Cinque Terre here we come!

The past few days I have not really done much except go to class. Yesterday I went the festival of nations, which was in the ‘rio’ (a river that once existed, but is now dried up so they made it a park). The festival was not what I expected at all. They had different booths from different countries, but the jewelry and clothes at each booth began to look very similar to each other after a while. So honestly I am not sure how legitimate the festival of the nations was. For example, one of the pictures posted is the booth that represented Ecuador. Apparently the only thing that Ecuador has to show for their country is Sponge Bob, which in itself is a bit odd. Something that was cool about the festival is that they had restaurants from places all around the world. A few of us went to ‘France’ to share a delicious chocolate and banana crepe. Also, one of the men there was from a Mayan civilization and he was talking to us about his chocolate that was made from pure cocoa beans. It was really good and interesting. He had an entire display that he was beginning to mold things out of the pure chocolate that the Mayan civilization had made. Also, we were finally able to finalize our plans to our trip to Pisa! On the 17th we are flying into Pisa, Italy and staying there for a night. Then we are taking a train to Cinque Terre where we are going to be walking through the five little cities that they have there. If you have not heard of this place you should Google it. It is really pretty. On a side note, I am having a lot more trouble balancing school and fun here. It is hard to cram an entire semester’s worth of information into six weeks and what makes it harder is trying to balance it in another country where you want to spend your time doing things rather than staying inside and doing homework. The pictures uploaded are from el rio and the one that looks like a castle is something that I saw on my walk back to the dorms.