Hey everyone!

Thanks for all the comments - had no idea that this many people were reading this! That's awesome. Hope everything is good at home! I'm working on getting some pictures online but the internet is a little sketchy here (as in, you have to sit out on the sidewalk to get the internet), so hopefully soon.

Perugia, the town I'm in, is really nice. The weather is cool, because it's in the hills. The view is fabulous, and our apartment is down a winding little alley. The key to my apartment is one of those big, old-fashioned ones, almost the size of my hand. Our door has lion heads on it. The apartment is this sort of hilarious mix of romeo-and-juliet-type armoires, gross blankets with weird little angels on them, and 1970s furniture. Our desks are pieces of plywood, and you have to light our stove with matches. It's actually really funny.

I have three roommates. My room-roommate is actually another girl named Jess from Northeastern, which is kind of funny. She's awesome, I got really lucky. I didn't know her before, but she came with four close friends, all of whose faces I kind of know from class or from this student group I'm in, so we've formed this little Boston group along with some other girls. There are 180 of us altogether, the majority being either from Boston, Elon College in North Carolina or U Colorado. Of course, 150 of us are girls and 30 are guys. This, combined with the fact that Italian men are surprisingly creepy and bizarre, makes me think that most of us will remain single until we leave. Which is okay.

We're having intensive Italian language class this week, and we've had a couple of welcome dinners, which was nice. Perugia is really quiet and small and things tend to close early, but the few nights we've gone out have been really fun. But the thing is, we're all sort of having a problem slowing down. There's no internet in our apartments, there are no TVs, not so many books or magazines, and things close early.

Simply put, we're all having problems adjusting.

Don't get me wrong. Italian life agrees with me - I'm the type of person that likes to have long dinners, likes quiet nights better sometimes, nothing too crazy. I don't watch that much TV anyway, and I'm okay with doing nothing a lot of the time and being on my own. But I've been feeling really funny ever since I got here. None of us really know what to make of Italy yet - the people are kind of rude, and we're all a little homesick, so it's been tough. But I can tell that it's only because it's the beginning and, although it might not be what we thought, it's going to work out alright.I think the hardest part is that no one here speaks ANY english, and they all know we're American.

On the upside, we are going to Rome this weekend. I am going to buy new clothes, since I can't figure out how to turn on our washing machine. We just had a really nice roommate dinner.

It's been a long week. It's been a lot harder than I thought it would be, but I think things should get better soon. Also, we have nothing to complain about, because our friend just got appendicitis -eek - in an Italian hospital ahh!

That's it! I'll write something again soon. Happy birthday Mom!! :)