Ciao.

Well, I made it through the first week. It seems funny that it's only been a week since I got to Perugia, since it seems like I've been here for a long time already. But it's also funny that I left home almost a month ago, since it seems like I just left yesterday. This time thing is really weirding me out.

Anyway, we've been settling in pretty well. I've gotten to know Perugia a little bit better, and each day it gets a little bit less intimidating. I don't know if any of you have seen that 1960s Romeo and Juliet production, or if it's just because I'm an English major, but it looks pretty much exactly like Verona in that movie. The center of town here is a giant building with huge griffon statues coming out of it, and then a huge fountain with statues. The main street is full of shops and small restaurants, and the streets are winding and dark and made of cobblestones - they look like tunnels.

The thing about Italy is that everything - everything - revolves around food here. If you look in a guidebook about Perugia, all it talks about is the pastries and the chocolate (Perugina, the company that makes Bacci balls, is here). I have been eating a LOT of food - we found the most amazing gelato place ever, and the most amazing gelato flavor (mint and cream) even though they are all really good. I'm becoming addicted to coffee, which is a problem, but all of the chocolate and bad things I've been eating are sort of counteracted by the fact that I've been eating healthier at home - just yogurt and vegetables and stuff. Who knows. I'm still the best eater out of everyone here, though - I think thanks to Vicky, who made me eat slow when we were in Greece and now I am so good at eating slow that I can eat a LOT without getting full. For example: at home, I don't really like pizza much, and the most I'll eat is two slices. In Italy, I have put away an ENTIRE pizza by myself more than once, and still had room to eat more. Granted that in Italy, eating an entire pizza is normal, because pizza is much less greasy and more like just bread with cheese and vegetables, but still. All the other people on our trip can do half at most, even the boys. So ha.

Aside from my, um, achievements in digestion, I am getting to like the people in Perugia more too. At first I thought they were all scary, but it turns out that if you really watch them, they are like Americans, just more so of everything. For example, they get much more overemotional and annoyed if you bother them, but they can also be much nicer and go a lot farther out of their way to help you. A lot of students have complained that Italian merchants try to give you back less change than you deserve, but a lot of others have been walked home by bartenders when they've had too much to drink, or otherwise helped. They are more fashionable, more overemotional, more rude, but also have more of some good traits. Also, they all have dogs, which is weird.

So I guess that's all the analysis I need to do for today, huh?

We are having a crazy weekend. We couldn't decide whether to go to Rome or Florence, or save money, so we decided to do all of those things at once. Rome is having a festival called the Notte Bianco, The White Night, tonight, where there are shows and performances and fireworks and everything - museums, stores, restaurants - are open all night and free. So, we went to Florence yesterday for the day, came back at night, and tonight we are leaving for Rome, getting there at 8pm, staying up and going to the festival all night so we don't have to pay for a hostel, and coming back at 7 tomorrow morning.

Florence was awesome, awesome, awesome. I went a couple of weeks ago for the day with Vicky, and it was awesome then too, but I was glad to go again and see some different things. Unfortunately, the entire point of the trip was for me to go shopping, since I have no clothes, and the only thing I bought was a scarf, which really doesn't help anything. But it was awesome. Ten of us left at about 8am, took a two hour train ride there, and then shopped for a while in the markets. We saw a couple of famous piazzas with statues, saw the inside of the church attached to the duomo, which is amazing, and then went to the Ponte Vecchio, that famous bridge. Then we got sort of overwhelmed and went out for lunch, during which I ate my entire pizza, some of everyone else's, and then a gelato. I honestly don't understand. Afterwards, we went to the Accademia and saw Michelangelo's David.

I thought that in Italy, I wouldn't enjoy seeing the most famous statues, standing in line, waiting in crowds. I thought I would enjoy the less famous things more. But all the hype about the David is absolutely justifiable. It is absolutely perfect. We read some things about how the hands on the statue are bigger to signify that David is still an awkward teenager growing into his body, and the effect really works. The body of the statue is just this perfect representation of man - the face looks alive, everything looks real, and the statue is actually a lot bigger in real life than you'd think it would be. I would probably only come halfway up its leg if I was next to it. There was a lot of amazing sculpture in the Accademia, a lot of beautiful things, this other statue The Rape of the Sabines that was pretty disturbingly real. But nothing like the David. I didn't try to sneak a picture of him, like I did in the Sistine Chapel, since there were guards everywhere. But whatever, it was amazing. Then my roommate Jess convinced us all to climb the bell tower near the Duomo, which was ridiculous because it involved climbing 440 winding, dark stone stairs, and we were all yelling and complaining, but then at the top it was this huge high view of all of Florence in the sunset. After my initial five minutes of whimpering and clinging to the wall, I actually started looking, and it was amazing. Jess wrote our initials on the wall on top, which will probably wash away, and we looked for a few more minutes and then took the train home. It was a perfect day. Of course, we got stranded at the train station at 11pm, and had to take a bunch of weird buses and thought that we were lost. But we eventually got home. Lesson learned - learn the bus schedule. I am really tired today, but I've got to wake up and go to Rome in an hour. Ahh!

So anyway, it's been a fun weekend so far. Next weekend we will hopefully get to Cinque Terre, some fishing towns in northern Italy that are supposed to be really nice. Classes start on Monday too - eek. I have the BEST SCHEDULE EVER though - my classes don't start until 11. Awesome.

Love you all! Talk to you soon.