If you're moving to a foreign country, do not do the following (trust me).

Lesson number 1: Do not move to another country unable to speak their language and think you can find somewhere to live within a week - just don't, because you can't...

After arriving into Milan we dropped our stuff off at the hostel which was to be our home for the next week and went out exploring and to spend some euros on some good Italian food and wine. Be-Bop was the place, the best pizza I've ever had!
The restaurants here all look incredibly average from the outside (and sometimes inside) but the focus is in the food. I love that they don't feel the need to over-do their appearance to draw people in, they thrive from word of mouth.

For the rest of the week we looked steadily for somewhere to live whilst enjoying copious amounts of cheap wine and pasta. We did come across a few hiccups along the way - believe it or not, the supermarket we found sold only corked bottles of wine but no corkscrew! Not one! using the creative minds we have, we found other ways to get the bottles open. For safety reasons I wouldn't advise our technique, however, lets just say it's a two man job but with a meat prong on a knife, anything is possible!

After a couple of days we were dying to get out of the hostel.. 3 girls, 1 shower, 1 mirror, in 1 room is a lot to deal with! By this point we had had our first day at our new university NABA and used the amazing team at student services to find a new apartment. I honestly don't know where would have ended up without them! - You see when you live in England and you're used to efficiency, finding an apartment in a week sounds like a plausible idea. However, for one we weren't in England, and two, we didn't speak one useful word of Italian! (apart from 'vino').
It was now Wednesday and we were due to move out of the hostel on Thursday, luckily we found a four bed apartment just a five minute walk from university and everything we could possibly need surrounding for a decent price and moved in the next day - somebody must have been watching over us!

Moral of the story - do not expect anything from the Italians at a speedy pase. Or at all really.
I'm still deciding whether or not I admire their lack of enthusiasm for anything other than time off.