March 16-20: Mid-terms Week!

I am finally back to catching up on this blog and it feels good to finally get it all in writing again. This past month has been the busiest I have had while abroad, which may be hard to believe that I am busy over here, but you will see once you read my entries about mid-terms, spring break, Mom and Dad's visit, Katie's visit and my trip to the Bay of Naples. Here it goes!


The week of March 16 through the 20th was mid-terms week. It was a difficult concept for us because we literally have not had any tests or quizzes since December. It was tough having to actually sit ourselves down and study for hours, but it all ended out fine because I made A's on everything except Italian, which is a humorous story. I took my Italian exam on Wednesday the 18th, which included present, past and future tenses. The composition we had to write was one that we had done a week before as an oral presentation, which I got a 100 on. Naturally, I used the same exact words and presentation from the week before and somehow got five points off of the composition. Of course, I brought this up to my Italian teacher and told her I didn't think it was fair for me to get points off of the composition when I got a 100 in the oral presentation and she made no corrections on that one. She told me "nice try" and that I was making it up and made me go to the Italian department where I could speak to the director, who spoke better English. After a fifteen-minute long argument and my Italian teacher telling me I am stubborn and too insistant, I gave up because they were impossible. First she used the excuse that I was using words like London and Paris instead of Londra and Parigi (which I had never learned, nor was I corrected on it in my oral presentation), then she used the excuse that I didn't use the correct tense, then she used the excuse that I didn't write enough words. I was so frustrated, especially because of the "language barrier" that I gave up. I'll save it for law school.

So after forcing ourselves to sit in the kitchen while it was beautiful outside for a week, we decided to relax on Thursday night by eating at Ciro & Sons, which is a restaurant near school. Patee, Marielle, Rebekka, Samantha and I decided to make it a "goodbye" dinner while we headed our separate ways for spring break the next ten days. Samantha went to Greece and Spain for spring break, while Rebekka, Patee, Kara, Sarah and I went to England and Ireland. Marielle's grandmother unfortunately passed away during mid-terms week, so she had to go back to New York for spring break, which was fortunate for her that she was able to do that and be there with her family.

On Friday, Patee and I decided to have a "spring cleaning day," which I was looking forward to for two weeks. Our apartment really needed some deep cleaning, so we woke up and were very productive for the whole day. Meanwhile, our neighbor across the courtyard from us who is outside of our bedroom window was doing the same thing ... we call her our friend because she is always opening her windows when it is nice out and putting her sheets and clothes on the railing to air out. We find her fascinating for some reason. Rebekka came to visit Patee and me with bagels from Rio Cafe while we finished sweeping, mopping and wiping down absolutely everything in the apartment. It felt amazing to have such a clean apartment!

Saturday began our spring break, which we had been looking forward to for so long. So we went to bed early Friday, woke up and packed and got ready for our amazing week in England and Ireland...