Tag Archives: First Impressions

Who needs an alarm clock?

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!  
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Location: Florence, Italy

First Impressions

Hola from Mexico!

As of today, I’ve been in Mexico for two full days and it’s been very interesting.  We went on a tour of the city and, as predicted, it was nothing like I expected. Compared to Venezuela, everything is very different. For one, in Venezuela there were roads, while here, most, if not all of the roads are made with pieces of slate with mortar in between.  It’s very cool. Another difference I noticed was with the society. In Venezuela, most people are either very rich or very poor, and there are few in between. Here, however, most people seem to be middle class. All of the houses are very similar looking, and it seems like most people where the same quality of clothing.

Another interesting thing about the city is all the nightlife there is, especially on the weekends. Just in the past two days I’ve seen a clown/mime show, 2 parades, a presentation with a bull costume and some bull fighters, and a traditional indigenous dance complete with costumes and headdresses. And all of this was just in the middle of the street downtown.

Something I found very interesting is right downtown there is a Starbucks and a Champ’s, but I have seen no sign of a McDonald’s. This is especially strange for me since there were three McDonald’s in the small town I was in in Venezuela, but nothing else from the United States.

The house I’m staying in is on top of a mountain, which is awesome as far as the view goes, but a B to come up every day. Going down is a cinch. I can get to the school in a little under 20 minutes, but coming back up is so hard. Even tonight, when it was chilly, I was out of breath and sweating coming up they hill. You don’t even want to know what it was like coming up the hill this afternoon for lunch.

The family I’m staying with is so adorable. It’s just a mom and her 13-year-old daughter, but they get along so well and seem like they are best friends. I’ve never seen a relationship like theirs at home.  Yesterday the mom made rice, salad and some type of pork cutlet for lunch, and afterwards we had a platano cut up with condensed milk on top. It was so sweet and delicious. Today, we had fresh fruit and pancakes for breakfast, and I have to say the mangos here are so much better than at home. Then for lunch, we had mac’n’cheese, but with spaghetti instead of macaroni, and some kind of tuna casserole that had bread instead of noodles and some really hot peppers. That was also delicious.

Well, I think that’s all for now, I’m exhausted and still have homework to do.

Adios,

Lexi


Location: Guanajuato, Mexico