Chitarra e Polizia

Yesterday was my first full day in Milan. I woke up and had to head to 6 hours of beginner Italian class which was extremely bearable due to my stunningly attractive instructor. Almost our entire class is from the U.S., so during the breaks everyone continued to meet one another. So far I haven't met anyone that I don't like immediately. 

After class Alyssa (another U of I student), Andy (Boston native, goes to school in Richmond, VA) and I headed to the supermarket down the street to buy some essentials, such as food, toilet paper,  and of course vino. Being in a foreign supermarket is like shopping as a 6 year old - you can't read any of the labels, so basically you are purchasing based on the picture. I spent 10 minutes by the meat trying to find chicken. It's kind of fascinating actually. You have to pay for each plastic bag by the way - so instead of doing that, we just commandeered the shopping cart all the way home. It's on my balcony as I type - I'm going to take it back in a few minutes. 

Later, at night, everyone congregated by the kitchens and on the terrace again, but this time there were way more people. It seems like everyone is extremely outgoing and excited to be here. I met some really sweet kids, including Sondro. Sondro is from Georgia (the country), has been studying in Budapest and Milan, and gets paid 50 euro an hour to drive Porsches around europe and take pictures of them. How do I sign up? Anyway, at some point a guitar was brought down and a guy from Brazil started playing universally popular songs like La Bamba, No Woman No Cry and Wonderwall. Naturally everyone started to sing and things got pretty loud - the time was probably 1:00 AMish. Apparently in Italy tired neighbors don't like 30 international students shouting "LaLaLaLaLaLa BAMBA!" in the middle of the night. Cultural differences I guess. Anyway, la polizia were called and a large, intimidating officer with flashlight blazing ruined the party. "SILENZIO! AVITE ANDARE!" was what I think he yelled at us. 

I was still wide awake though, so some others and I got together on Binoy's (from New Jersey) balcony. I think we realized it was late when we looked at a watch and realized it was 6:00 AM. Crazy jet lag. Right before I headed to bed I got Skype called (if you don't have Skype, you need to get it and call me on it.... www.skype.com) by Scott Wolf. Scott is my friend from Deerfield who was at Bocconi last semester, so is interested to know how things are going. It was around 11:00 PM his time, so he was wondering what the hell I was doing still up. Living the dream, I said. 

In conclusion, I need to buy a new alarm clock, because I woke up at 4:o0 and missed my second day of Italian (class started at 2:30). I guess I'm that guy. Anyhow, I'm going to try to make the most of the rest of the evening though, so I have to take off for now. But clearly it's been a blasty blast thus far, and there will be much more to come.

Oh yeah, I think this weekend we're going to try to go to Cinque Terra. Nice.