Buongiorno bologna etc.

This Friday we took our first trip to Bologna. We had our tickets ahead of time, but the train station was still stressful because we could not figure out how to validate our tickets. The normal ticket machines weren't working but finally a woman came up to us and in english told us to go to these little yellow boxes, and now we know. Luckily we made it to the train and everything was fine. It was really cool being somewhere else for multiple reasons. 1. Bologna was a city and it was really cool to see ancient elements truly mixed with a city atmosphere. 2. there were tons of young people, Bologna has one of the oldest Universities in the world and the city definitely revolves around them 3. great shopping, a million 10 euro shoe stores, I got a really cute purse! 4. it made me really feel like Verona was my home and I was surprisingly really excited to go back and feel more relaxed. Friday night was a lot of fun. We went out to dinner and then to the street where all of the University students hang out. We met people from all over Italy and from other places in Europe. Some of the girls on the trip had a bit too much fun, and lets just say our trip ended with a vespa ride (kind of like a motorcycle) which was a lot of fun.
    The next morning, I woke up and me and another girl decided to go back early to Verona, we arrived at the train station with plenty of time, sat at the stop and the train never came. We then realized we were at the wrong stop so we had to wait another two hours. Luckily, we were pretty close to the shopping area so I got a really cute purse but it was still pretty annoying. When I got back I was able to rest, do some laundry eat and chill out which was really nice.

Today was also a long but good day. My alarm didn't go off so I woke up at 10:20 with somewhere to be at 10:30 ahh. I raced out of the apt. and arrived at 1045 which wasn't bad. Today was a Jewish arts and music festival which is really cool since the Jewish community here is really small. I went, but got kind of overwhelmed because everything was in Italian and I had no idea what was going on. I then went and found the woman I had been emailing with. She seemed a little stressed out but at least recognized who I was from the emails and confirmed that I'll be coming for Erev Rosh Hashanah this Wednesday night. I concluded that it was okay not to participate in the festival and I'll probably get most info from people who I meet at services and dinner, and hopefully someone around my age. Overall though the Synagogue was beautiful and really cool to be inside, it is definitely the oldest Synagogue I have ever been in. On the way down the stairs from the office I stopped by the room that had a bunch of cool artifacts in it. It had a megillah, so siddurim, pictures from bar mitzvahs, teffilin and other things. A man in there noticed that I was reading the Hebrew and asked me questions about all of the holidays. I am pretty sure he wasn't Jewish but he seemed very interested and said he was from the area. It was cool to be able to feel like I actually knew something since lately I have felt so clueless not knowing Italian.

The rest of the day I spent wandering but I finally went across the bridge of the river which was really cool. Across the bridge less people live and there is less business but a lot more ruins. There was a really cool looking archeological museum that I will definitely go back to when it is open. I was planning on meeting up with the other girls in my group for lunch but they wanted to go to mcdonalds so I decided to eat on my own. I sat outside on piazza bra and ordered Spaghetti con pomodoro e basilica (tomato and basil yumm!) it was good but it was huge! something I have learned about Italy is the restaurant is offended if you leave anything on the plate, all I can say is uugggh i was so full but it was really yummy! Overall today I found I made a lot of mistakes involving food/drinks:

1. I spilled my fruit cup (so yummy!) trying to take a picture of it
2. I paid for my cappuccino not at the counter but at the register
3. I didn't automatically sit down at a restaurant, I waited to be seated
4. I ate by mysellf and had to therefore finish a large plate of spaghetti on my own so I wouldn't seem rude
5. I improperly ordered my gelato and instead of a cone ended up with a coup with two spoons

that's it for now!