Today was the second to last day of classes this month!! Tomorrow we have class from 9am-1pm and then we have to take our written test at 2pm. Then on Thursday morning I go in for my oral exam at 9:15 with Caitie as my partner and then we are done and have a four day weekend! I know we are all looking forward to it. Yesterday class was from 9am-2pm and was a little agonizing...it is just so long to be sitting in one place for one class...although you think we would be used to it. Today however was not bad at all. We got done at 1pm today. It went by pretty quickly and we got some homework tonight that is what the test will be like so that was good. I took some sweet color coded notes today with my italian markers so that occupied me.

By the last half an hour of class things got weird. Everyone was just starting to go crazy and couldn't concentrate and Giovanni, our Chilean, took out his camera and started to take a video and some pictures and it was just funny. Thankfully our teacher was cool about it and stopped trying to get us to do an exercise and asked us what we our plans for the evening were. Being the lovely students we are we told her of our study sesh and everyone else said nothing because they needed to study and she told us it was the last night of Carnivale, no parties for anyone? haha....tonight at the Galleria where we go to dance there is a Carnivale party and we all have these free entrance cards but none of us are going...priorities! There was just a parade or a concert outside for the past like half an hour, it was sweet. I love how there is usually always something goin on around here...I will miss that when I return to boring Greenfield...oh well! I will miss a lot of things haha.

Today we got home from school and went to the internet cafe on a search for hotels for Brad, Caitie's boyfriend, when he comes in about two weeks! That will be fun....everyone has people coming to visit soon. Caitie has Brad coming, Minnie's boyfriend is coming very soon, and parents/family of Abbey, Colleen, and Roxy are all coming too before the end of the trip! I'm happy for them. After we are done with the oral exam on Thursday we do not have school again until Tuesday! I love having the 4 day weekends at the end of the month. Colleen and Roxy are going to Ireland for the weekend but I think the rest of us are staying here. I am going to get in contact with Anna Lisa this weekend and try to go and see them and hopefully go to Arezzo with her. Otherwise the rest of us here were thinking of doing a wine tasting in Siena and maybe going to Florence for a day! We will see :)

Right now I am looking out my bedroom window and it is SO sunny yet the rain is pouring down. I need to be on the prowl for a rainbow soon or something!! It's bizarre. I should try to capture it with a picture but I'm sure I probably can't. Anyways. It's so funny how small Siena is. The past week we have been running into so many people we have been meeting from school, when we are out, etc. I love it!

Not too long after we all started going to school here one morning Roxy, Colleen, and Christin were walking to school together because the rest of us had class at 8:30am while everyone else had class at 9am. They were walking down the street and no one was around except for this man and he came over to them, slapped Colleen's butt, she yelled "NO" at him and then he went and full on grabbed Christin's butt. They had thought at the time that something was worng with him mentally and they were just very freaked out and scared at the time...can you blame them? So from then on they started walking to school early with us and they told Elena and she said that if they ever saw him again to call her and tell her. Today after school they were going to the grocery store and Caitie and I were going home so we went our seperate ways. I guess they ended up seeing the guy again and they called Elena who called the police who finally found him and questioned him. Turns out he is 16 and does have a mental disability but they were scared when they saw him again. I guess they were at the train/bus stations and he kept getting on a waiting bus, sitting there for a few minutes, going and sitting on another for a few minutes, etc etc. Apparently he lives in the country outside of Siena. Anyways that was their big news of the day. Otherwise though nothing bad has really happened to anyone. None of us ever walk arond alone so that is good...I never feel unsafe here. Sometimes there are creepers and the guys here are way more blatant and forward but we're immune to it now ;)

Last week one night Abbey and I were in the kitchen eating dinner and our Italian roommate Chiara came out to make her dinner. The three of us talked for like an hour and a half and it was really good bonding with her actually. She is 19, her 20th birthday is on March 6th. It's not that we did not get along with her before or anything but none of us had really spent time with her and just saw her in passing and the language barrier sometimes made us think that she did not like us, hahaha, but now I feel much better and she is really sweet. I swear now that I know her I see and meet so many more women here named Chiara...before I didn't even know one person named Chiara or really think of it when I thought of Italian names.

Caitie and Minnie went to Austria and Slovakia this past weekend! They went to the music museum in Vienna and they said it was incredible. Very interactive and they spent a huge chunk of their Saturday there. Last night Caitie downloaded this CD that they heard there called "Bethoveen Reloaded". It is legit the coolest thing I have ever heard!! I don't know if you can find it on YouTube but if you can you should listen. It is Bethoveen but it's like electronic and has awesome sound effects and beats. I have a friend who has a sound booth/studio at home and makes beats and music and it would be sweet material for that. I just love getting new music and this was just really interesting.

Here goes the bells a-ringing....they are so sporatic here. Another sound I will probably grow to miss. I need to go eat some dinner though and get to studying and doing ny homework. Will write again soon. Still don't have internet at our apartment :( I do not understand how we had it for a week and now it is gone...grr. Oh well! Ciao! xox