I was so excited when our plane finally landed and I was in ITALY for the first time! We landed in Rome and took a bus for 6 hours to Lido di Camaiore which was where our orientation was for our first three weeks! The six hour bus ride was NOT fun because, once again, I was just so darn tired from travelling, OH and because we had to leave London at 3AM to get on our flight to Rome at 6. So crabby, tired Sierra (again) was just so ready to be in one place!
When we finally go there though, Lido was beautiful! It is this little beach town with rows and rows and rows of umbrellas all over the beach! It is not like our beaches at all with just sand, there is the ocean then a trillion umbrellas all around with bunches of walkways and little resturants all around! here is a picture...
Hotel Colombo was where we were living for three weeks and it was interesting to say the least! I wish I had taken more pictures of the room and bathroom so you could get a "clearer" picture, but basically you walked into the bathroom and on the left was the sink and right after that, the toilette, and along the right was the shower, over the toilette. So we all had to shower basically on top of the toilet, AND, (it gets better) you would think that the bright person who designed the showers would have sloped the floor DOWN towards the drain so the water flowed into it, oh but Italians are just a different kind sometimes! The drain was in the middle of the completly level floor, so the water tended to just drain out of the door into everyone's bedrooms and not into the little drain! haha, so we put our towels under the door everyday so our rooms didnt flood! Hotel Colombo also provided us with breakfast and dinner everyday. So in the morning before school at 9AM we could get some yogurt or cereali or lumpy coffee. After one week, I no longer took advantage of the "free breakfast." I am making it sound so bad, it actually was an okay hotel, I just had to learn that Italy is different and everywhere things arent like the US. (Hotel Colombo's food was just really bad.)
Okay, so onto the fun stuff. Hello- I lived in a beach town and woke up for class everyday at 8 because it took 20 mins to walk to school, then after class was over at noon, we all walked to the boardwalk for lunch then changed into our suits and sat at the beach all day, or played beach volleyball, or rented bikes and went riding around on our beach cruisers! It really was so much fun! There was also another town farther down from Lido called Viareggio, where we would ride our bikes down to some little resurant or to look in the little shops or see the magic shows going on in the center. One day, Pablo and I rode our bikes all the way to the end of Viareggio and saw the COOLEST yachts I have ever seen! They had a big warehouse where they were building them and it was AWESOME! I have never seen boats that big!
Lido was also really cool because no one there spoke English, so we had to work really hard on our Italian to be able to speak to the locals. My Italian teacher was also so cool!!! i really liked her a lot! There is a picture of her and I on my last day of school when we all took our finals! And YES I got my grades back from orientation and YES I got an A!
