First Day in the Apartment

We stayed out late last night, about 4pm, one of my latest nights out since my 22nd birthday. Mark is 20 and Dave is 21. They both have the energy for all this running around and drinking like I did when I was in Germany, but I was really feeling it even with only 5 drinks for the night (10pm to 3am). Hopefully once I recover more from the trip over I can keep up.

Dave and I moved into our apartment today. It is much larger and nicer than either of us was expecting. The living room came with a tv, table and couch. From there we have a small kitchen with a one person balcony off of it. Next to the kitchen door is a very large balcony just for our apartment. Plus Dave and I have our own private balcony from our room that looks over the river Dora Reparia. Our room is also fairly large, perhaps 16x16ft. For three people the place also has one and a half baths with a tub, not just a shower. Pictures will be posted hopefully at the same time as this blog.

The location of the apartments is also fairly ideal. There are two supermarkets next door, a bakery at the corner, and a butcher around the corner. The bus at the corner stop takes us all the way to the university, which makes class life simple. Night life may be a bit more complicated if we wanted to go to the places downtown. Since going out time is after 11pm it will be easiest to take a taxi for 10€ = $14, otherwise the walk is 35-45 minutes. There are also bars in the area, and we’ll have to explore a bit to find the good ones.

As for my Italian, I am slowly becoming more confident. My vocabulary is still extremely small, but I am figure out ways to get my meaning across with what I know. It is a bit of a guessing game for the Italians, but it works. To help speed things up Dave and I bought some high school level reading books. Since we decided to trade the books off when we are done with them, we decided against Harry Potter. I personally thought it was good choice since we had both read it, and the grammar and vocabulary are easy. The stuff we have is slightly more difficult, but perhaps more useful.

We also found out that we can get internet in the apartment. It will take several days though, and will be time limited. Apparently the Italians use the pay per hours deal. I recall it being in the U.S. for a while, but people found it too restrictive. The largest plan is 20 hours a month for the whole apartment at a cost of 30€. Between that, the free wi-fi on campus and doing other things it should work out fine. Hopefully we will have time tomorrow to find an internet point in our area. The downtown are is touristy, and lacks them.