Orientation Italian-Style

A short stack of pancakes, ham and eggs, a glass of milk and a glass of orange juice for Vitamin C...that's what's for breakfast. But not in Italy. Orientation for the Pantheon Institute started today, appropriately, with colazione all'italiana, Italian breakfast. No ham, no eggs, no pancakes, though the milk was piping hot and foamed to perfection in all the cappuccinos and caffe lattes. And students were able to try cornetti (croissant) filled with fruit or cream or even white chocolate.
After the breakfast "lesson," Program Coordinator Jesse Smeal and student services coordinator Zachary Nowak went through all the must-knows for Orientation Spring 2009. This included discussions of safety, of academic policy, of housing dos and donts, and about living in and loving Rome. The afternoon was filled with a housing workshop, cell phone purchases (Parents: Remember we're six hours ahead of EST), and a travel class. And just to wrap it up, famous Roman tourguide Nicoletta Messina took students on a tour of Rome's highlights, both to orient them and to show them the sites. Rome for a semester, four months in Italy. Learn, and carpe diem!

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." — Mark Twain

"All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware." — Martin Buber

"Two roads diverged in a wood and I – I took the one less traveled by." — Robert Frost