Oh Atlantic Ocean, foul fiend and bane of my existence, thou hast once again been vanquished: Bologna by night, by day, and Shower Fracaso: the sequel.

Ciao from Italy!  Here begins my second semester abroad and the next installment of this blog.  After a rather uneventful trip down to O'Hare [we gave Rob a ride to Holland, stopped at El Az (no taco truck this time, sadly), and took in a movie], I spent most of my time in the airport and the first hour or so of the flight reading an anthology of zombie stories (thank you, Sergio) and people watching.  Before I even checked in with the airline, I knew I was in the right line when one of the only people ahead of me was a guy with skinny jeans, boots, a skin-tight shirt, a purple striped scarf, earrings, and hair gelled to stand straight up like he stuck his finger in an electric socket.  Oh, how I've missed Europe!  The flight was long, but the girl I sat next to, Ariella, is awesome, and is now my roommate for the time we live in the hotel.  She's actually a friend of Veronica's (one of my friends from Spain, remember?) as well.  Anyways, I and all of my luggage arrived safely in Bologna.  I feel I'm back at square one on the language front.  I can understand nearly everything, but it takes me forever to think of how to respond.  Surprisingly, I don't default to Spanish as much as I expected (which isn't to say I don't a little bit-- I think I've said "vale" at least 20 times so far.  The Italians say ok, so you'd think it'd be easier).  I didn't realize how much I could actually communicate in Spanish (albeit grammatically incorrectly) until I pretty much had to rewind to the beginning of the semester.  Actually, it's even worse considering I only had one year of Italian, then took a semester off.  Yikes!  Again, comprehension isn't really an issue, but it's going to take awhile before I'm able to hold a conversation.  Anyways, upon arriving, I successfully took a taxi and checked into the hotel, then went to purchase a cell phone.  Unfortunately, I needed my passport, which was then being held by reception at the hotel.  So, Ariella and another new friend, Drew, and I all headed to a little sandwich place for lunch and of course got some gelato.  I ended up getting two flavors named "tierra del fuego" and "fin del mundo".  Why the names were in Spanish is beyond me.  Anyways, "tierra del fuego" was pretty much the gelato version of the leche merengada batidos we used to get at the tetería (...the holy spirit is indeed everywhere... :).  It was amazing.  We went back to the hotel for a shower and ended up taking a quick and rather inadvertent nap as well.  Though we were exhausted, we ended up dragging ourselves out of bed to go get the cell phones and wander around.  I just got a new SIM card for my Spanish phone.  We ended up in the Piazza Maggiore and found the public library nearby which was the seat of the university from the mid 1500s to the early 1800s.  Piazza Maggiore (it reminded me a bit of the plaza mayor in Salamanca):

Statue of Neptune (that's the Roman version of Poseidon, folks!) in the Piazza Nettuno, adjacent to the Piazza Maggiore:

Some shots of the library:

One of the things I love most about Europe is the feeling of living history, how everything is so old, yet ageless.  Everywhere you go, you can find something beautiful, something that has existed for centuries.  Some of the characteristic porticoes of Bologna:

Drew and I in front of a canal by our hotel:

This fellow reminded me of some grizzled bounty hunter rafting down the amazon in a horror movie or something:

More of the canal:

The street our program office is on [a little unsettling... street of the malcontents.  We found a Via dell' Inferno as well (Street of Hell)... apparently there are a lot of dissatisfied people in Bologna]:

One of the main streets:

A church:

We eventually wandered to the due torri (the two towers... neither Orthanc nor Barad-dûr), the only towers left from the over 100 present in medieval times:

 Me in the doorway of one of the towers:

 Ariella reading the plaque:

After seeing the torri, we wandered the streets some more and ended up running into Drew's host dad (he stayed in Bologna for two weeks in high school and stayed with a host family; now he's planning on staying with them again this time).  He recommended a pizza place for dinner which turned out to be amazing (but then, it's Italy, so of course it was amazing).  The next morning, we had our orientation meeting (all in Italian, of course) and filled out forms for the permesso di soggiorno.  We wandered around some more after lunch to see everything during the day, then had a meeting about housing.  We have to find our own apartments.  I'm terrified.  We walked through the university area afterward and found some flyers, but I haven't called any numbers yet.  Bologna by day:

Last night, we had a welcome dinner with the year-long students, then went out to the Italian version of O'Briens (English Empire) for a bit.  Ariella and I were tired, though, so we didn't stay out long.  One of the year-long girls, Meghan, tutors two young boys in English and doesn't want to do it anymore, so she might give the job to me.  It's only an hour a week and I think it'd be fun (or at least a good experience).  I'm pretty excited.  So.. remember the dental floss in the shower incident in Valladolid?  Last night I was on the other end of things.  Ariella was in the shower and I heard a crash and then cursing and shuffling and banging around.  It turns out that the door had somehow become detached from the frame.  We kind of just left it and went to bed, until we heard another crash about an hour later.  We put it back up, and if we don't touch it, it balances and you can't really tell.

This morning we had medical and police meetings.  The doctor is American and just moved to Bologna around a decade ago.  This gives me hope-- maybe I'll end up living in Europe someday after all.  :)  We went to a fantastic sushi bar for lunch today; it was really fun!  I wanted to take a picture, but I felt that was a bit too touristy.  I'll definitely be going back, though, so maybe next time.  Well, over and out for now.  I leave you with some dinosaur graffiti from Toledo that I forgot to post before: