Venice

Wow so much has happened in the last few days! This weekend I went with a group of 16 other students to Venice! Here's the play-by-play!

So Thursday I had a couple of classes including my Italian class. My prof seriously looks like Einstein, so every time I look at him and picture the famous picture of Einstein sticking out his tongue I start to laugh. After classes we quickly packed and hurried to the train station to buy our tickets for the night train. As it turns out you can get really cheap tickets if you take a night train, without a bed, with a group of 10 or more. Too bad we missed the ticket office hours so we missed out on the group rate. We still managed to get tickets and catch the train.

I then gave the group my "inspirational speech." Basically I told them to create their own buddy system like the 1st graders do so that we don't always have to count to 17. Then I told them that there were concerns about the volume of their voices in public places. I am one of the few people on the trip that is self conscious about speaking English in a public place. I think it draws attention to you and points you out as a foreigner. Great way to attract pick pocketers. This issue has also made me realize how uncomfortable it must be to move to the U.S. with limited English knowledge. Navigating with a foreign language surrounding you is difficult enough, you don't need to draw what is unfortunately negative attention towards yourself too. Oh, and I mentioned that we needed to watch out for each other and represent our school well. Not all that inspirational, but I felt it needed to be done.

Night trains are kind of crazy. There are definitely people that are characters that ride them. I slept at least an hour or two on the way there, which was definitely not enough to support an adequate energy level in Venice. We got to what could have been our train stop and waited until the last minute to get off. We didn't really know if it was the right stop, but we took a chance. It worked out fine and we waited around for over an hour for a bus. We all stayed surprisingly optimistic through it considering we were out in chilly weather early in the morning carry all of our stuff as a sewer truck filled up next to us!

We got to our residence for the next evening. It consisted of small "cabins" (more like very small trailers), tents, and places to set up RVs. It was the most Minnesota-like thing I have seen all trip! I saw grass in Italy for the first time!! There were trees and falling leaves too! We were right on the water, which actually had a strange similarity to Lake Superior in Duluth. I'll put up pictures later. I am excited to be here and experience new things, but it was fun to see that there are things here that are like at home too!

After dropping off our clothes, and other non-essentials, we headed to Venice! It was just like the pictures! The one thing I never got from the pictures is how big it is! It took us about half of a day to find St. Mark's Basillica which is on the other side of the island. We mostly just stopped in little shops (not my choice) and walked around. We were burned out early in the afternoon though so some of us headed back to camp. We took the wrong bus to the camp (who would have two bus 11's when there are an infinite number of numbers you could use?) This was actually one of the most fun parts. I love not being on a schedule when you can afford to get lost and just laugh about it! We were stuck at a bus stop in front of a hotel for a while with an Italian woman. I couldn't decide if the bus that she got on was the one we wanted to take, so I kept eye contact with her after she got on. I then chased the bus down as she convinced the driver to stop. She ended up leaving her bag of stuff at the bus stop so I felt awful that she had helped us, and I couldn't even help her.

We got back to camp and met some guys from Ohio. They are studying abroad in Austria, but had come to Italy for the weekend. I'm not sure if they were excited to see us because we were also Americans, or because we were girls, but it was fun to talk with them. Met up with some other people and went to a restaurant for dinner and had what Evan described as "Chef Boyardee." Lisa Teresa (Lisa's new nickname...if you knew her you would understand. Get it?...as in Mother Teresa) and I ordered wine. It was the first time I ordered wine at a restaurant! I feel old.

Next day we headed back to Venice. It was more fun the second day, because we knew our way around. We tried to bargain for a good deal on a gondola ride, but it wasn't going to happen. We filled our time with another tour of St. Mark's Basillica and other museums. I light a candle at the Basillica for my great uncle that passed away since I left home. I didn't know him, but I thought it was a good way to honor him.

A few of you reading this already know this about me, but I am the worst museum attendee ever! I love museums and I had a blast with Lisa, Katelynn, and Evan, but seriously I am awful! We took pictures in areas where cameras weren't allowed and I climbed up next to a sculpture to take a picture. So much for security guards and security cameras. We were so sneaky!

Another highlight of the day was my experience with the locals. I am kind of goofy and get a kick out of waiving to people on tour boats. I was waiving to one, when this older Italian guy came up and started laughing at me. I smiled and then laughed too. He and his buddy and the four of us watched another couple of guys struggling to start their boat in the canal. We all sat there laughing and then cheered for them when they finally got it started. This is when I realized that laughter is a common language, and we didn't need to speak the same language to have that connection. The four of us ended the awesome day with pizza outside and a few card games in front of the train station. Another 7 hour train ride back with 20 minutes of sleep and here I am! Bed time! I missed out on a lot of sleep this weekend!