First day, then a break

my favorite poster graffiti on a wall near my school

First day of school on Monday went very smoothly. Started class at noon, and except for a few breaks, I had class until 8:30pm. Very weird to walk out of class and into the night, in the middle of a busy city with multicolored lights and people relaxing outside small cafes. Web Design class lasted 2.5hrs, but went by in no time. Very modern Mac desktops with Photoshop CS3 and Fireworks and Dreamweaver, just like at my college at home. I had to take a photo of myself through the computer's webcam for the professor, and that is now my profile picture on here. Today, strangely enough, was a free day with no classes, so I wandered through the streets and struck up conversion with street vendors. One was from Sicily and another from Romania. Both had fascinating little stories to tell and were very friendly and welcoming. I also achieved my goal of wanting to buy some Italian indoor soccer shoes - both for playing in school soccer leagues here and for wearing around. It took ages to find some that were affordable. Things, especially shoes, are extremely expensive here. Everyone wears fashion bling-bling. So many gold shoes, it's very weird. More fun stories to come tomorrow, I'm sure. :)


a man steers his boats to a dock on the Arno

nothing more refreshing than a beautiful morning bike ride - the Duomo is the large dome