Clouds of Insects

Hello,

Well, I've had my first couple days of class here in Milan. It's difficult to say for sure if this will have been worth it. The first day we spent a lot of time taking photographs which was eye-opening and then worked sort of by committee on some editorial designs, which was frustrating and interesting at the same time. Today we learned about some general advertising concepts, which is probably good since I never did before, and we looked at some Italian design history, and learned about these things called Carrosella which were old commercials from the '50s. They're around 2 minutes long usually, some longer. They are like little tiny movies about nothing and then after for a moment at the end they advertise some random product. Very strange.

Last night I was in the design lab and a couple of people from class invited me to go get some dinner. There was a Columbian guy around 20, a Turkish girl about the same age, and a girl from the south of Spain who's 24. We got a little lost thanks to the Turkish girl, whose name I can only sort of pronounce, something like Teuton but obviously not that. We stopped and had some 2 Euro Coca con ghiaccio (Coke with ice). Bleh. The Columbian guy, Diego, got tired so he went home, and the rest of us found our way to a bar and had a glass of wine. Then we walked down this large street with a canal in the middle, but all the restaurants were pricey, so we found a side street and ate at a cheaper place. The portions were huge but the food was so-so. Nothing to write home about.

Afterwards I waited for the two girls to finish the wine they had gotten and a cloud of mosquitos descended upon us. Milanese mosquitos are giants of the mosquito world, people say they land at Malpensa. There are also so many of them it boggles the mind. You kill them sometimes, if you swat them hard enough, but they keep coming. They even try to bite you through your clothes. Eventually the wine was finished and we left.

Milano looks a lot like a city like New York or any American city in many ways. But one huge difference is at night right after Aperitivo, the Italian happy hour, the streets are absolutely filled with people. Not getting drunk, just going out on their mopeds or their tiny cars to have a gelato or glass of wine and socialize. It's really nice, I wish they'd do it in America.

Well, I need to leave the lab here soon. I'm going to go back to the hotel and some people from our group are going out for Aperitivo and maybe a drink or two early before heading home. Hopefully now updating every day should be simple. I didn't have time to do any new pictures but I'll see what I can do tonight/tomorrow.