I promised you there would be more updates soon, did I not? So, onto the adventure that was Fall Break.

Similar to spring break in the States, Fall Break is a week-long break from classes in Italy that occur the week after midterms. In Italian universities, there are set dates for midterms and every class is required to give one, similar to how many U.S universities (including Seton Hall,) have Finals Week. In Italy, I have found, professors do not seem to give out as much work on a week-to-week basis as in the U.S, instead placing a much higher weight on two grades: the midterm and the final. For a majority of my classes, those are the only grades I will receive for the entre semester, and my final grade depends almost entirely on them. I conferred with a bunch of my fellow students who told me much the same thing. Thus, midterms take on an entirely new (and slightly panic-inducing) level of importance, and, given the amount of studying we do for them, it seems only fair that FUA gave us the week following midterms off. I, at least, desperately needed a brain break.

I heard many epic tales about other students’ breaks, from the amazing (a week-long Safari through South Africa,) to the disastrous, (missing one’s flight home and having to sleep in a Moroccan train station.) Some students, such as my next door neighbors, tried to cram as much travel as humanly possible into their break, traveling to four different countries in eight days, while others (such as one of my flat mates,) decided to stay in Florence, choosing to relax and explore all the beauties Florence and the nearby Italian cities had to offer. My roommate and I chose what I think was a very happy medium, splitting the break in half, spending the first half in Sicily, Italy and the second half in Dublin, Ireland. En route to our destinations, we also got to catch a glimpse of the Italian cities Pisa and Milan. Here’s my roundup of the highlights, (and lowlights, because there were many of those too,):

Getting to Sicily was in a cinch. We took a five euro, hour-long train ride to Pisa, and then a free, five minute shuttle to Galileo Galilee airport in Pisa. Getting to the hostel from the airport, however, was not. We left late on a Thursday night after we had finished our final midterms, and arrived in Palermo, Sicily completely exhausted only to discover we had forgotten to bring our confirmation for the hostel, so we had absolutely no idea where we were going. A quick call to the U.S allowed us to figure out where we were going and we took a (rather expensive) taxi ride to the hostel.
A Casa di Amici hostel/Bed-and-Breakfast is a cute, small hostel with an artsy sort of vibe that is run by Claudia Vitale and a couple of young women (who I believe are sisters.) They were super sweet, although only Claudia really knew how to speak English, and since it was so small, there was not a 24/7 reception. When we first arrived we had to ring the doorbell repeatedly and wait outside for a while before we finally found a number to call to be let in since we got there so late. Claudia and the girls, however, were exceedingly welcome and willing to do just about anything to make sure we were comfortable.
At the hostel, there was quite a wide range of people, many of whom, I was surprised to find, were a good deal older. My roommate and I befriended an older German couple, an Australian who had just graduated from university, and a German med student. Most of the people we met were awesome, but we also met one Russian kid who seemed to be about our age that was a little on the creepy side and made blatantly racist remarks to us and made us want to lock the door behind us when we finally escaped his company.
Palermo, Sicily is a much bigger city than Florence, much harder to navigate and much more spread out (making it difficult to walk everywhere like we do in Florence.) A combination of a badly scaled map and two bad navigators led to a lot of time spent getting completely lost. However, everywhere my roommate and I went, we met
A Casa Di Amici-Female 4-Person Dorm. Super Cute

people willing to help us, whether they spoke English or not.
The Sicilian dialect is entirely different from the Florentine one, and my roommate and I could not understand the Sicilians at all. It was quite difficult.
We took the bus out to Salame (a very small city outside of Palermo in Sicily,) to see some of my roommate’s distant relatives. Getting there was quite frustrating, (in Palermo they sell bus tickets in coffee shops, obviously we should have known, and then we got off at the wrong stop and had to be picked up by one of my roommate’s cousins,) and being there was pretty difficult as well. None of them spoke English, which made things quite interesting, but I was still struck by their dedication to family. Even though we had never met (and I wasn’t even family,) they welcomed us to their home with open arms, accepted us unconditionally, stuffed us full of amazing Sicilian food, and invited us to stay the night at their home. One of the things that struck me was the importance put on family, rather than work. They all came home from work at around 1 pm on a Monday afternoon and gathered at one home to eat a four-course lunch, which lasted around two and a half hours before they headed back to work. They also had no qualms about taking frequent breaks from work to show us around Salame or to drop us back off at the bus station the next day. The whole family ate all of their meals together, and everyone moved in and out of each other’s houses without even knocking several times throughout the day just to drop in and chat or show off a recent purchase. Going to Salame to meet my roommate’s relatives was one of the most interesting and incredible experiences thus far in Italy, and I think I have learned the most about Italy from my two-day trip.