Day 10 in Bolzano

This is how I spent my first weekend in the lovely city of Bolzano! Well, I'm not actually in the city as you can see, I'm about a 1.5 hour drive to the east into the heart of the Dolomites. On Friday we had an orientation and I started asking people about hiking in the area and started talking with a 3rd year student who loves to hike and she invited a few of us to join her and her friend on a hike that Sunday! It was totally worth getting up at 7am, I cannot believe the views we got during the drive and during the hike itself.

Other than enjoying the scenery, I've been busy meeting people on my floor, dealing with paper work for about a bajillion things, and catching up on my lack of internet over the last 5 weeks. The paperwork part of the last week has sucked, but it's almost all over now so that's makes me happy. I've got a tax code, a bank account (which should start getting scholarship money in 3 weeks), a student number, and an Italian cell phone (which has some issues with the data connection (read: keeps stealing my money for no good reason)). The only thing left to do is find a bike so I can explore a little further in this pretty city!

My living situation is a combination of awesome and very odd. I'm on the second floor of the building with a lot of other Erasmus Mundus students, but across the courtyard from our half of the building is an elementary school! In the same building! It's a bit confusing. The accommodation is run by a religious group, so they are pretty strict about some kind of unusual things. For example, you can't move any of the furniture in your room and my friend Ondra can't hang his laundry outside his window because "it's awkward for the kids to see it while they have recess in the courtyard." Um, really? But, the rooms are super clean and big, and we get a mini fridge between me and my flatmate, Lamar, so I can't complain.

On that note, I've met so many great people already! It's fantastic. On our floor we have 2 guys from the Czech republic: Ondra and Yhan. 2 girls and a guy from Russia: Tatania, Angelina, and Yuvgeni. My flatmate from Texas, Lamar. An Italian guy named Marco. A guy from Brazil named Diego. I've met many more people around the building as well as other students in different housing, but there are way too many to name here or even to remember all their names! But the group that I mention above have all hung out a fair amount in the last week, so that's really nice to have some consistency after traveling for so long.

I think that I've finally figured out my class schedule too, so next week my freedom will all end and I'll have to get used to having responsibilities again. It looks like I'm taking about 4 required courses and get to choose maybe 1-2 that I want to take in addition to a language course in Italian. Right now my optional courses are a toss up between some paired courses. Either Semantic Web Technologies paired with Machine Learning: Algorithms and Applications, or a course called Digital Libraries paired with Knowledge Representation and Ontologies, which is supposed to be a really strong subject with some of the professors here. The other option is to pick some courses from the Language and Communication Technologies modules. They seem really interesting, but less related to the fields that I saw myself pursuing.... If anyone (*cough* NateFreddieDon *cough*) has any thoughts on these courses, I'd be quite interested to hear them.

After all this text, I leave you with a link to my new Picasa photos! Some pictures from Berlin, Prague, Amsterdam, Brussles, and my first week in Bolzano, plus some hiking. Please take a look at them and feel free to comment on the photos, that way I'll know exactly how jealous you are. ;)

Also, my mailing address, in case you want to send me anything. I like food, money, letters, and surprises! If you give me your address, I promise I'll send something back too!

Quentin Schroeder, Room 216B
Istituto Rainerum
Via Carducci, 7
39100 Bolzano, Italy


Love you all!

In Bolzano

Hey everyone! After 5 weeks of travel I have finally arrived at my new home in Bolzano! I don't have internet in my room yet, so I'm posting this from an internet cafe, which is why it is going to be a bit short.

My room is pretty nice, it's a good size and it has a private little kitchen that I share with another American guy named Lamar. So far I've meet about 5 other people, all doing the Erasmus or Erasmus Mundus programs (first is for EU students, second is for non). We have an orientation meeting for the university tomorrow at 3pm so hopefully after that I'll have my student ID and be able to activate the internet in my room, which for a big nerd and addict like me is very important! Then I will be able to call you all and say hi and post a blog with a ton of pictures like I know you have all been waiting for.

The building that I'm staying in is pretty interesting, I'm still working on figuring it all out. It's run by some kind of church organization and most of the staff seems to be priests... Their english isn't the best, so it's hard to tell sometimes. There is also an elementary school in the building, so there were about 50 little kids running around downstairs this morning! (And by morning, I mean 1pm when I got up.) The only disappointing thing is that it looks like they have a pretty strict "no over-night guest" policy, so all my friends that I offered a place to crash if they wanted to come visit might get screwed. Ah well, I'm sure I can work something out or figure out another place for them to stay.

So far I've just been exploring the city center a bit and getting some basic food and soap/tissues/sponges kinda stuff. I still need to go get some linens for my bed since they don't provide them for me, so that's my next adventure!

I'm really excited to be here and am especially looking forward to learning Italian and German! It turns out that all the street signs are written in both Italian and German and it's much higher than the 30% German speaking population than my research had said! It's pretty intense to be shoved into these 2 languages, but I really want to learn. I feel like a bad American when I expect everyone to know English, so I'm trying to use as much Italian as I can, even if it's only 5 words.

Okay, with that, I'm off to find some linens for my bed! I hope everyone back home is doing well, and I miss you all! I can't wait to see many of you for the holidays.

Love you all!