Centro Mercale e Supermercato

It might be the lack of sleep (been staying up far too late for my reputation), but today has been a tad on the frustrating side. Atleast the morning. We had to be up at the campus at 9am for immigration. My roommates and I were going to try and get up there early so we could be in and out quickly. We were super slow this morning (too many late nights)so we got to the bus stop at about 8:20 and at 8:55 the bus finally came and about 60 NYU students squeezed onto it. Of course, NYU decided to have all 400+ of us come up at once just so we could wait for two hours for our number to be called. Then when our number was called we had to wait until it was called again. Then the actual immigration process took less than one minute. VERY frustrating. It all just seemed very illogical. Following that ordeal we had to wait for the bus for 40 minutes to pick us back up and bring us downtown. It's going to be very interesting to figure out the bus schedule for classes...
Everything picked up when we finally got some food (mozzerella e pomodoro panino)and then we walked to the Mercato Centrale to check out the food! It was so cool to see all the fresh formaggi, carni, verdure, frutte, paste...the colors were vibrant and the smells strong. I loved seeing all of it but then I was quickly intimidated with the prospect of learning how to cook with all of it. I didn't buy anything and decided that I should stick to a typical supermercato for food shopping. I went to one right down the street from my apartment and found some food that I might be able to cook with: pasta, frozen veggies and pasta sauce. I also bought a bottle of vino rosso for 1.81 euros. I have a feeling it's not going to be too bad...I'm in Italy right?
When I went to pay the women at the cash register accidently charged me 198 euro instead of 19.80 euros on my credit card! She only spoke italian so I didn't understand what was going on at first, but she showed me the credit card receipt and I finally got it. Of course I don't know how to say refund in Italian so the manager came over and apologized saying she would give me the difference in cash. She said it in Italian and I'm so glad I understood it! The two women felt really bad and kept saying: mi dispiace! (i'm sorry!).
Now I'm back in my apartamento, updating my blog and trying to mentally prepare myself for taking another cold shower...they can't fix anything on weekends so I have a few more days of this...tonight will be another meal out, last one until classes start on monday!