First Weekend!

On Saturday the school split us up into four different excursions around the local area.  I got to go to Bellinzona to see castles along with my roommate and another Cal Poly student.  We took a train from Lugano to Bellinzona, I just love the train! We hiked up to two castles with gorgeous views! The weather was a lot cooler, which was so nice.  Afterwards we hiked back into town and had my first gelato of the trip, melon, delicious! Then we headed back to Lugano and had dinner with our orientation group at a great pizza place right on the lake.  After dinner we got a drink and then headed to the local concert called "Blues to Bop".  It was fun and interesting to see all the locals out!

On Sunday we did a day trip to a place called Valle Verzasca. I absolutely loved it! We took a bus up to a beautiful valley with the alps on all sides of us.  The bus drove us about 45 minutes up the valley where we stopped at an adorable little town and had lunch by the river.  Then we hiked 10 minutes to a waterfall.  It was absolutely freezing, I had my feet in the glacier water for 1 minute and it was painful, but some people actually swam! It is a homey feeling for me to be surrounded by lots of trees and beautiful mountains.  I realized that I am going to try to visit as many places in the alps as possible in the next 4 months. 

After the waterfall, we hiked back to the buses and took them 30 minutes down the valley to a swimming hole where people jumped off the rocks and it was a tad bit warmer.  I actually went in for like 30 seconds! The water was so soft and refreshing.  We hung out there for a couple hours and headed back to Lugano.  It was my favorite day so far!

Tomorrow I start classes, I am really interested to see what they are like.  Are they hard? Easy? It will be interesting to be on a semester system, seems like I will have much more time to study because my longest class is a hour and fifteen minutes and usually my shortest class at Cal Poly is 2 hours!

Well, I'm going to get some sleep so I can be up bright and early to walk up the hill for my first class at 8:30am. Yay for school again! 

XOXO