the Flyers game at a bar on Saturday, which was a magnificent personal victory for me. So pumped that they are in the Cup Finals. But Florence is really cool at night. The bars are fun although the drinks are relatively expensive, but it’s always a great time going out in a group of friends.

I have been to the first class of both of my classes so far this week. Monday I had my “villa and the garden” class which is going to be awesome. Every class for the rest of the semester takes place on site at some country villa or garden. Imagine going on a field trip every class, and that’s what I have to look forward to. Today, I had my first Management class taught by the Dean of Penn State’s business school. It was interesting, and he seems like a really interesting professor. He uses a lot of fun stories and real life scenarios to illustrate the application of the material, and keeps the whole class involved with a conversational style. So far, it seems like I’ve got a terrific 6 weeks ahead of me, from an academic, social, emotional, and almost any other perspective you can name.

And if anyone needs any sort of reminder or alarm at 1 a.m. your time, 7 a.m. mine, I’ll put the birds on speaker. Ciao!  

Location: Florence, Italy