Bologna, Italy!

My attempt at a gardening blog is going to take a 9 month hiatus while I study at Johns Hopkins Bologna Campus. We officially arrived on Wednesday, August 25th. After three days in town, we have an apartment (sans A/C), found a few plants for the balconies, tried our hand at shopping for groceries, and will hopefully have internet hooked up by the end of next week. Foodwise, we have tried a pizzeria (small pizza + free soda for 5 euro - not bad), an 'appetizer buffet' at a bar (pay for a drink and eat all you want from the app buffet), an Italian restaurant, and some gelato, of course. We haven't quite found the best places to eat yet, but hopefully will soon. The lack of A/C has been less than fun. We were psyched to see the apartment had a fan, then found out it was broken. Bought another fan from the hardware store (with lots of pointing and gesturing), which proceeded to stop working in the middle of the night. *sigh* We're on fan number three now and really hoping it's going to stick with us for the long haul. Italian lessons start on Monday - hooray! Hopefully the days of sporting the deer in headlights look when anyone talks to me will be over soon. More to come soon.