Bowdy’s study abroad trip

To start off, after I posted my last blog on Sunday we went on a hike to the top of Urbino where an old fort is located. It’s the prettiest view here. On our walk, we saw a wild pig and stopped to video it. As it kept walking uphill towards us, we just stood there waiting on it to get closer. Long story short, we let it get too close and it started chasing us. It was a massive pig and he still got pretty close to us. It was definitely the highlight of our day! The hike to the top made it worth it. He started chasing us right after I took this video.

Monday was the first day of school. I was actually excited to start so I could get back to work on thesis. Every morning so far we have stopped and gotten espresso and breakfast before class.

We met in our thesis lab at 8 and worked until about noon, then went back to the city to the Mensa (cafeteria) for lunch. It’s about a mile walk from campus to the city (uphill). The cafeteria lunch is pretty good so far, nothing special.

After lunch we went back to the thesis lab and worked until about 5, then did some planning for our free weekend trips until 7 when the Mensa opens back up for dinner.

Tuesday was a long day as well. Pretty much just worked on thesis all day again. I got a picture of a rainbow on the walk back to the city after school all day.

After dinner we went back to the fort to show the class. It was absolutely beautiful.

Wednesday we worked in the thesis lab from 8am until 9, when our class started with all of the UTSA students. That class is from 9am-11am. As you can imagine it’s not fun being in class that long. We had a short meeting after class, got lunch, and went back to do thesis until 6. Nothing but thesis these last 3 days! Our heavy thesis days are Monday-Wednesday and then usually Thursday-Sundays are more relaxed fun/travel days. We have an organic farm tour and wine tasting tomorrow so that will be included on my next blog.

Thursday was our travel day to Urbino. Our meeting spot was back at the airport so we could meet our other classmates and all of the UTSA students. There are about 100 of them here with us and they are all architecture students. From the airport we loaded up on buses and traveled to Urbino, it was about a 4 hour drive.

These were our first views of Urbino upon arrival. It was very surreal once we finally got here, knowing that I will be living here for 3 months. For the rest of the day we got checked into our dorms and ate dinner. I got the ravioli and it was absolutely amazing.

Friday morning we had orientation. They went over all the basics with us of what’s required while we are here. It took a couple of hours. They then showed us the Mensa (dining hall) where we will eat most of our meals. Overall it was decent, but basically just normal dining hall food. Friday night we went to dinner at our favorite restaurant so far called Sazio. We met a waiter there that speaks english and have already developed a friendship with him.

After dinner, we hung out for a while and then walked to campus (20 min walk up hill) to watch Auburn play our first game at 1am. We stayed up the entire night and didn’t get back to our dorms until about 6 am. Watching the sunrise on our walk back to the dorm was awesome, but I couldn’t take a picture because my phone was dead. Blake, Jack and I bought hats and wore them the whole night. We got tons of crazy stares.

As you can imagine, we slept in to about 2 in the afternoon on Saturday afternoon. We hung out in our kitchen pretty much the whole day and watched college game day and played cards. We got pizza and brought it back to the dorms to watch the Alabama football game.

Today we have been working on thesis preparing for our first day of class tomorrow. I am adding some final touch-ups to my 3D model of my building. After today I will be completely done with the model and ready to move on to my project plan. We plan on getting dinner somewhere later and then getting some rest for tomorrow.

That’s it for today. Will update in a couple days! Below are pictures of the views from campus.

Welcome to my first blog post. This one will be very plain and boring compared to future blogs because it’s just about our travel day. We arrived at the ATL airport a couple of hours before our flight to make sure we had enough time to check in and get to our gate. While we were waiting, we all went to the sky club and had some pre-flight food and mimosas. Our plane got delayed for about an hour but other than that everything went smooth. The flight was a little under 9 hours. I slept for maybe 2-3 hours the whole flight. Once we landed in the Rome Fiumicino airport, we got all of our luggage (no lost bags surprisingly) and headed straight to our hotel to check in. Once checked in, we got a cab and went straight for the beach where we ate and hung out the rest of the day. We ended up going to bed early due to being tired from all the travel. Some things I’ve loved so far: random espresso shots throughout the day, and the Carbonara pasta was amazing. We are currently on buses traveling from Rome to Urbino (where we are living for the next 3 months) so I will update later!