Over a week later...

Well, it is almost the 9th of November here in Italy, which got me to thinking "Wow, it's already been a bit over a week". Sure, a week may not really be that long but it was one of the first times I recognised a true passage of time. Things are fine here. I have started work at the school. They are defintely teenagers, and definetly Italian. The response so far has been fair. The first day was kind of hard to get interaction, but I made them introduce themselves in English. I had to make sure I spoke very slowly and used simple language, which I had certainly thought of earlier but in practice you just start talking like you normally would if you're not used to teaching to people of a different mother tongue.

So far I have explored Milan but there really isn't a whole lot to do. It lacks the charm of other more medieval villages because it is certainly one of the most modern italian cities. I'm not really used to living right in a city like Milan. The air isn't as clean as back home I've noticed. I use public transportation to get around and it works out pretty nice. This may be one of the only towns where the buses and trams seem to run on time! The metro (subway) is pretty well developed too. It is also fairly clean. You don't see too many bums or beggars on the cars, but they will hang out near the entrances sometimes. All in all though, I would say it is a pretty good transportation venue, no real bad experiences.

After seeing what Milan had to offer (although I still have to book in advance a trip to the Last Supper and hope to catch some opera or at least a concert at the famous La Scala theater) I decided it was time to explore a little bit. I've gone so far to Lake Como and Turin (or Torino). Lake Como was very nice although extremely windy when I was there. I liked Torino quite a bit. It was just a day trip but I hung around the city until it got dark. Along a lot of the streets there were lights strung up indifferent patterns (think Christmas lights). It was very pretty and made for good pictures. I also visited the home of the Shroud of Turin, which some believe to be the cloth Jesus was wrapped in after cruxifiction. I learned that whoever it was that was wrapped in there (the guide told me that it is not officially recognised by the church) had type B blood, which I found very interesting. The guide also told me something that I found very interesting regarding the identity of the person. He said "Science can give us an examination of the cloth itself and it cannot say anything about the person that was contained in it".

Well, it is midnight here and I have to do some teaching tomorrow. Leave comments if you feel the urge! It let's me know people are reading!