Today was an uneventful day. We met one of our coordinators downstairs of our apartment to walk to a university of Italian students to do an event with them. Our Italian friends go to Roma Tre University, which is about a 40 minute walk from our apartments. Instead of interacting with specific Italian students, we talked about how our schools and education systems are way different. The school I go to, Leonardo Di Vinci is a language school where Americans go. The University we went to is called Roma 3. The school system is very different here. Roma 3 is equivalent to college-level in the United States. Italian children, much like the United States children are in elementary school from age 6-11. From there students move on to middle school and stay there until they are 16. Up until this point all their education has been free. Students who wish to further their education and continue to high school must pass an administered exam. Students do not have to attend this level of school, but if they do they remain at this level for five years until they are 19 years old. At this level education is no longer free. Unlike the United States where you apply for college and pick your major when you get there, in Italy you have to decide what profession you want to go into at the age of 16 because you apply to sceondaria superiore accordingly. There are designated schools to your professional field. After completing these years of school students are required to take another exam in order to receive their diploma, like in the United States, provides for social mobility and is associated with prestige and opportunity. We visited Roma 3 because we're going to be paired up with Italian students this semester. We will meet 3-4 times this semester for a few hours. The goal of this exchange program is to have us interact with italian students to better understand what their life is like here, and vice versa.
After Roma Tre, we had to walk all the way back to school. We were 40 minutes away from our apartments and in the opposite direction of school which means it took over an hour to get to Italian class. We had to walk the whole way basically because there was a strike today. The strike is where all public transportation is closed for 24 hours. I guess the workers of transportation do this every month in order to get more money. It hasn't work, and is very inconvenient for the people of Rome, but there is nothing we can do. Somehow, the tram was running every so often so we hoped on it and made it to Italian class 10 minutes later. Since we are going to Prague tomorrow, we are missing 2 classes. 29/32 of us are going to Prague so we figured that they would cancel class because we are allowed to have absences, but that is not the case. We are kinda in trouble and will never all travel in a pack again, but it will be well worth it!
We only had Italian today, so my friend Kim and I ran some errands after class. I got a new pair of sunglasses, bargained from 10 euro to 6! Then we went to an Internet Point to print out our boarding passes. It costs 2.60 euro to be on the Internet for 15 minutes. How ridiculous! And it costs .50euro to print a piece of paper. All of our big assignments need to be typed and they expect us to print everything, but that is going to be so time consuming and expensive! We better be able to email our assignments otherwise I will not be happy. We went to the grocery store and the train station to check what time we need to get a train to make our flight tomorrow. At the station were 2 homeless people sitting by the time sheet. They SMELLED so BAD! I barely could breathe and my eyes started to tear. I felt so dirty. On our way home we stopped inside this coffee shop and bought a pastry. We thought it was filled with chocolate, but it was nugget flavor we think. It was good, but not what we were expecting. But hey we had to try our first pastry someday. We came back and decided to go on a quick run. It was my first work out since the states, and it was good! It was dark out so we didn't go long, but we plan to run more often now. It felt so good to clear my head and just run!
Some people are going out tonight, but I have Layers of Rome at 930 in the morning, and I do not want to be late for this class with the scary teacher. Our flight to Prague tomorrow is at 430 and we come back at like 4 on Sunday. I do not know much about Prague except that it is pretty, has castles, and is cheap, but I am excited to learn more and be educated! I will be staying in my first hostel this weekend. Our hostel seems like it's going to be in a good location and near a lot of places to walk to. It also give us free amenities such as happy hour from 5-7, free wifi, free entry to a topless bar, etc! Haha. I am a little nervous to stay in a hostel, but I am with seven other girls so I think we will be okay. Also, apparently one of the big 'clubs' in Prague has 5 dance floors, and one floor plays 90s music. Maybe I can find a nice Czech boy to bring me back to my jr. high days and slow dance with to some *NSYNC, Backstreet boys, or BBMack!
I will update you about Prague when I get back on Sunday! I cannot wait!!! I hope its not too cold there!
Ciao!
-Marisa
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