Hi, Buon Ringraziamente! (that means Happy Thanksgiving...if I remember right.) Today is a good day. They started to put up the Christmas lights that hang all over the streets here. Word on the street is that there's going to be a giant Christmas tree going up in Piazza XXIV Novembre, our main square, too. I love, love, love Christmas decorations. Also, there is this woodsmoke hanging in the air, which is most likely due to some natural disaster, but feels pret...

BUONAGIORNATA. So my classes all got cancelled today for no reason, so that's great. The only class I had was Italian. My Italian teacher yelled at us for a half hour about how she was disappointed in us because we never put in any effort. Then she said, Jess, what is the answer to number one on the homework? And, obviously, I hadn't done it. Luckily, I am a good faker. I feel like I am the only one here who isn't doing homework all the time. As a matter of fa...

I LOVE AMSTERDAM. I'm serious. It was the greatest city ever. NO, not because of DRUGS. It's because everyone there is friendly, and it's gorgeous, and there are canals and tall skinny houses and bicycles everywhere. Every restaurant and coffeeshop is cool and ridiculously decorated - fishtanks, walls painted like a jungle, live music and everyone gets up and dances. Every shop has hidden corners full of crazy old records and books and vintage clothes. Flower ma...

Perugia has a lot of...characters. There are the nice old men who work at the Parma store, who yell out "Ciao!" in the mornings when we walk by. There is the guy at the coffee shop who memorizes my order and calls me "friend." There is the woman who plays the same five-note song on her flute all day, every day, while her pierced, blue-haired boyfriend begs us for money. If she stops playing that song, the five dogs that sit at her feet all at...

Heyyyyyy! Whoa, I haven't actually written in this in a really long time. Let me see if I can think of everything that happened. Troy came to visit. It was amazing. He took a FIFTEEN HOUR TRAIN here and back from Paris. We ate tons (Indian food unlimited buffet...and beer...yes???), we went to the chocolate festival, there were like thousands of people in the streets. There were chocolate carving festivals, people were like rioting over free chocolate, there we...