I'm a pioneer! Or pilgrim? Prima? Anyway.. I'm a first!

So, I found out today that I am the first American student that Federico II has had!  So that's why I've gotten so many "Why are you here?"s...

Okay Okay Okay.

So much to tell.

First of all...is it safe to take Dramemine as a sleeping pill?  I know, I know, Dan, "non faccia le droghe!", but I don't know what else to do!

Second of all, Dad- here is my mailing address:
Hope "The Best Daughter in the World" Mooberry
Collegio Villalta
Via G. Martucci,  35/h
80121 Napoli, Italy

Third- I ate leek the other night- I want that on the record.  It was pretty okay.  I shot some across the room by accident, though...darn plastic utensiles.

Also, I want to mention- Folmeister, remember when you taught me the Italian hand motion for "come here"? Well, I didn't.  That one got me on the first day.  One of the ladies that works at Villalta was telling me to come here for quite awhile, with me just staring dumbly at her.. They retaught it to me the other night when they were teaching me hand motions.

Another thing I learned that night that I thought was interesting is that in Italy, they have two types of high schools.  One is the scientific high school and the other is the classic high school.  At the classic high school, they learn about the arts and basically nothing about math or science, and vice versa.  However, Elena* went to the classic high school, but is now studying to be a dentist.  She said that the transition from arts to science was very hard. 

K, now onto the chronological updates:
I believe I left off with the night before my first class, so that's where I'll pick up.  I went to my first class! haha.  I was pretty nervous about voyaging out into the unknown with only a general dirrection to head and not knowing the native tongue.. but I found where I needed to go with minimal problems!  It's a beautiful walk to my Italian class.  It's held in a big, beautiful building, right on the ocean front (serisouly, the doors are about a football field from the shore), AND there's a castle on a small, sort of peninsula right by the building as well! A real castle!!  Naples has several of these strewn about.  If I could get my dratted pictures to load, you guys would be able to see 3 castles just from the pictures from the terrace on my building.  Anyway.. the walk to the school is about a mile (maybe a little more? It takes me a half hour) and most of it is walking along the shore..  ahhh! I love Italy!  I walked into a couple of wrong buildings first, but people were happy to tell me I was in the wrong place.  Finally, I walked into the correct building and a girl came running in after me (I was slightly late at this point because of the other buildings..etc.) and she asked in Italian if I was going to the Italian course, and I said yes, but I don't speak Italian, this is my first day (the course had started 3 lessons ago). She seemed relieved and told me it was her first day too, so we found the classroom together.  She was from Hungary, and ended up not being in my class because she had taken 4 years of Italian already, but it was nice to walk in with somebody.  I'm not sure I learned a thing in the class... missing the first few classes was not good.  The teacher speaks in Italian the whole time, and pretty much everyone else in the class is from Spain and had a better idea what she was talking about than I did because of the similarities.  At least I was doing better than the poor man who was sitting in front of me... I don't think he's ever learned another language before and the verb conjugation was too much for him.  He has an amazing voice, though.  I think he's an opera singer.  At one point in the class, the teacher had him sing a song; he sang "Without a Song," and it gave me chills- molto buono.

My Italian class is right during when lunch is at Villalta.  When you aren't going to be at the Villalta when a meal is served, you get a "note" that has a credit of 3 euros for your meal.  I stopped at a stand along the shore on my way back for lunch, and it turns out this stand was like the one place that doesn't accept the notes, haha. But.. food is so cheap in Italy!  I had a ginormous crossiant, which was filled with some mix between cinnamon (similar to what is the cinnabon rolls..real thick, dark cinnamon) and chocolate, and it only cost 1 euro!  Something like that at a Starbucks would be $6 at least!  I hadn't been to the bank yet, so I paid with a $5 bill.  I got a coke and 3 euros back... quite exciting.  Drinking warm coke from a straw makes you burpy, and walking while drinking warm coke from a straw is not better.. so I sat down on a bench facing the ocean, with mountains covered in classic Italian buildings on either side of me and a park full of rather loud birds behind me, eating my delicious Italian food.  I get to do this twice a week...

When I got back to the Villalta, Elisabetta asked me if I would go to London with her!! So... I'm going, duh.  We leave tomorrow!  Elisabetta is going to this conference: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kfvp4NZQFQk.  While she is doing her thing there Thursday and Friday, I am either going to visit Jenn (a girl from my Missouri S&T volleyball team who is studying abroad in Leeds, England), or she is coming to visit me in London... I'll let you know what is decided.  I found out today that Elisabetta will be staying somewhere with the conference, so I need to find a place to stay on my own... so Leeds is looking pretty darn good, if only the train wasn't so expense.  I was looking up cheap places to stay in London and a site for hostiles said: Hostiles- For the young, or young at heart!  What about the old at heart? I guess I will have to find somewhere else to stay. 

But then on Saturday I am going to see everything there is to see in London with Elisabetta, then we come back to Italy on Sunday.  I bought the tickets with a card and Elisabetta gave me euros for her half (this is as good of an exchange rate as you can get), so now I have a fat wallet full of Euros.  Don't worry Dad.. I only take them out with me a couple at a time.  The cheapest flight we could find has a connection in Frankfurt on the way there and a connection in Monaco on the way back; so I guess I'm going to Germany and France this week, too! Our flight leaves Naples tomorrow at 1:35pm and gets to Frankfurt at 3:40. Our next flight leaves at 5:30 and gets to London City Airport at 6:00pm.  We fly back on Sunday at 1:15 from Heathrow, we land in Monaco at 4:05 and leave at 7:25, and get to Naples at 8:55pm.  Sound tiring? Well, I don't sleep anyway, so, no prob.

That night (last night) after dinner at our group talk we had "manners training."  It was pretty funny.  They told us to bring high heels and a jacket, and we were asked to walk around in high heals and they would correct us to make use walk like ladies..  We also were taught how to take off a jacket like a lady, and how to cut food like a lady (this may have been for my benefit, haha).  I only did the jacket-taking off. I guess I passed, she didn't say anything.  Apparently I'm at a lady's college... I did not realize this when I signed up!

Today was even more exciting than yesterday..  Well, it started off with being woken up at 9, after finally getting to sleep a few hours earlier, because everyday the maids come in and clean at 9, and we're supposed to be out, and have left the room in an orderly fashion (or something like that.. I was still pretty sleepy when she gave the dirrections).  But around noon I ventured out on my own again to figure out the metro and find my way to a different campus!  I didn't really know what I was doing, even though Elisabetta had already given me sparse dirrections, and as soon as I stepped outside of the door, I realized I didn't know which way the metro station was.  I turned around to come right back in, and Elena was walking out and she was headed to the metro! God's been taking such good care of me.  It was a good thing she was there because I would have had no idea what to do.. there are no dirrections on how to use the metro at the metro, and I wouldn't have known where to get my ticket stamped or which side of the rails to stand on.  Elena was going the other dirrection, but she got me to the right place.

So I used the metro, got off at the right stop, found the building I was supposed to find, I have no idea how, and found the room of the man I was supposed to talk to about getting my research project, as well as where my classes are going to be.  It turns out that I had the wrong schedule- the classes don't start next week, they started this past Monday.. and they will be done mid-June.  So, if anyone wants to come visit, please come and travel with me at the end of June! But it also turns out that I haven't missed any class, because I haven't had any class to miss!  No one else has signed up for the Foundation Engineering class in English, but I will still get to take it as a private lesson! That should be interesting. It means I have to pay attention...  And the other class I was signed up for, Earthquake Engineering- the teacher decided not to have it after all, I guess, so I got to pick a new class to take.  The professor who was helping me was pushing very strongly for me to take Advanced Applied Engineering Mathematics, which would have been pretty interesting, but I'm going to take Advanced Metallic Structures (basically Steels II).  AAEM would've been doing alot of diffeq, matlab(bleh!), and finite-differnce and finite element methods.  AMS is doing overall steel design criteria for new buildings and refurbishing historical constructions, which I think sounds fantastic. It will be following the European code rather than what is used in the states, but oh well.

After talking with him I tried to find Natalia (from Rolla-here for 2 more weeks), but she was not at her desk, and then I went out and tried to buy pizza at a cigarette stand... haha.  I don't know why they had a big picture of a pizza! I ended up getting a great panini thing made of sourdough bread, mozzarella, and salami.  It was very good.  I ate it in a dirty park while I waited for 3 o'clock so I could go talk to the AMS teacher to make sure it was what I wanted to do.  Naples is gorgeous, but there is trash everywhere.  The girl on my flight to Naples said that the trash collectors go on strike alot.  After talking to the AMS teacher I knew I wanted to take that class (which is good because the other class overlaps with my Italian class 2 times a week).  Then I navigated my way back to the metro and back to Villalta. The I went out and bought a flashdrive.  Now I'm getting tired of writing. Can you tell?  I'm sure you're getting tired of reading, Mom, the only person who would read this long of a post.

Okay, that catches you all up. I will post again some day. I don't know if I will have internet or a computer in England.. so my next blog may be next Monday, when I have been to 3 more countries and been to my first engineering class.

Arrivederci!