Moving into a 16th Century Villa

I arrived at the villa around 11 o'clock on Sept. 2. I was the fourth person to arrive. After taking care of the necessary room key deposit and getting a water bottle, I was taken to my room by the house fellow, Amanda. We left my luggage by the door and I was to come back and get it once I found my room. Amanda said she wasn't really familiar with the room numbers, so we went on a bit of a tour of the other rooms. After finally finding mine, I had to try and find the main door to go pick up my luggage. That was the easy part. I then had to carry my 50+ pound bags up the stairs...and I didn't really know where I was going. I got a little lost at one point and accidently ran into the house fellow who directed me to my room. I finally got my bags upstairs and thought unpacking would be a good idea. But, of course, I didn't do that. One of my roommates was already here, but she was napping. All I wanted to do after hiking the luggage up the stairs was shower...but I waited for that too. Now that I think of it, I'm not certain what I did until my roommate woke up.

But, she eventually did. And we met. Her name is Amanda and she seemed pretty cool. We started unpacking a little, but didn't want to get too far because we didn't want to take all the drawer space and closet space from our other roommate. By the way, for the family reading, I'm in the same room as Katie, my cousin, when she did the program two years ago. The same bed too! Anyawy, I like to think we have the best room because we have 3 windows, which is great for airflow! Although, the windows don't stay open when it gets windy and they are quite loud when they slam. We also have two dresses and two large freestanding closets out in the hall. Once we realized that it didn't matter where we put our clothes because there would be plenty of space, we unpacked completely. This was followed by showers!

After we were clean, and cooled down a little, we went out into Sesto because Amanda needed to find an ATM. She got some cash and we stopped at a little cafe for a 90cent pastery because we weren't getting food until supper that night.

The rest of the day passed in a daze of wandering around the villa and trying to figure out where we were going. We finally got another roommate, Kristine, a little later on in the day. (More on the roommates later!) At 7pm we had supper, which was a fantastic first meal! Everyone was pretty wiped out, so not much went on after supper!