Updates

Since I last wrote, I been busy. Last weekend, Giuseppe came to visit and we spent the entire day in Milan Saturday seeing new sights and getting more familiar with the city. A friend of mine is currently doing her Master's here so she was nice enough to bring us around. One of the cuter places we saw was a church that has a sort of optical illusion inside. It is called Santa Maria Presso San Satiro. Essentially the back wall is painted in such a way that when you walk in it looks like this:

but when you walk further into the church and look from the side, you see that all that is painted above is actually painted on a single almost completely flat wall:

I thought that was awesome. Besides that, we mostly just saw the more touristy parts of Milan. This weekend, Giuseppe came back along with my beloved friend Katherine and a few of her buddies from Andorra. We did the touristy run through again but also made some useful discoveries about public bathrooms. 

(Bathroom side note: Just so everyone knows, there is a *free* public bathroom at Sforzesco Castle and one that costs fifty cents in the Burger King in Piazza Duomo. It prints out a little voucher so you can get your fifty cents back paying for a coffee or something.)

On Sunday, we went to Lake Como which was beautiful as expected and surrounded by mountains. Apparently, George Clooney's house is nestled further back from the part of the lake that you can actually see from the town of Como. Sadly, it isn't there for everyone to see. Anyway, here are a couple of the pictures I took. As you can see, northern Italy may not have anything on New England but the trees still get colorful here in the fall. 

I'm really liking the gym and the other day, I saw the hot tub for the first time and I think I fell in love. I also understand now where the high membership price comes from...It is a dream. Huge. Jets upon jets upon jets and neon lights under the water. Having access to something like this during the fall and winter time is just wonderful.

School is going well so far. I feel bad that I still haven't learned very many names, but I have 16 classes total and I don't think I'm going to be able to keep them all straight! This week, obviously I'll be talking about Halloween in a few of my classes as well as the books Gulliver's Travels and the Great Gatsby. Luckily I just watched the movie because the teacher for that class asked me to show some scenes for discussion this Friday.

Soon I'll be teaching three afterschool conversation classes probably Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday 2:30-3:30pm. In this case, I'll be the teacher and not the teacher's assistant so I hope that the kids are respectful...Anyway, for each of those classes I'll receive a stipend at the end of the year. It obviously won't be like the salary of someone with a real full-time job but it will be a few hundred euros at least. Yay for big pay days on the last day of school! I also asked my advisor about doing private lessons because that is the main way that people like me who are doing assistantships make extra pocket change. I love my free time here but I still think I could manage to fill more of it up and still have plenty of time to relax.