I have a larger update at my laptop back in my apartment, but I was here in the photography lab editing my pictures for our next assignment and, since I am extremely behind on updating my blog, I thought I would post about my experience at the questura yesterday. The questura is the Italian police station, don't worry, everyone has to go to get their fingerprints taken. This was the second time I had to go to the questura. The first time, which only took an hour and a half, for other people it took much longer, I waited in line for most of that time to simply get my fingerprints scanned into a computer. However, once that was done I was told that I would need to return to have my fringerprints taken again. Apparently the Italian police department isn't able to share my fingerprints between the two different departments. So I arrived at the questura at 9:00AM, which is when I was told to arrive. There was a pretty large group of people waiting there to also get their fingerprints taken and we waited for 25 minutes for a police officer to finally arrive. When he did, he came around and collected everyone's appointment papers and then told us to wait. He didn't return again for another 45 minutes and, when he did, he called me and two older ladies with him and took us into the police station. Once there, he had us sit in the hallway and disappeared into his empty office for another 25 minutes. He finally came out again and called the first and then second lady in with him to take their fingerprints and pictures. After they were finished, about an hour later, he called me into the office. When I handed him my passport he exclaimed "Ahhh, Stati Uniti!!! (United States)" and while taking my picture kept laughing and saying to himself "Americani, americani." Since I am used to Italians not particularly liking people from the United States, I wasn't too surprised at his reaction, but thought it was getting to be a bit much when he took me over to his desk and, looking at my passport exclaimed, "Stati Uniti, numero uno!" At first I just laughed along with him a little, but soon realized that he was being completely serious. He was enamoured with the United States. He proceeded to open up my passport and go through each page, pointing at the pictures of various American scenes and saying how beautiful they were. He also read several of the quotes from different presidents at the tops of the pages. He finally took my fingerprints and told me where to go next. As I was leaving, his partner walked and he called my back, asking if he could show my passport to his friend. He showed his friend all the pages and again said how beautiful all the pictures and quotes were. Unfortunately his friend didn't seem to share the same love of the U.S and simply grunted and walked away. I then walked back to one of the windows I was originally directed to and, after waiting another 40 minutes, found out that I would have to return, again, to the questura to actually pick up my permit of stay.

One of the pictures from my photography projects.

Paris Part II

The first night we walked around the city – from the Latin Quarter, up to the Notre Dame, over to the Louvre, and back to the Latin Quarter on the other side of the river. The next day we headed to Pere Lachaise, a famous and extremely large graveyard (it sounds much more morbid writing it out than actually visiting it). Many famous people including Chopin, Proust, and Jim Morrison, are buried there and it’s a pretty big tourist attraction. After Pere Lachaise, we went to the top of the Notre Dame where there are spectacular views of the entire city and you’re able to see inside one of the bell towers. After lingering at the top enjoying the view for a while, we headed back down and walked over to the Eiffel Tower area where we bought dinner which consisted, again, of bread and croissants. On our way back to the Latin Quarter, we happened to pick up a brochure for Disneyland Paris, so early the next morning we caught an early train and arrived at Disneyland in time for opening. We stayed in Disneyland for the whole day and, of course, went on many, many rides, I think around 15 in total, with the highlight of course being Buzz Lightyear, although it was not the same ride and unfortunately I didn’t max out, but got relatively close. After having lived in a foreign country for the past couple of months, it was nice to be somewhere where we understood things a bit more. Disneyland was set up in a very similar way to the Magic Kingdom in Florida, only some of the lands were switched around and had slightly different names (for instance, Tomorrowland became Discoveryland). We stayed until closing at 10:00PM and headed back to the center of Paris. Although it might seem strange that we decided to spend a whole day while in Paris at Disneyland, I'm very glad to have gone, it was a lot of fun! The next day, we had a few hours before we had to start heading to Barcelona, so we grabbed some breakfast, which was, yet again, bread and croissants, and went to a large park in the Latin Quarter.

At around noon, we headed onto the metro and found our way to the bus that would take us on the 90km journey to the airport, but more on that in a couple of days. I have to get to bed as I will be waking up early to catch a train to go to Florence! I apologize in advance if something in this doesn’t make sense or there are a vast amount of typos, as I did not get a chance to read it over yet.

I hope all is well back home.

Paris Part I

Last week was spring break here in Perugia. I went to Paris and Barcelona, but first I had to get through midterms. Luckily I only had three, as there was no midterm for my photography class, and I feel I did well them.

For spring break I went to Paris first. All my flights for spring break were booked with budget airlines, which usually means having to travel a bit outside of your destination city in return for much cheaper flights, but luckily my first flight flew out of Rome’s main airport and into Paris’s main airport, so that portion of the traveling experience was a bit easier. Unfortunately we missed one of our connecting trains on our way to Rome because the train we were on arrived quite a bit late, but luckily there was another train leaving a few minutes after we arrived. I had forgotten how enjoyable of a city Paris is to be in. The temperature was much more pleasant this time around. Instead of being 20 degrees with wind chill, it was a breezy 60. This made walking around the city much easier, and walking was definitely in order considering all we ate was bread and croissants (shockingly it’s rather hard to find a reasonable place to eat in Paris, but I’m not going to complain considering how magnificent the bread and pastries were).

All my midterms are finally over and I feel I did well on all of them. There were a few confusing questions on my Roman Empire one, but I'm sure it'll turn out well in the end. Now, however, is time for the projects. We have one paper that has to be a group paper, which I find annoying to be forced on me, but luckily Erin is in my class so I don't have to worry about the other person doing their own work for it. The school is also obsessed with presentations here, so we have a presentation in nearly every class to go along with our projects. I'm sure it's good practice and all, but it's frustrating being stuck inside when it's starting to get nicer out and we're in Italy!