My New Aparment

Well there is definitely a mixed bag of emotions going on here in Italy, but most of it is pretty exciting underneath (or right on the surface!). We were given the task a couple of days ago of finding apartments here in Bologna, which was a little daunting. I was lucky I came a few days early and had the good fortune of tagging along while Kelly looked for apartments, and we both had the good fortune of having Kelly's friend Simona be our guide through the process. Most of the other students are still looking for apartments, but it feels pretty good to have found one already and to be able to relax a little right now.
My apartment is in the historic center (il centro storico) and it is absolutely beautiful. I love it! I'll be sharing a room with a French girl named Irene who seems very nice, and sharing the apartment with an Italian girl, Rosana, and a Spanish girl (I haven't met yet). All three are students at l'Universita di Bologna too. They all speak Italian in addition to their first languages which is great. I'm so excited that I'm going to be living in a multi-cultural, multi-lingual apartment while living and learning Italian. I think its going to be a great experience. The apartment itself is very nice, lots of marble, clean, updated, lots of natural light, and its so close to everything (school, restaurants, bars, shopping) and its very close to Kelly and Simona's apartments and our friend Flor (another girl in the program).
Kelly, Flor and I are venturing out to Ikea today (very Italian, I know) to shop for our new places. All the apartments here come furnished, but we still need to add some homey touches, like sheets and pillows! :-)
On another note, we took our "pre-session test" today to be placed into the different levels for our pre-session course. It was a little more difficult than I anticipated, but from the sounds of it, I'm not the only one that felt that way. There is an incredible mix of abilities and skills in Italian among the participants in the program, which is great. It will be really interesting to see how everyone changes and improves throughout the next six months.
Things are really getting going now. We start our presession on Monday, go to get our "permesso di soggiorno" tomorrow, move in tomorrow and we go from there! Once we leave the hotel I feel like our Italian experience is really going to take off.
I'm thinking of doing a "scambia di lingua" here to help practice my Italian. I think it would be a great way to not only practice speaking, but to meet people and to learn more about the culture and social life here. I would help someone with their Italian and they would help me with my Italian, what could be better?!
The only thing I need to get going on is my pictures. None of us want to walk around like the American tourist, you know. We all want to pretend we're Italian through and through, but come on. Even if we can speak Italian perfectly, we will always be American here, so there will be some picture taking very soon.
A presto tutti!