Milan

So we woke up today at 3 to get ready to catch our shuttle. Considering that I didn't get to sleep until about 1:30, I knew it was going to be a long day. We got ready to go and headed down stairs to meet the shuttle at 4. Natalia went to check on the girls from the first floor to make sure they were up, and Stephanie went to check on the other girl in the downstairs apartment. When she opened the door she was still in her pajamas so she made a mad dash to get ready in two minutes. The shuttles got there and we were all ready by then so we loaded up and headed to the airport.

At the airport we went through security and went to wait by our gate for our flight to be boarded. After a while we walked around to find food but the only thing that was open was the duty free shop. Eventually our flight was called and we found our seats. The flight was pretty open so we got a row to ourselves. I remember looking out the window as we took off and thinking that the sun had still not come up. The next thing I knew we were standing up and trying to get off the place. I had slept through the entire flight and the landing – pretty impressive.

So in my disoriented state I start wondering why everyone was heading to the back of the plane to get off. So headed that way and it turned out that they had one of those giant stair things at the door for us to climb down. It was awesome. I felt like the Beatles and I had to resist the urge to wave to everyone as we came down. Then we got on a bus that had standing room only and the driver took advantage of the twenty feet he had to drive us to do a few donuts and swerve around an obstacle course that must have been set up. I would love to have that job. After all this we had to walk through the duty free shop, of course, and then started following signs that said useit (exit). These signs took us through the entire outer edge of the Milan airport so we were able to see all aspects of baggage system.

Then as we were climbing down another set of stairs I realized that I recognized the part of the airport we were in. I had just gotten the new Call of Duty for Christmas and one of the levels I had to infiltrate the Russian mafia and we massacred a bunch of people in the Milan airport – odd right? Well, at least knew which way to go at this point, but do not get into the truck because they will shoot you.

So we get to the exit finally and look around to get our bearings. I remembered that we needed to take a bus to the city center and Natalia and I went to look for tickets on the bus. We found them fairly easily and went outside to que up. While we were waiting we watched the bus next to us start to load up to leave. All of a sudden this woman starts screaming something in Italian at the bus driver and hitting the side of the bus, I have no idea what she was saying but he did something and the underneath luggage door opened back up and a small woman jumped out. She was not happy at all about being locked up in the compartment, but we enjoyed it.

After the hour ride into the city we were dropped off at the train station. Once there we walked around until we found someone who gave us a map and told us how to get to the hostel. We walked a few blocks up the street until we found our hostel. Because it was still fairly early in the morning we dropped our bags off at the front desk and got ready to head back out. The hostel had a beautiful backyard and patio garden, they also had a golden retriever named bobby (pronounced bow-bay).

We walked down the street and found a little café for lunch. Here we finally had a chance to try some real Italian food. I had a lasagna Bolognese that was amazing. After lunch we headed to the metro station and took the subway to Il Duomo. Il Duomo is a large cathedral in the heart of Milan and is one of the largest Gothic Cathedrals in Europe. As we came out of the subway we were surrounded by guys who tried to tie rainbow string bracelets on our wrists as we walked. They told us they were from Ethiopia and the bracelets were free but once they were tied on they kept asking for a few Euros. Eventually we were able to escape and made it to the edge of the cathedral. We found a gelato cart and bought our first gelatos in Italy. We walked around the square and ate our ice cream while looking at the cathedral.

We eventually went in the cathedral and had a chance to walk around. It was very beautiful and covered with paintings on every single wall. After a while we headed back out and went to go look at the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II which is an amazing covered gallery that has a ton of restaurants and expensive shops. We walked through the gallery and wound up outside of the teatro alla scala which is a famous opera theater. Here we decided to split up with Michelle, who wanted to take the elevator to the roof of the dome, while I drug the other girls to see the pinacoteca. The Pinacoteca Ambrosia is a small art museum that has some works by some local renaissance artists as well as a small collection by Leonardo Da Vinci.

We wove through the small and confusing streets until we reached the museum. We walked along and saw "The Gifts of the Magi" and a cartoon of "The School of Athens" by Raphael. They set up the large cartoon, which is a sketch for the fresco in the Vatican, in a room with a screen on the floor with a few chairs in front. If you sat for a while they would show on the screen who each person in the painting was. The painting shows images of Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Alexander the Great, and other philosophers. We found out later that Stephanie and Melissa saw the chairs and decided to take a nap. When we explained to them later how important the painting was they couldn't believe it, but we thought it was pretty funny.

We all wondered through at our own pace and I wound up alone on the second floor looking at some sculptures. While I was up there I met an old security guard who insisted on showing me around. He pointed and slowly explained what each thing was – I was able to understand almost every other word so I nodded and agreed a lot. He pointed out some of the statues that were in the courtyard and asked me what I was studying. Between his Italian and my small understanding of Spanish we were able to get a long ok. As we walked a long he gave me mints and told me about how much he liked his job at the museum. Efficiently we ran into Natalia and I quickly introduced her to my new friend, who told me we could call him Pino. She had no idea what he was saying and kept asking him "what?" Finally I nudged her and told her to just agree because we would be there forever otherwise.

We said goodbye to our friend and headed downstairs to look at the Da Vinci collection. We saw a few of his paintings and a lot of his architectural designs and sketches. He did a lot of sketches during the construction of the Duomo as well; it made me laugh because it looks like he did all these intricate designs on small napkins. Then we walked into a small alcove that had a collections of busts, it was pretty dark and eerie so Natalia was freaked out. I enjoyed scaring her a little until we finally ran outside. We walked backed to the Galleria to meet up with Michelle and she pointed out a mosaic that everyone seemed to be gathered around. It was a picture of a bull and there was a hole in the painting. Everyone seemed to walk up to the hole and put their right heel in it and spin around, we weren't sure what the story was but we did it anyways.

By then it was about four in the afternoon and we were all pretty dead on our feet so we headed back to the hostel for a quick lie down. We checked into our rooms and they were pretty nice. Natalia, Stephanie and Melissa had a room on the second floor while Michelle and I shared a room on the ground floor. It was a very, very small room with barely enough room to walk in between the two beds. We laid down and I settled in to read, I woke up an hour later.

I went upstairs to see if the other girls wanted to go grab some food and they said they were up for it. We got ready and headed back out. We took the metro back to the Duomo and found a little pizza place in the square. We ate pizza and watched the sun set on the cathedral, eventually in the dark it started being lit up by a large advertisement to the side. It turned the cathedral into beautiful blues and purples, very nice. After dinner we walked around until we found a gelato place and we got some ice cream, we went over to the cathedral steps and ate our ice cream.

After we finished we headed back to the hostel. Once we got there we went out onto the patio and looked over the plans for the next day. I brought a notebook with me and had written out lists of what I wanted to see at each place, I also kept a list of who had paid for what and who still owed money – in the end it worked out very well. So we settled our book keeping and I went back to the room for a minute. Our keep was on a giant brass – thing. I mean it was like a paperweight. Well, when I was trying to get back in the room I dropped the stupid thing and it sounded like I had broken something in the hallway. That's when I found out that when I'm flustered I now apologize in Spanish. So I finally made it back outside and we finished up everything. We finally went to bed around midnight.

Tuesday Meeting

Today Stephanie and I overslept and then realized that we had to go to the meeting at 12 to meet with Levonne. We got ready and ran to school but we were still the only ones late. We sat and listened to her for a while and then we turned in our questions. Then we walked home and went to H&M to do more shopping. After awhile we headed back home to study for our test in History tomorrow morning. Josune and I got bored easily but Alex made us stay and study together.

Then when we were all pretty bored of studying we found some tango songs and Josune and Alex showed off their mad skils.

Then Stephanie wanted to play too, but she wasn't in our class so we told her she could stay but she couldn't be part of our awesome team. Then we all got crazy with our lack of sleep and Steph started sending me facebook messages to come visit her in her room. It was hilarious but we finally went to sleep.

Levonne’s Visit

Today class finished up pretty early so I was able to get home after only about an hour or two. Mandy and I made soup for lunch and were sitting in the living room watching Shakira music videos when the door bell rang. We had forgotten that Levonne was still here and was scheduled to come and visit the apartments so she could see how AIFS was working as a program. So we jumped up and gave her a tiny tour of our apartment and she kept telling us that we are so lucky and we are taking this for granted – I asked what she meant by this and she just said it could be worse. I still don't understand how we're taking it for granted but there you go. After awhile they left and stood in the hallway outside our door forever, I listened through the door but they were only talking about going to visit the home stays.

I then went out with Mandy to go clothes shopping. I have been wearing the same couple of changes of clothes for over a month now and it is definitely time for a change. I went in Zara, a huge European clothing chain, and bought a few things. And then found a small bag for me to use when we went to Italy.

Later, as I was about to go to bed, I realized that I hadn't filled out the ten page questioner that Levonne asked us to have ready for the meeting tomorrow. So I quickly filled it out and then I crashed.

Easter

We woke up this morning and realized that "hey, it's Easter." So we got up and cleaned up the house so we could have a nice dinner. Some of the others went to El Rastro to look for a bag and I went out to have breakfast. I went to one of the larger bakeries in Puerto del Sol and had some tarajas and café con leche. It was a really nice relaxing breakfast, and I enjoyed watching everyone panicking about getting the pastries for Easter.

When I came home I helped, or tried to help, Josune make dinner. She made two oven roasted chickens with potatos and carrots. She also made us some tarajas for desert. We invited Doug and Sian to come over for dinner and we ate at about 8 at night. The food was amazing, and we sat around and had a nice evening with wine and good food.

After desert the others were teasing me because I love British history. So Josune found a quiz about general British history and Sian and I had to do the quiz to see who knew more. She knew more of course, she lives there, but I didn't come in too far behind. Then we took a harry potter quiz and it just went on from there. Everyone left around 11 and it wasn't too bad for Easter.

Postre Tour

Today we had a chance to join a tour of some of the bakeries that make the tarajas for Easter. Tarajas are slices of stale bread soaked in either honey milk or sugar wine and then fried with a little egg. They are like amazing French toast slices. We met up with our guide, a crazy woman with colors all over her pants. No, she really had colors on her pants – like red, blue, turquoise, mauve – it was crazy. She walked us around the city center and showed us some of the oldest bakeries and explained the different pastries that they make there. It was fun to see some of the places but we were sad that we didn't get to actually have any pastries.

After the tour was over we were talking to Doug for a little bit and he invited us to have dinner with Levonne. Levonne is the coordinator from Fullerton College who had come to Spain to conduct a site evaluation to see how the program was working out. She's a crazy old lady but pretty nice, so we said sure why not. Natalia, Josune, Alex, Doug and I met her at her hotel and then walked across the street to an Italian restaurant. We had a great time talking about our trip and teasing Josune about bossing us around to eat healthy. After a few hours we said goodnight and headed back home.

Good Friday

Today Natalia and I stayed in bed all day and worked on our homework and our trip to Italy, again. We relaxed until about 4 in the afternoon and then got ready to go out and see another procession. This procession was planned to walk along Gran Via, one of the large boulevards in Madrid, and in front of the Prado museum until they reached Puerto del Sol. When we got out of the subway and tried to head up to the street there were guards blocking off the large exits. We finally found an exit that was open and when we headed out we realized that we had arrived right in the middle of the procession. The processions usually last a few hours to go by one spot, but this one lasted barely an hour.

We were able to see most of the floats and the people following the procession. There were people walking barefoot through the streets, people who had arrived to see the procession and felt so moved that they took their shoes off and followed. After a while we joined the horde of people to go find Sian. When we met up with her we talked her into going to grab some tapas with us before going home.

We figured that it would probably be easier to walk to the square, rather than try and take the metro. Little did we know that we would be following the entire procession to the square. So, though AIFS warned us to please refrain from joining in any parades or marches, we found ourselves in the middle of the Good Friday procession to Puerto del Sol. We had a good time, considering it took almost an hour to walk a few blocks. We discussed our heritage and where everyone's family is from. Natalia's mother comes from Puerto Rico and her dad from Spain. Michelle is very much English. And Sian comes from England but she said that her family comes from northern and southern England which makes a big difference in lighter and darker skin color. Pretty exciting.

We finally made it to the same street we had gone to on our tapas tour a few nights before. We went to one of the bars we hadn't been to and ordered some wine and bread. After a while Josune and Alex met up with us and we went next door to the Sangria place so Michelle could try her hand at pouring Sangria straight into her mouth. After this bar we said goodnight to Sian and headed out to try and find some racciones because we were starving. Racciones are larger portions of tapas for a little bit more money. We wound up at a little bar and had some patatas and chorizo. We ended the night back at the ice cream bar for a little sugar. Finally we were pretty tired from our day of not really doing anything and headed back home.

Holy Thursday

Today we slept in until almost eleven. Natalia and I stayed in our pajamas and worked on booking some last minute things for our Italy trip. It was kind of nice to get to stay in bed and be lazy, I feel like I've been going none stop since I got here and it was nice to relax. Our roommate came home around one in the afternoon and it was nice to see her back home and doing really well. Sian was nice enough to go and get her from the hospital and make sure all the right paperwork was filled out, she took her home as well and helped her understand any questions she might have.

Later I skyped my parents to see how things were going. I made some soup for dinner, it's my favorite right now, and Natalia and I shared it before we headed out to see one of the processions. We met Sian and a few other girls in the Plaza Mayor at about eight. We were a bit early for the procession so we talked for a while until we saw people starting to line along either side of an invisible aisle. I was impressed that the people were able to keep the aisle exactly the right width for the procession to walk through, without any markers or guards. Interesting. So we lined up and got a front row view. We stood and waited for the procession to get here for over an hour. We watch some police on motorcycles ride through the aisle to make sure it was clear. One cop thought he was the best there was and kept speeding through the crowd and suddenly stopping; then he fell over. It was kind of sad because the bike fell on his leg so he needed help getting up, but he was kind of being a jerk so a lot people were snickering at him.

Behind Natalia and next to me was a tiny woman about sixty years old. Instead of asking if she could go in front or anything like that she took to pushing against Natalia. It was hilarious. So now she and I had an activity to entertain us. Every time someone would ask to go past us to walk to the other side we would scoot over and I would put myself between the woman and Natalia, and then a few minutes later the woman would worm her way between us again. We were cracking up.

Eventually we could hear drums and we knew the procession was close. The procession is slow to represent Jesus' walk with the cross, but also because they have one to two large floats that men carry. They carry the floats for a few yards and then stop and rest – they will do this all night. The people in robes are hooded so that there is no discrimination between the people who are being judged. The more penitent people walked the entire night barefoot, and we saw one person with chains around their feet. The contrast of the long purple candles they carried with the holes in their robes for their eyes made the entire procession rather eerie. I loved it.