Chocolate

Classes are going well. Midterms and projects are starting to come in, though. I have my Italian midterm next week and a couple others soon after that. I'm not too worried about Italian. Most of the grammar is easy, so I'll just need to focus on memorizing more vocab. The other midterm in my history class should be interesting as he wants us to know a bunch of dates, but the material is interesting and the teacher is very nice. Yesterday I finished editing my pictures for my first photography project, so I'll have to see how she grades. Since we get to choose what our topics are for our future projects, hopefully it'll be more interesting than 200 pictures of the same object.

So today we decided to attempt to go on a tour of the Perugina chocolate factory, about a half hour from the city center. I called ahead a few days ago and made a reservation for a free English speaking tour today at 3:00. We found out that there's a bus, the R bus, that brings you relatively close to the factory and there was a bus that left at 2:10. We arrived at the bus station at 2:00 and waited for the bus to arrive. When it did, we got on and asked the driver politely in Italian if he knew which station we should get off at for the Perugina chocolate factory. He told us that we the bus doesn't go right to the factory, only near it, and he promptly left the bus. A little confused but assuming we'd figure things out, we went and took a seat. A few minutes later he came back on the bus and came over to us and angrily told us that if we were in a hurry we should take the H bus. We responded thank you, but we weren't in a hurry, so we'd just stay on this bus. He returned to the front of the bus and a few more minutes later, right before he was about to leave, he called me up to the front of the bus and started yelling that we should get off his bus and take the H bus. He wasn't leaving with us on it. Not knowing how to respond, we went over to the H bus stop and, right as the bus we were just on pulled away, we saw that the bus had left 10 minutes ago. I'm not sure if something was just lost in translation, but he seemed to be a very angry Italian man. I then went over to the small bus ticket booth and asked them if they knew which bus I should take to get to the Perugina chocolate factory, to which they responded the R bus, which is the one we were thrown off of. A bit distraught, I called the chocolate factory to try to explain and see if it would be all right if we were a few minutes late. It was not. We decided to try to go anyway since we had already swiped our bus ticket. Half an hour later, another R bus arrived, luckily with a different driver, and we headed off. About 20 minutes later, we realized that none of the stops were labeled and nothing was ever being announced, so I went over to the bus driver and asked him if he knew when we would arrive at the San Sista stop (the people on the phone had told me that would be the best stop). He said that we had passed it, but we would be looping around soon and would be back at that stop in about 15 minutes. He even said he would signal to us when to get off the bus. So we finally were able to get off at the San Sista stop and proceeded to walk, basically down a highway, in the direction of the Perugina factory. This was at 4:10. About 10 minute later, we arrived, 2 hours after we started our journey, at the factory. Right in front of the factory was an evidentally unknown bus stop, this one for the I buses. Inside we inquired if we were too late to catch a tour, in any language. Unfortunately, we were, the last tour was at 3:30, but the worker offered us some free chocolates and said we could watch a short movie in English about the factory. After eating our fill of free Baci and other assorted chocolates, we headed back out and caught the bus back to the city center 4 hours after we started. Now that we know what we're doing, we'll have to make a reservation for another weekend. Unfortunately no cameras are allowed in the factory.