Arrival in Alba & Apartment Tour

Wow, it has already been 5 days since I left for home. It feels like longer and shorter than that at the same time, but regardless, the last five days have been awesome. :)

At first, immediately after saying goodbye to my family and going through security, I got this really anxious feeling in the pit of my stomach. It was like, holy cow.. I'm alone. Since I commuted to college, I've never lived away from home, never really been apart from my family. Now I was going off to not just another country, but an entirely different continent, thousands of miles away from home and anything remotely familiar. I felt thrust into the unknown, and I got really really nervous. It got better when the other three students who were on the same flight arrived, and it's only gotten better from there :)

All three flights were fairly uneventful, we figured out where we needed to go and everything without too many problems. All flights actually arrived earlier than scheduled, so the longest flight was just 7 hours instead of 8. We had TVs in the back of the seat in front of us, which was fantastic! I've never had my own TV on a plane, so it was really exciting that I'd get to use it on the longest flight, lol. I watched The A-Team (okay movie, didn't completely follow the plotline), Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (I actually really liked this one), and the first part of Up. :) I didn't get too much sleep on the flight unfortunately; I just couldn't get really comfortable.

We arrived in Paris shortly after 6 in the morning and got to see the sunrise, as well as part of a rainbow, which was pretty neat. On the flight from Paris to Turin, I got myself a window seat so that I could get my first glimpse of Italy from the air. On the way, we flew over the Alps, which were sooo amazing to see. The pictures that I got definitely do not do them justice; the mountains were just so majestic and the craggy outlines so clear and crisp - it was amazing.

Leaving Paris behind..

Flying over the Alps!

We got in to Turin shortly after 11, got off the plane, and then waited for our luggage.. and waited.. and waited. Our luggage unfortunately did not make it to Turin. Even though we had a 3 or 4 hour layover in Paris, our bags somehow got left behind. (Way to go, Air France) We went to Lost & Found, slightly aggravated and just thinking that this was way ridiculous, gave them our baggage tags and described what they looked like, and the guy said they would send them to the Campus Center hopefully by the next day. Thankfully they did, but that means the first day and a half I was living out of my carry-on (good thing Mom had me prepared with changes of clothes and such.. Thanks Mom! :P).

All of us students who arrived before 1pm on Monday were picked up in this big orange Mercedes bus.. it was awesome. It was like riding in a party pumpkin, haha. I dozed on and off on the ride to Alba, and then we were there! We were all split up into groups of who we'd be living with, and I found myself singled out, all alone again. :( Dan (our RA) told me that apparently all five of my housemates weren't going to arrive til the next day - untrue, Lilian, my now roommate, arrived later that evening :) But, for the first several hours before dinner that night, I was all by myself in a new apartment with no roommates, and nothing to unpack. It was an interesting situation, but it all turned out okay.

At first, I didn't really like our apartment. It's fairly small and doesn't have too much light. I think that's the first impression that most of us had. The boys definitely have by far the nicest apartment. It has lots of space and light, two bathrooms, and two awesome views from their terraces. Jealous, but not complaining b/c our apartment has grown on me, it's central to a lot of places we can go to (grocery store & ATM across the street, three gelato/chocolate/coffee places around the corner, etc), and, of course, I'm in Italy! I have what I need, and I am so so happy and blessed to be here :)

Our hallway seen from the main door.

Our tiny bathroom, to be shared by six girls for 3 months.. should be interesting. (Thankfully it seems kind of split down the middle as far as how many of us like to shower in the morning & evening.)

Right side of the kitchen.

Left side of the kitchen - pretty much our only common area right now. There's one more bedroom that hasn't been unlocked yet, I guess b/c ppl didn't really use it before, but we're gonna get that one opened up to have more shared living space.

Rightside view from the kitchen terrace. That clock tower chimes every hour, half hour, I don't really know.. fairly often, but I've already pretty much tuned it out so it doesn't keep me up.

Leftside view from the kitchen terrace.

Bedroom #1

Bedroom #2

Bedroom #3

Can you guess which one I picked? Yeahh, mine is the purple one with the terrace. The nice thing about being the first one here is that I got first dibs, so naturally I picked the biggest one with color and a lovely terrace :)

View directly outside the terrace

Leftside view from the terrace, which overlooks our street, Via Mazzini. Directly underneath that banner is the Alba Galleria Shopping Center, which is like a mini-mall, with the entire bottom floor a grocery store. Quite convenient. :)

Rightside view of the terrace - there's the nearest ATM, although we don't know what their fees are yet.

 MacLeod's, the pub we live above. There's our terrace two floors right above it! :)

This is my cell phone and awesome keys - well, the colored keys are pretty normal, the apartment key is gigantically fantastic. :P The Nokia cell is really similar to the one my family used when we were in the Philippines so I've pretty much got all the features figured out, and I put my charm from my camera on it since most all of us got the same phone.

Well, thus concludes my apartment tour. These pictures were taken before any of my other housemates got here, so everything looks pretty bare. We've done some rearranging & added personal touches here and there, and are looking to probably do some decorating in our few common areas too, so I may post updated pictures sometime during the course of the semester.

I've been really bad so far about posting updates, emails, and uploading pictures, but it's been a fairly busy week. I'll keep trying to update when I can - it may be later today, maybe not until next week. There's been a lot going on so far, so I'd like to be able to update more often, & maybe with shorter posts, rather than super long ones each week, but we'll see how it goes. I'm also looking into a way to post pictures so that people not on Facebook (my parents, boyfriend, sister, boyfriend's family, etc..) can see them too, b/c I set my FB photos so that only Facebook friends can view them, otherwise Facebook can steal them and use them however they want, by my understanding of their policy. Once I get that all figured out, that'll be posted here as well.

Ciao ciao!