Buongiorno,

It's been another great week and also a busy one.  I should really try to blog more in between so I don't have to type out these huge blogs, but I always forget.  My week was good, my classes are starting to get more serious and I have an italian test next week which I'm pretty nervous about since we learned so much in just a few weeks.  I'm going to have a busy upcoming week.  I officially signed up for soccer and we have our first practice game this wednesday.  I also have signed up to volunteer helping at an elementary school and we meet with the principal on Wednesday. It should only be a few hours a week so I'm looking forward to it.  This past week I officially booked my flight to Barcelona! I should be booking my hostel soon.  My friend Colleen and I are going March 14-17.

This week was fun! Tuesday my friends and I went out to Tijuana, which is a mexican place. They're pretty rare here in Italy but it was so awesome.  We got nachos, toastadas, and margaritas.  Tacos is my favorite meal so I was really happy.  We will definitely be going back.  Also on Tuesday, we went to the Uffizi Museum, which was cool.  There were a ton of busts and paintings. On Wednesday, my story of the city class went on a really cool historic tour of the city.  We saw exactly where the city of Florence was during the Roman Empire. It is so small to what the city is now.  We saw the rounded walls of where the coliseum once stood, which is now houses. We saw where the center of town used to be.  We were able to see the 1966 flood marks on the buildings, and they were way over one story high.  I really enjoy that class.  On thursday, we tried to go to Cappelle di Medici, which is the Medici's tombs, but it was closed. We ended up just walking around and shopping.

On Friday, we just hung out around during the day.  We went to the diner and it was awesome. It's an American diner so they had pancakes and breakfast sandwiches and burgers.  I got chocolate chip pancakes and I was so happy.  Later around 6:30, we got all dressed up and went out to the restaurant literally across the street.  It was really nice and delicious.  We had a really great dinner.  I got spicy spaghetti and it was way spicier than I imagined it.  We then went to the opera around 8!!! It was so fun to get dressed up and go out to something so formal.  The only problem was that we all bought new heels and they were very cute, but it was awful walking in them on cobblestones.  The opera was good, the singers were so talented.  It was just hard to pay attention to a 4 and a half hour opera when it's all in Italian.  They had the subtitles projected on top of the stage, so I could look at it and identify about one word in each line, but that wasn't very helpful.  The opera was called Don Giovani, and I looked at the wikipedia summary during intermission to get to know more about the storyline.  It was truly exhausting and we came back and immediately went to sleep.

On Saturday, we went to Venice.  I was so excited to see Venice.  We booked our transportation with this one company since it was cheaper than doing it on our own.  It took about three hours to get there and when we got there the group leaders weren't very helpful.  We took a water taxi to San Marco, which was where carnivale was happening.  Although, mostly everything was cancelled since it rained the entire day, was freezing, and incredibly windy.  We all knew it was going to be miserable so we decided to make the best out of it. When we got there we got lunch with a big group of us, which was fun.  We warmed up and then shopped around for a while, and it was cool because they have so much Murano glass there.  Murano is another island and it's famous for the glass making there.  We then went in and got "dinner" somewhere.  And by dinner, I just mean we got bruschetta and I got hot chocolate, which was literally just melted chocolate.  It was so thick, but it was good.  We were told that the leaders would be back by 7 and they made it sound that whoever got on the first bus would leave first once it filled.  Instead, that didn't happen and we sat on the bus for an hour waiting for everyone to get back.  The ride back took about 4 hours because it rained, and snowed pretty hard.  The bus was blowing air conditioning, so it was freezing, and at some point the ceiling was leaking.  It was not the best trip, and we won't be booking with that company again.

Today, we are going to the diner again! I have a lot of work to do and then we are going to watch the superbowl tonight!  We had to reserve tickets since so many people like to go see it.  It makes sense because there are so many students here.

Upcoming Plans:

This weekend (Feb 7-10): INTERLAKEN! I'm so excited, but I need to figure out if I can rent everything I need there.

Next weekend (Feb 15-17): Paris!!! I can't believe it's so soon.  We need to start looking up the places we want to go!

Feb 22-24:  This is the weekend before midterms!! I will most likely be studying but we were also thinking about taking a day trip to Pisa and/or Lucca.

I can't believe the weekend after my parents will be here!!! I'm so excited! I've started writing out places to take them and everything.  Time is flying by here.

Ciao Ciao Ciaoooo,
Katie