A siesta day!

Ciao everyone!

Today was a perfect day for a siesta! It's a shame I didn't get to take one because we were SO busy!

This morning, I woke up and grabbed a nice breakfast and took my time to prepare for my day. We were told to wear business casual clothes and bring along sneakers or a change of clothes for a scavenger hunt (no other information was disclosed to us until right before the hunt). There are two things I have learned from personal experience in the past couple of days regarding my ability to navigate the streets of Bologna:

1) It's much harder than I initially thought it would be to remember key landmarks and names of streets. I know that Via is street in Italian, but beyond that it is difficult to remember which streets are which and where important landmarks are. Instead, I have been remembering locations by referencing gelaterias and restaurants we have passed!

2) The other lesson-- wearing any other shoe but sneakers or padded shoes around the city HURTS. The walk to the center of the city from our Camplus location takes a good 20-25 minutes and I am estimating that we walked about 3-4 miles today in total! It is vital to wear comfortable shoes-- my blisters on the tops of my feet keep echoing that sentiment!

Our squad of 47 plus staff walked down the La Piazza Maggiore in the center of the city and took a three hour tour of the entirety of Bologna. The information gleaned about the city's history and culture was fascinating, but by the second hour, some of my peers and I were feeling the wear from the hot, humid (90 degree) weather and our professional clothes were soaked with sweat.

La Piazza Maggiore with the Neptune Fountain!

 We received an official welcome speech and address from the Bologna location of John Hopkins' SAIS graduate school and toured their campus. As well, the staff for our Symposium went over in detail the structure of our program, our schedule, expectations, and opportunities for learning and personal growth. I find that each member of my peer group, as well as the staff, bring a unique feel to the culture of our culminated group and enrich it as such! It was so refreshing and interesting today hearing about my fellow colleagues and their dreams, as well as their accomplishments.

After learning about the logistical aspects of our program (we get into the thick of it tomorrow) and being given our assigned readings, we all had the chance to partner up with someone we didn't know very well and introduce that person. I thought that icebreaker was a very interactive, fun way of getting to know about everyone's interests and personality quirks and I can't wait to learn more and get to know these incredible individuals!

We were split up into six groups of around 6-7 people after the icebreaker and were told that there were 19 things we needed to photograph around Bologna and we had an hour and a half to do it! Our group, Group 3, set off quickly to find such things as the "belly button of Venus" and the oldest Osteria in Bologna!

                                                          Tortellini, aka "the belly-button of Venus"

 After the scavenger hunt ended, we all filed back to Camplus utterly drained from the sun and drenched from running around the city all day. I ended up going out with three new friends-- Rebecca, Jocelyn & Sybil (from South Africa, California, and the Dominican Republic respectively)-- for dinner and we had a blast ordering food at a delicious Italian restaurant about 10 minutes from campus.

All in all, the day was long and somewhat arduous but filled with much information and entertainment. I am very excited to start the academic portion of our program tomorrow and to become closer to the people I am sharing this diverse experience with!

Buona serra!