On Tuesday, we had a welcoming meeting at the hotel
and received a huge packet of helpful information such as maps, etc. We also
found out where we would be living and then we were able to move in! I'm living in a newly
remodeled apartment with four other girls in the downtown district (YAY! More
on that later.)
Today we were told to meet at the school at 10am for an orientation. At the welcoming meeting yesterday at the hotel, we each received a detailed map of the city with all the metro/train stops circled and with our school circled in red. We just had to get to school by 10am using our map, seems easy enough right? Not so, my friends. Living downtown in a huge city, is like, living DOWNTOWN... busy streets, street signs posted randomly on buildings, tiny fiat cars buzzing past you when take a step off the curb, vespas on the sidewalks (just kidding). It was just overwhelming. Luckily we had friends living directly next to us, so we set off in a big group (about 8 of us) to find the school. Our first objective was to find the Metro. After walking to the main square, we saw a red 'M', and followed it to stairs that led to underground. That for SURE had to be the Metro, obviously!
Today we were told to meet at the school at 10am for an orientation. At the welcoming meeting yesterday at the hotel, we each received a detailed map of the city with all the metro/train stops circled and with our school circled in red. We just had to get to school by 10am using our map, seems easy enough right? Not so, my friends. Living downtown in a huge city, is like, living DOWNTOWN... busy streets, street signs posted randomly on buildings, tiny fiat cars buzzing past you when take a step off the curb, vespas on the sidewalks (just kidding). It was just overwhelming. Luckily we had friends living directly next to us, so we set off in a big group (about 8 of us) to find the school. Our first objective was to find the Metro. After walking to the main square, we saw a red 'M', and followed it to stairs that led to underground. That for SURE had to be the Metro, obviously!
Turns out what we thought was the Metro was actually just the underground part of the train.. talk about super confusing! Once we were about 20 minutes into our train ride, we noticed we were on the wrong form of transportation. We whipped out our maps and got off at the station appearing closest to our school, and then began to walk.
Feeling frazzled & late
About 15 minutes into our walk to school, we realized the roads we were on were not anywhere on our map. We decided to attempt to use the bus system, and bus 18 looked like it would drop us off close enough! So we hopped on the first bus 18 we saw (no tickets in hand), and realized quickly we were going the wrong direction. Whoops. Flying off that bus as quickly as possible, we decided to call the program staff to let them know we were lost, not just sleeping in. They also had no clue where we were, so we just continued walking around (for two hours) until we found the correct bus!
On the upside, we had a lovely time seeing more of Turin! :-)
Cars park both directions, no big deal.
xo,
Lauren
