Sorry its taken me so long to post since Ive arrived in Italy. Our stay in Venice Monday night was fun. We were really tired but managed to have some authentic Italian food along with some red and white wine. Our neverending travel dilemmas began Tuesday morning as we headed to school. To give you an overview, Lindsey, Kyle, Lauren and I left our hotel at noon, but didnt arrive in Paderno until 530 pm...and Ill remind you its only located 1.5 hours north of Venice!

We took a watertaxi from our hotel to the Mestre train station. Unfortunately, we couldnt make it off the boat fast enough and missed our stop. We had ALL of our luggage with us. After getting off at the next stop we backtracked. Sounds simple enough, but the streets of Venice were crowded and our bags were heavy. Not to mention there were little peaks we had to go up and then go back down...the worst being a huge bridging connecting the left and right sides of the canal. I am still sore from my 43 pound backpack. I did not make smart choices with my packing.

After an 1.5 long train ride (in which we had trouble finding our train, figuring out where we were supposed to put our luggage, and issues locating the ticket validator) we made it to Bassano. From Bassano we purchased train tickets to Paderno. We had to lug all of our luggage 200 meters (or maybe it was yards or feet. whatever it was, it was far with our bags) to the bus stop. Then we waited an hour for the bus to arrive.

There were a lot of CIU students on the bus, and thankfully a random girl on the bus gave us directions to campus...otherwise we would have wandered the streets of Paderno lost, sad and tired. I am staying in SGP...which weve all renamed GSP (shout out to 1West!!!). Its a coed dorm, but i never see any one anyways so it doesnt matter. SGP is the good dorm...larger rooms, a private bathroom. Whats weird is that the halls are dark alllll the time unless you push these little buttons located all throughout the halls which light it up for a few minutes. It is quite eerie at night and could be the setting for a horror movie. Lindsey is located across the hall from me (originally she was in La Salle dorm but hated her room and was able to switch).

The food absolutely sucks. Dinner is pasta with sauce, a sick nasty form of meat, rolls and cressants, yogurt (my favorite of the meal), sometimes fruit. The cereal was not rice crispies like i was expecting but a bland and nasty form of cardboard. We have 2 liter bottles of water on every table because no one drinks tap water.