Davincci Low Ropes Course

So today my group, the red group, had to do the Davincci Low Ropes Course. I honestly don't know why they call it a low ropes course...it involved no ropes. We began at 9 and ended around 4:15...with an hour for lunch. It was really cold this morning...not as cold as what some of you back home are dealing with but cold nonetheless. So we did our activities indoors in the gym across the street. You have to understand that when I say across the street, it is really cool. There is a tunnel that takes you from the campus side where the classrooms are to the sports center on the other side. Or Centro Sportivo. We had to share the gym for a good part of the day with the private Italian students. It was very loud. Our instructors were from Slovania. They were funny. Very intense but they had a good sense of humor. It was just a nice way to break the week up.

First we ran a couple laps and the stretched for a while. Our first exercise was called "willow in the wind." Basically we were in like groups of 12 and one person had to stand in the center. They had to be as stiff as board and trust the people that were around them to move them around the circle. We did it once when the people were in a close circle and then they moved outward some and you had to do it again. This was just the beginning though for our tasks that lied ahead...little did we know. Then we had to start this exercise where you sat down, toe to toe with someone, and you had to hold onto eachother and lift up and the same time. You had to do this successfully three times and then you had to add people. Eventually we made it up to 25 people. Our toes were in a circle and we were holding onto each other and there were people lifting from the outside. It was so hard...I got elbowed in the eye at one point. Won't be surprised if it is black in the morning because it hurts. Then we had the trust fall...you all know what that is. Was not excited about that at all but I did it.

Then we had three obstacles that every group had to complete. First one for my group was the climbing wall. Basically, a 12 ft. wooden wall...nothing to hold onto. We had to figure out how to get all 12 of us over. The rules were only once the first 3 people were up they could stay but only 3 people could be at the top at once. Once you had gone over the wall you couldn't help get the people up...you could only spot them...and only the last person could use the rope to get over the wall. It was hard. My group made it all up and over in 3 minutes 21 seconds. Then we had an exercise with 2 platforms that we all had to stand on one and we had to get to the other side without touching the "lava" (funny story, Cody had mentioned doing activities with "lava" and he hates them...when they told us to pretend it was lava, I just busted out laughing)...Anyways, we did this in 29 seconds. The last obstacle was like this spiderweb type thing. There were 12 spaces in the spider web. Once someone went through one space you could no longer use that space. I literally was lifted and carried through my space because it was at the top. You couldn't touch the ropes more than once or you had to start over. We did this exercise in 1 minute 15 seconds.

The day ended with what you could basically call crowd surfing. We stood in 2 lines across the gym and we would lift someone up at one end over everyone's heads and just like conveyer belt them down the line. Once you reached the opposite line you did a back flip down to the floor.

Needless to say, I'm extremely sore at the moment. I am super tired and will probably crash in the next little bit. We learned a lot though from all of this. We learned the importance of trust and communication which was the point of every exercise that they made us do today. All in all, it really was fun but 'm just exhausted. Ciao for now!

Character Strength

Ciao!
So today I started CAP. My day consisted of 4 blocks of 2 hours sessions. First, I had survival Italian I. Then I went into the basic beliefts seminar. After that, I had lunch and a break and then I went into he travel orientation. And finally, I ended the day with the character strength seminar which is what I'm going to kind of share.

Before I left for Italy, I had to take a 240 question survey online that would tell your character strengths. It listed your top 24 strengths. In the seminar today we were asked to dig deeper into ourselves to see how, in our every day lives, we use the top five. We were asked to think about how our main strengths can help us decide what to do with our future careers and so forth. My list going from my strongest character strength to the "weakest" strength is this:

1. spirituality, sense of purpose
2. capacity to love and be loved
3. love of learning
4. gratitude
5. kindness and generosity
6. curiosity and interest in the world
7.appreciation of beauty and excellence
8. fairness, equity, and justice
9. social intelligence
10. honesty, authenticity, and genuiness
11. industry, diligence, and perseverance
12. leadership
13.caution, prudence, and discretion
14. humor and playfulness
15. citizenship, teamwork, and loyalty
16. self-control and self-regulation
17. zest, enthusiasm, and energy
18. forgiveness and mercy
19. judgment, critical thinking, and open-mindedness
20. creativity, ingenuity, and originality
21. modesty and humility
22. perspective (wisdom)
23. hope, optimism, and future-mindedness
24. bravery and valor...bahaha(figures that's my last one)

Also, I think a lot of you have been wondering about my living situation. Obviously, I live on campus. There are two floors of people in my building and then there is another builidng that has a couple of floors of people as well. Few people have a roommate. I have my own room/bathroom. It is bigger than my dorm back at OSU my first year. The only thing that bothers me is how short the bed is...it doesn't even come up to my knees. Also, because the buildings are old they have stone walls and marble floors. It's pretty and all but it is REALLY loud. You can just hear someone opening their door, loud. So, as you can imagine it's hard to concentrate when you can hear everything everyone is doing.

That's all that is going on at this moment. More later! Ciao

Some of You are Wondering

Ok. So this week was long and I'm glad it's over and done with. The first week is supposed to be the hardest part of the program. My classes are going to be a lot of work but a lot of fun! My schedule is this:

MWF: (all afternoon classes)

Elementary Italian with Professoressa De Nardi (from Italy)

Business Communication with Dr. Bunnell (from Delaware)

TTh:(all morning classes)

Statistics with Dr. Foulds (at 8 a.m...ugh!) (from Brazil)

Media Ethics with Dr. Standish (from Oxford, England)

Half way through the semester the days switch. Like, I will go to my TTh classes on MWF instead...not looking forward to that.

A lot of you want to know about the food here. I have only eaten off of campus once. I had a vegetarian panini. It was really good. The food on campus, I assume, represents what a lot of meals in Italy are like. Breakfast mainly consists of sweet things. No like bacon, sausage and eggs here. They have like sweet rolls, cream filled pastries, cereal, yogurt, lots of different juices and hot chocolate. Lunch and dinner usually have like 2 pastas to choose from (dinner also usually has a soup to choose as well instead of pasta), then there are usually 2 meats to choose from with some vegetables, a salad and water to drink.

I don't have class at all this week. We have our CAP activities all this week. We have been put into groups and will be with them this week. Then I will start my LIFE program on Thursday as well.

We went to Crespano Sunday morning. It is about a km away. So we just walked. They have a market there every Sunday from 9-1. It was HUGE. It was a lot of fun. We just walked around and looked at everything. It reminded me of a flea market back in the states. We ate at a pub in while we were there. There were 7 of us total. Cody, Rachel, Kyle, Jacob, Claire, Matt, and then me. We had a good time. Pictures are above from our adventure.

Hello all! This will just be the beginning of the pictures. Of course, there is a picture of Pooh...he goes everywhere with me! So being half way around the world is no different! Then the other pictures is the view from my room...beautiful, isn't it? I took this picture once the fog had finally gone away and you could actually see the mountains. I plan on posting some videos as well but I accidentally left my cord in Borger, so that will take a while I'm afraid. Hope you enjoy!

The First Week

Buongiorno!
I have finally made it to the destination of Paderno del Grappa, Italy. It was a long, long trip! This week has gone by pretty quickly. Classes here are much different than in the US. My statistics teacher is from Brazil. My Journalism Ethics class is from England. My Italian teacher is from Italy...makes sense. Then my Communication teacher is from Delaware. Adjusting to the time has been difficult. Adjusting to the Italian lifestyle has been even more difficult. The staff here have been great and very helpful.
The getting here from Texas wasn't as hard as I imagined. I met up with three people at DFW and we traveled together. We actually met another guy in DFW who was doing the program as well. So I traveled with Cody, Rachel, and Kyle all rom Tech and the Jacob traveled with us as well, he is from Kansas State. Together we made the trek from DFW to Frankfurt and then from Frankfurt to Venice. The flights were long but smooth. None of us really got any sleep on the plane rides. Our flight was delayed into Venice which was not good because we only had a limited amount of time to get to figure out everything. We had to get our baggage (which luckily it all made it), we had to buy a bus pass to take us to the train station in Venice. Then we had to buy a train ticket and get on a train to Bassano. From Bassono we got on another bus that took us to the school in Paderno. We got here and checked in and then had dinner and a meeting.
Then Tuesday, bright and early, I had a class at 8 a.m. It has just taken some time to get adjusted. More of everything later!