Milan, Italy - July 3rd

I was afraid staying up late another night would make my illness return so I played it safe and went to bed early last night. It was one of the best nights of sleep I had gotten since arriving in Europe. My dorm room is a brand new building with a lot of energy saving technology. All the lights are motion sensing and when you come in your room, you have to put the key in a slot by the door to turn on the electricity in the room. I don't think they took into account the fridge being connected to the same source renders it pretty much useless as once we leave the room it turns off. The window is equipped with "vampire" shutters which completely black out the room so we could sleep in the middle of the day. Since it is only Sunday we don't have class this morning, but I had to get up early anyways to catch breakfast and meet the group downstairs. After breakfast, our group departed for the campus which is just a few metro stops down towards the center of town. The campus was closed off so we couldn't go inside so instead we headed up the street towards the Duomo. Like the center streets in Munich and Heidelberg, it was only pedestrian streets lined with tons of clothing stores. There were people shopping all over the place. Dr. Wright took us to a place were the serve Italian fast food but unfortunately it was closed also. Not many places open on Sundays.

Back at the dorms I played some pool with Gary and watched the Wimbledon cup finals. At dinner time, our teacher took us out to our Welcoming Dinner at a very nice restaurant downtown. When we got to the restaurant no one was at the entrance and we waited out front for about half an hour. We all figured the Italians forgot we were coming and since it was Sunday, hadn't come into work. Eventually we walked around the block and found that we had been waiting at the back entrance. The building of the restaurant had a big archway entrance with a path down the side of the building that was lined with candles. At the end of the path we turned into a courtyard with tables and a bar set up. At the bar was lots of food and a guy serving us free drinks. I piled on the food and got a beer and some champagne. We ate, drank, and talked for hours. The waiters brought out pasta and later tiramisu for dessert. After dinner, the group headed back to the dorms and went to bed excited to begin the first day of class tomorrow.