Mi chiamo Emily. No, io non parlo Italiano.

7:15am. Operation Sign Up commenced. We jumped out of bed and braved the frigid waters of the Stockholm shower. After quickly assembling our top secret Nutella-on-Toast, Dorothy and I snuck out the door and ran to the bus stop. We shoved our way onto the bus and hopped out at school...where we joined the line of 50 other students out in the courtyard.

Why on earth were we playing secret agent in the early hours of the morning? Because at 8:30am registration for the university organized trips opened. There are two weekend and 2 day trips that the university offers every spring: A weekend in Tuscany, a weekend in Capri/Pompeii, a day in Assisi, and another day in Tuscany. Since I'm only a sophomore, I don't have friends scattered all over Europe that are willing to put me up for the night, so any traveling I do will be far more expensive than it will be for my roommates. I had my eye on the weekend trips. Unfortunately, the line was so long that I had to step out and go to class before I could register. An hour later, during our 10 minute class break, I raced back down to sign up. The Capri trip was completely full. I managed to get the last spot on the Tuscany trip, but I'm a little bummed out.

Disappointing morning aside, I had a very interesting first day of classes. My first class is Art of the Renaissance and Baroque and meets from 9 to noon on Mondays. Apparently I won't be back in that classroom for over a month because the class consists of on-site lectures with a few student presentations. Next week we're meeting at the Coliseum. No big deal. I think the hardest part of the class is going to be understanding my professor as she speaks a mix of American and British English with a healthy dab of Italian in every sentence.

After a delicious lunch at Archi, the cafe across the street from the university, I wandered around campus until my Italian Language and Culture class at 2pm. This isn't your average Italian class. It's kind of "Italian for the Survival of Study Abroad Students." The class is split into Language, which is always taught in Italian, and Culture, which is always taught in English. Yesterday was a Language day. "Ciao, mi chiamo Anna. Che ti chiami?" our professor said with a rather unimpressed look on her face. Anna doesn't seem too keen on teaching single semester students the roots of her native language. She walked around the room asking all 22 of us the same question. We picked up on it eventually. Next, she taught us the verb "Parlare" which means "to speak." "Ciao, mi chiamo Anna. Ti parli Italiano?" We were to answer "No, io non parlo Italiano" which means "No, I don't speak Italian." Hearing this 22 times was rather depressing and kind of frustrated me. Why are you drilling into our heads that we don't speak Italian? Isn't that why we're in your class? To learn Italian?

After class, I explored the student lounge and watched Al Jazeera. The reports from Cairo are a little scary. I got a message from American University telling us that all AU students studying in Egypt had made contact with home and were being evacuated. It's good to know we have a plan.

My final class, "Rome: Republic and Empire" met at 5:15pm. It's an introductory Roman history class that seems to be structured a lot like my IB History classes in high school. We will be looking at different primary and secondary sources and analyzing the voice, perspective, and value of each. We finished class with a scene from the movie Cleopatra. It was filmed during World War II and was so extravagant that it nearly bankrupted Fox.

After class, Becca and I were starving so we checked out the little pizzeria on the corner by our bus stop and ordered enough pizza for a family of four.

Five minutes later...

YUM!