I am officially done with one month of classes in Italia! The classes go by month here and on Wednesday of last week I took the written final exam and on Thursday morning we had the oral final exam. I got a 24/25 on the written final exam and a 30/30 on the oral exam!! I am proud. I loved my teacher, it was sad to leave him. His name is Maurizio and he’s a good teacher and kept me laughing all the time. We had a few papers throughout the month and I got “Brava” on them so I am pleased with that class! It is hard to believe it is already February right now! Tomorrow on Tuesday we start new classes, I do not know who my teacher will be yet. We will be taking both a language class and I think possibly a culture class as well.

This weekend four of the girls on our trip went to Paris! They loved it but said it was extremely cold. Probably like being back home at Umass...we have been so lucky with weather! I look at people’s pictures online and see snow banks and ice and feel so bad but so lucky to be missing at least one winter in Massachusetts haha. Anyways, while those girls were gone Abbey, Minnie, Katlyn, and I took a day trip on Friday to Assisi! The bus took about 2 hours to get there but it was a nice drive, we went through Perugia and then ended in Assisi. It is really beautiful and sits on a hill as you drive up and I couldn’t wait to actually get there.

We got there and Katlyn had to use an atm machine so we waited for her…all of a sudden the screen stops and it says “Your card has been retained” and that’s it. LUCKILY this atm was attached to a bank so she went inside and talked to the guy and got her card back, I felt so bad for her. The door to get inside the bank was pretty crazy though! It was like a time transporter or something, you had to press a button and the door to the capsule opened, then it closed, then the door to the inside opened and she could get out inside the bank. It reminded me of something that belonged to NASA, strange. After we sorted that mess out we headed to use a bathroom and get a bite to eat. We went to this bar and the owner, Angelo, was talking to us all in Italian and it was really cute! After that we went to S. Francesco’s and walked around inside and took pictures. It was really beautiful. When you walk outside from the top part you get an amazing view and we had gorgeous weather so I could not have asked for anything better. Once we hung out there for a bit and took pictures we started walking around some more. Assisi is a very quiet place, it is very spiritual. We found the Temple of Minerva and wanted to go inside. From the outside it does not look like anything special but when you walk in those doors to that small church it is gorgeous!! We couldn’t believe it. There was gold trim everywhere, balconies around the corners, and a really beautiful altar with columns. We went into some shops and walked around and then we had to go find a place to buy a bus ticket back to Siena. We don’t know why we did not get round trip tickets before we left, that is a must for all trips from now on!! We got sent to a few random shops and no one could help us out, but finally we found this travel agency and the woman was a complete doll. She called in the tickets for us and gave us all the information we needed. What a relief that was. We had 40 minutes to spare before our bus came so we went back to St. Francis’ and relaxed and enjoyed the view yet again before heading on our bus back to Siena. We got home and just took it easy because it was already about 8:30pm.

The rest of the weekend I spent basically with my roommate Abbey. We hung out around our apartment, read, we went to see the Duomo in Siena which is stunning!! We get in for free with our student ID cards and I know for sure I will be going back there often. It is very gothic and huge and I need to go take more pictures on a day with more sun; pictures with flash are not allowed and Saturday was not the brightest of all days. Saturday afternoon we met up with Elena and a few of her friends and we met a very sweet girl from Norway named Ida! She did the Siena program last year and is here again. She is dating someone from UMass who did the program last year, Andres. I actually just met him before I came to Siena. I was in the library at school with Alessia and we ran into him and he showed me all of his pictures and told me how much I was going to love it. (He was right!) So that was interesting to meet her…we went to a nice dinner with all of them and a few people from my program. Sunday we just went out for coffee with Ida and did some grocery shopping and before Abbey and I knew it our roommates were home from Paris! It was funny how excited we were to have them back, we missed them! They had some stories to tell which I loved and it seemed like they had a great time. It got pretty quiet with them gone so now our little old family is back together haha. I also went to the Fortress to jog/walk! I am starting to get into a routine going there so I’m pleased about that. The Fortress is about a 5 minutes walk or so from where I live and is absolutely gorgeous. The view from the top where there are paths to walk, a little playground, etc is to..die..for! If only everyone could go there they might not mind working out!

We had today off because it is a new month so new students to our school can take their placement tests and oral placement tests. Tomorrow we have class at 2pm but we do not know who our teacher is yet or what level we are in. Things here in Italy are pretty disorganized when it comes to this stuff. Oh well, time will tell! I’m going to go for now but hope everyone is well. Love you all.