After boarding the plane in Newark to Rome, on Tuesday, we sat at the gate for two hours while the mechanics fixed a “small” electrical problem. On the plane I sat next to a UT-Austin senior architecture major. Pretty impressive, since 1,000+ students apply each year and they only accept 80. Because of the delay in Newark I arrive in Rome just after my connecting flight to Bologna left. I went through immigration and then made my way to Alitalia, the carrier to Bologna, when in line with a couple of other study aboard students. I meet Sammy, a girl who was in the exact same program as me; we then left then went into the domestic terminal and got boarding passes for the next flight to Bologna at 17:30. Keep in mind we landed in Rome at 9:30a.m. Sami and I then proceeded to burn seven hours in a foreign airport, without internet access and no way to leave. It made for a long day to say the least; I lightly entertained myself by repeatedly shopping in the duty free stores. I think two large bottles of Remdy Martin will be headed home with me. We finally took off to Bologna after meeting two other students in our program who were in the same program. Finally arriving in Bologna the four of us plus one other were picked up and driven to Ferrara.
We got dropped off at the hotel and proceeded to rush to dinner to meet the others in the program. At the small Italian pizza place, I ordered the Bacon Pizza, no knowing the ingredients I figured I couldn’t go wrong. Another person at the table, capable of reading Italian, notified me that the pizza’s ingredients had egg listed, it was too late I was attempting to read the drink menu. When my pizza was served it had an egg cooked sun sided up in the middle, surrounded by four large pieces of bacon. I wish I had pictures to prove it but it was quite good. A couple hit up one of the local restaurants/coffee bar/dessert gallery, I ask the bartender or maybe he was a barista to get me the local favorite or what he liked but they didn’t understand. I ended up with American coffee added milk and sugar, took two sips, paid my one euro and left. When back to the hotel for a sleepless night due to my roommates and I inability to work the ac and no breeze through our window.
This picture is out of our hotel room window, it’s a tough life.
The crazy Europeans and their hotel keys, we dropped it off at the front desk every time we left the hotel. 
In the morning, everyone in the program ate a somewhat typical Italian buffet breakfast in the hotel. For most of the morning and a better part of the afternoon we had orientation classes, very boring and uneventful. I did eat a good Panini with a two other guys for lunch. Near the end we wrote program goals. Here’s mine, in no particular order:
- Learn Italian
- Become fluent in Italian culture
- Try many things
- Meet many locals, preferably girls
- Pass my classes
- Get a Euro-Gay haircut (emphasize on the gay part)
Other goals that were consider for the list included: skinny dipping in the moat the surrounds the Castle in the center of town, Spending a weekend in an Italian jail, finding a fake idea so I can continue my newfound wine drinking habit back home, and developing a collection of man-bags.
We had an hour and a half off before another program dinner, Sammy, I and another girl when in search of WiFi to no avail. We did come across an overpriced internet café. Last night program dinner was served on a surprise menu, we had no idea what we were going to get. It turned out to be a delicious four course meal. After some more walking around we found the flag throws, state side they would be called male-color-guard. It’s a pretty competitive sport. . . .err. . . activity, at the festival in the spring, teams of two or four “battle” each other, it was very impressive.
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