London!!! i want to go back!!!

ok soo ive been back for while now but i have been super busy with finishing and studying for finals. ok now for london.... we left right after our history final to go to Pisa. We werent sure if we would be able to make it to Pisa by train because there were strikes going on, but once we got to the train station, there was a train going so we hopped on. Once we got the the airport, we still had a long time before we could check in. We all found a spot to sit and eat our dinner. I still had somewhat of headache from stressing out at this time. After an hour or so of waiting this really big group of kids from london came up and were going to be on the same flight as us. we rushed for the front of the check in line so we wouldnt have to wait for all of them to get checked in. Once we were checked in we had to go up to the boarder control to get our passports stamped. After that it was time to get on the plane. That was the worst plane ride of my life!!! take off to landing was about a little over an hour...and i was in the bathroom puking my guts out for almost the whole ride...we got off the plane and i felt like i was going to faint. it took us about another 20 mins before we could get our passports stamped. after that our taxi driver was waiting for us with our names on a sheet. i was glad to be off the plane, but being in another moving vehical was going to kill me. i had a bag in my hands for the 2 hour drive just in case i ended up getting sick. It was around 2:30 when we got to the house. we couldnt find the house at first bc each house has a name instead of a number. we had to call kaylas aunt and ask her where it was. she was there waiting for us at the house to let us in. where we stayed was the annex which used to be an old storage house until a tree fell on it and they rebuilt it. we slept in pretty late the next day. when we got up we got to meet the family. they have two boys, jamie and john. jamie was about to turn 17 and john is 13. they way they treated each other made me think of my booger little siblings :). later that day we went for a walk out in the country side of London it is really pretty where we were staying. They live up on a hill so you can see the little towns around them. Kaylas aunt and uncle even own goats!!! we got to fed them :). in the annex there were three beds so kayla and bri shared the pullout upstairs i had a mattress in the band room and danielle had a bed in the kitchen. the next day we were off to oxford!! Oxford was to pretty it is made up of a whole bunch of colleges. while we were there we got to eat at this placed called the mission. sooo basically its oxfords version of chipotle! i was soo glad to have mexican food!! after lunch we walked around the town and went into part of one of the old libraries and we even to the bub, Eagle and Child, where CS lewis and Tolkin would meet up and have a drink and talk about there books. I was still feeling pretty bad, but was slowly getting better because of my meds that the DR gave me back home. once we got back to the house we got ready to go have dinner at the local pub. It was just a quick walk through the woods to get there. I had the soup of the day since i was still feeling queasy from earlier that day. After our lovely dinner we headed back to get some sleep because we had to get up early to get to LONDON!! we had purchased tickets to go on a haunted ghost ride for Halloween night. Sunday morning i was feeling awful again. At first i didnt think that i was going to be able to go to London. We went to this little church in town for mass. I had taken more meds and was going to base my decision to go to London on how I felt after mass. It was nice to hear mass in English again :). I was feeling better after mass and knew that while i was in London i would feel better with the fresh air. So after mass we were on our way to London! we had to take a train to get to the main station before getting on the tubes (subway) to get to where we wanted to go. This first day in London was more of a walk around and relax day. we didnt do a whole bunch of touristy stuff. our first stop was Piccadilly Circus. This is Londons downtown New York City, with all of the lights and signs and shows. I really wanted to see a show while we were there but we didnt :(. pretty much the whole day we were walking around London and looking at the sights. the girls wanted to find fish and Chips so they had that for lunch. I was feeling better, but didnt want that grease in my stomach so i had a slice of cheese pizza...:/ yes i know.. i wasnt in italy anymore but it was the only thing that i thought my stomach could handle. after lunch we walked some more and had quite a few impromptu photo shoots with rocks that looked like eggs and in a park. After a while we found the Sherlock Holmes pub, which was right across the street from where our bus was going to start for the haunted bus ride. once we knew where it was we walked around because we still had like 4 hours before our tour started. we ran into an Indian Festival and i even found some Dr. Pepper!!!! i was really happy :D. finally we decided to go back to the pub and wait. Kayla and Bri had some beer while me and danielle passed. During this time bri and i had a really good discussion and she helped me figure out somethings that i needed to work on. finally it was time for the bus ride. I was scared, but we were laughing pretty much the whole time. after that we were all tied and ready to get back. we crashed as soon as we got back to the house after the train ride. ok that was my first 2 days in london i will have more up later, but right now i need to get some sleep. we leave early tomorrow morning for ROME!!! ill post more later! Ciao!!!

so much to catch up on!

ok sooo i havent posted in awhile... so i have a lot to catch up on... so this will probably be split into three parts. ok so part one will be about the week before our italian history and culture final. I was really stressing out over this final. we really hadnt been told what the test was going to be over, except he had given us these packets to read through and a time line that we needed to memorize. The packets were pretty big, and all he had told us to do was read through them... i tend to not do well if I dont know what is actually going to be on the tests. so the test is on friday, and its wednesday and i still havnet gotten the gist of any of the readings that he had given us. I still hadnt even gotten to my notes that i had taken. by thrusday i was falling apart... i had a complete breakdown i was stressed out. i was crying and i was a mess. i have to do good this semester, since everything that i hope to do is based of me doing really well and raising my GPA. i told my parents, and my dad called me on skype to try to help me settle down. we talked for a while and he told me to calm down and to find a quiet place and say a rosary, and just take a little bit to settle down. while i did that he told me that once my brother Aaron got home, that they would go for a walk and say a rosary for me. once they got back they called again to see how i was doing. I had calmed down quite a bit and had a laugh while watching my brother goof off in the back of the video chat, him being the monkey boy that he is. after all of that, i was talking to some of the girls just to see if they had an idea of what they though would be on the test, and they ended up sending me there study guide that they had made. i was really really grateful for that. i pretty much just studied that until i went to bed and through out the next day until the final. we had gotten out of Francesco's class early so i took advantage of that time to pack since i left for London right after the final. once i was all set and packed i studied even more. the final was easier than i expected, but there were some tough questions. i find out in a week or so what our grades were on it. after that test i felt a wave of releif. it was done and over with, and now i could concentrate on having a blast in London and Malta for fall break!!!

Fun, Pranks, Incorruptibles...

this weekend was a blast! It started off right after lunch on thursday. the boys had left for the weekend so the girls who were still here called it an official girls weekend. we decided to take a page out of the step up 2 movie and pull a prank on the boys. so thursday after lunch, we all started looking for good songs to dance too. we found a really neat dance to Ke$ha's Blah Blah Blah. So that night we all were down in the cantina practicing... we have some pretty funny videos. we up up till like 1 in the morning practicing. Friday since we didnt have classes, we decided to get up early and practice again, but that ended up not happening, but we did practice after we decided to change the song, because of the lyrics.. we ended up using TikTok instead which was perfect because the dance that we had already learned fit in! it was decided that joy molli bri and christina would dress up in the guys clothes and dance around. after a few practice rounds we headed down stairs to mess around. we were up till 1:30 when we finally decided to go to bed because some of us decided to get up early the next day. saturday morning i got up early with Christina Molli Joy and Nick to go to a monastary to have mass with some people from the Saint Tomas More Society here in Florence. The priest who said mass was Don Mario. He is a really cool priest from New York. while we were at the Monastary, we go to see an Incorruptible body of Mary Maddalena of Pazzi. she is not fully incorrupt, but it was still pretty cool to see. after that we met up with a group of kids from a college up in Northeast IUsa. I cant remember the name of the school that the group was from. While we were with the group Don Mario got us in to the Baptistry for free! it was really neat and we could just bypass the line too! being friends with a priest has its benefits. after that we went to a nice resturant. we all had a blast. he has some very funny stories, and since he is from new york he is a liitle sore about the rangers beating the yankees to go to the world series. after that we decided to go shopping to look for outfits to wear to the club and for the video since we were going to shoot once we had gotten back to the villa. man those girls when they were in the guys clothes looked like the guys lol. we filmed and had a blast filming. we were going to go out that night but we decided not to. on sunday i went to mass up in town and then came back because i wanted to work on an essay for Francesco for our final. it didnt happen... i could not concentrate. at all. after dinner a bunch of us waited till the boys got back because we wanted to show them the video and listen to what happened this weekend. they ended up getting back a lot later than what we were expecting. they really enjoyed the prank, but there faces were the best when they relized that it was there room and clothes. they said it was a nice ending to a crappy weekend. all in all i think this was one of the dunnest weekends spent here at the villa, and i cant believe we only have one more weekend here before we leave for Rome! Ill be home in 30 days!!!! its crazy!!! Ciao!

oh and here is the link for the video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzBMxk5bhYo

Check it out!

Venice and Padua and Verona...Oh my!

wow what a fun weekend!as the title states, I was in venice (venezia), padua (padova), and Verona with my friends Katie and Rachel. we left early friday morning to catch our train to Venice. we got in around noon, so we decided to walk around and find a place to eat lunch. we ended up at The church of St Mary Magdalene. Lunch was bad as usual. we have only had one really good sack lunch since we have been here. AFter that we decided to go shopping and find out how to get to St Marks Square. Once we got back to the train station, a man told us to just head back the same way that we had come and keep going and follow the signs and we will get there. so we were on our way...even though it took us for ever to get there, Bc we shopped way to much :) we also stopped at a lot of churches. then we finally made it. It was amazing!!!!! There we soo many people but it was amazing still. we wanted to go in the cathedral, but not luggage was allowed. our backpacks were considered luggage. they told us that we could drop them off some where but we were not going to do that at all. so we decided to walk around and take pictures! got some gifts while we walked too. after that we headed out on our way to find san barnaba church. this church was used for the outside of the library in Indiana Jones and the last Crusade. it took forever to get there, and we were lead the wrong way at first but we finally got there. we couldnt go in because there was an exhibit going on so we would have had to pay. :/ after that we were getting tired so we had to find a place to eat. we did and the girls realy wanted fish. me not so much and i was feeling really dehydrated then too. so i just got some pasta carbornara. it was really good and the girls liked there fish soup. we made sure not to get the water this time since rachel and i had learned our lesson a few days before. once we were done we got to take on eof the boat rides back to the train station. That was really cool to see the city at night along the water. once we were back to the station, we had to get our ticket to the other venice station where our hotel was located. we could not for the love of us get a ticket! i mean its only one euro! finally we found the right machine and all i had left was a 20 and 2 50s so i put the 20 in thinking i would get my change back...no i got my ticket and a little slip of paper that said 19 euros on it. i started flipping out. the ticket office were close so i couldnt ask them so i went up to one of the vendors and asked them what it meant. the lady told me i just take it up to the window and they would give me the change. i felt relieved when she told me that. so we got the tickets and were on our way to the hotel. we got lost finding it and had help from some very nice people. one lady even called the hotel for us. once we got the directions it was fairly easy. we got there and passed out, well only for a few mins for me...i had a coughing fit and was dehydrated from the day and ended up getting sick, but i didnt make it to the bathroom :/. after that i passed out. the next morning we got up somewhat early to head out to padua/padova. we went to the ticket line and i got my money back :). it was a 30 min train ride there. once we were there we decided to buy a map just in case. good thing we did we would have gotten very lost later in the day. 1st we decided to go to the convent of the Fransician Elisabethian sisters, which was a convent that a blessed Elisabetta Vedramini on my dads side of the family founded. on our way there we stopped at even more churches. katie brought up the point of saying that she hadnt seen any other church besides a catholic church since we have been here. but we finally made it. we walked in to see if we could tour around, but the sister at the front did not speak english and she couldnt understand our broken italian so we took a few pamphlets and a pin and took some pictures of the sign. next we were on our way to the cathedral of st antony. this is where we would have gotten lost, because we wanted to stop by the church of st benedict on our way there. we made some pit stops to on our way too. we went to this really cool breadstore and we even stopped at a card store where i bought my brothers magic cards :)it was amazing going in there. we even got to see his tomb and walk by and touch it. we knelled down to pray afterword and both rachel and I had this weird feeling after we had gotten up. it was very strange. we even got to see his relics too! after that we headed back to go to verona! once we arrived, we made our way to the wall. we had to pass by a lot of fancy highend stores so we didnt bother looking. once we got there, we took some pictures and wrote our names on the wall. it didnt really live up to the expectations of the movie but it was still cool to go see. all in all we had a good weekend and i am still super sore from carrying a backpack all weekend but we had a blast. we would all like to go back to vencie though :) Ciao!

....forgotten details...

so i just totally remembered that I never talked about going to see the David and the Ufizzi... the David was Awesome.. I cant believe that Michelangelo did that when he was only 23! The only thing that is off about the statue is the hands they are to big compared to the rest of his body. After that we went and saw another one of Michelangelo's creations. On the other side of Florence, there is a Little church that has a statue of the crucifixion. it was beautiful! Michaelangelo sculpted this when he was only 16! its amazing what he did. Just like the David, there is one thing that is different about the statue. His head is significantly bigger than the body of Jesus. It is still an amazing masterpiece. That was 2 weeks ago. The week after that we went to the Ufizzi. It used to be the Medici's palace, but now it is an art gallery. It was really neat to see all of the different paintings from all of the artists dating from fall of rome to after the middle ages.well thats all for now. i will be posting lot tomorrow about my weekend in Venice Padua and Verona. Ciao!

why hello there.....its been awhile...

so yeah i told myself that i was going to post everyday, but nothing really exciting has happened....we finally hit the m=one month mark of being here. time has really flow by. i have been so many places since i have been here its not even funny. so this week we had our last class w Francesco. that was a really fun class and i will miss it. on thursday we only had one class so we were free the whole afternoon. it was mainly a chill day so we just hung out at the villa. friday was free to so i got to sleep in for awhile. after lunch, me and maddie went into town. i got the boots that i wanted so i was happy. after that we played some games and had a barbeque at the villa. the ga,es were fun and entailed a whole bunch of random things. after that we decided to go to the Red Garter which is a karaoke bar. we all had a blast!!! the whole group came except for the girls who were in Ireland. even jen the lady who heads up the program here and our RD pietro! we had a blast. i even went up with 2 other girls jill and fiona and sang your love is my drug by ke$ha! saturday i slept in till 12 i was tired from all the things we had done on friday... everyone else did too. that day i hung out and went shopping with rachel and katie. we also went to mass at 5 at the duomo bc its in english!!!! it was so nice going to mass where i actually understood and could follow along. after that everyone wanted pizza, but me and rachel really wanted to get some alfredo pasta. after walking a good 30 mins we finally found a decent place with pasta alferdo. we decided to split so it would be even cheaper....that is untill we got the bill....they charged us 4 euros for a bottle of water!!!!! had we known we wouldnt have done that :/ oh well we got to have a nice chat and walked around downtown florence at night. once we had gotten back to the villa we decided to stay here and start studying, but a few others went out again. we were tired so we didnt want to go. sunday was truly a lazy sunday again. i got a lot of reading in to help prepare for my history final at the end of the month and i did some italian homework. i had to write to a friend back home in italian. but all in all it was an ok week but deff had a blast with everyone on friday night! ciao!

"mi chiamo Bond....James Bond"

oh my goodness oh my goodness... so much has gone on since i have blogged.ok so thursday we left early in the morning to go to Assisi, the first of our many stops on our trip. The first place we stopped at was outside of Assis. we went into the church that was built around the church that St. Francis built. It was really neat to actually be in the same place that Francis had once been in. After we had toured around, we ate lunch right outside of the cathedral. you know your lunch isnt good when the pigeons wont even eat it. stale bread and meat is not tasty at all. after lunch we walked around in the stands for a while and bought a bunch of small gifts. one has to get a rosewood rosary while they are in Assisi. next we were on our way to Medieval Assisi. we stopped out the outskirts to take pictures. The city is huge! Once we were actually in Assisi, we went to the cathedral of St francis. while we were there we got to go down into the crypt and saw the tomb of St. Francis. it was a really cool experience. there are also 5 other tombs in the crypt. 4 of which are Francis's best friends, and loyal followers, as well as one women who we believe was the last person that Francis was in contact with before he died. from the catherdal, we walked up and up and up to a higher part of the city to see the church of st. claire. while we were there we also go to see where she was buried. in the crypt, they had some relics, one of which was he shoe of St. Francis. This shoe was the shoe that he was wearing when he received the stigmata. Now Claires bone are in a maniquin, that is wearing that habit that the poor claires wear now. FAter that we had like 2 hours of free time, so we decide to walk around. while we were walking, we found this little store that was selling soccer jerseys for 5 and 10 euros, so we decided to get some. i ended up getting a De Rossi Italy jersey. after that we headed to the hotel for dinner. Hotel Sacro Cuore. This place was beautiful! the hotel over looked the city off of a side of a mountain. once we got there we had an hour before dinner, so we decided to watch some tv.... of course, the only language that they have is ....dun dun dun Italian!... so we watched a few episodes of scrubs on MTV. of course scrubs was dubbed, but one of the guys watching had seen the episode before and kept us up to date with what was going on. the food there was amazing!!!!we had this delicious pasta dish, then soup and a second course of chicken Parmesan, and tiramisu! i was stuffed after the pasta! after that we all got ready for bed we had to be up early the next day for classes, so christina zach gabe fiona and i decided to watch some tv. on one of the stations they had a james bond movie playing. It was golden eye so we decided to watch that. i will have to say i have never seen a Bond movie before, but it was still a good movie for being dubbed. after that was over me and christina crashed. the next morining we were up bright and early we had to leave the hotel at 7:45 :/. we were on our way to Norcia, to visit the home town of Benedict. once we were there we got to go to a latin mass with the benedictine monks in the Cathedral. that was really cool to experience. after that mass the abbot came and talked to us. most of the monks were americans, but the had a few indonesians and europeans there. there are 14 in total and they had just celebrated the 10th anniversary of being back in Norcia. after that we walked around again before going up the mountian into a really smal city. i wish i could remember the name:/. being in the mountian reminded me of LOTRs. it was so pretty there but cold. after that we headed down the mountian and back to the hotel. The next day was Pietro's our RDs birthday so we went out for a night on the town in Perugia. we went to a bar because the club was going to be way to expensive. (i had a coke. i wasnt going to take any chances on getting sick this trip) after that we were told about a little bar down below where they had a DJ for free. so we went there and danced for a few hours. some of us decided to leave early but Pietro didnt have a phone to call a taxi, bc he had left it with the girls who stayed back. (they ended up not even using the phone at all :/) so we started walking back bc we couldnt call a taxi. we walked up hills and down hills for a good hour before finally stopping and calling a cab. it was 1:45 am before we got back. once we got to the hotel we crashed. luckily we didnt have to leave until 10 the next morning. 9 am rolls around the next morning and my alarm goes off...me and christina didnt get out of bed till 9:30. by 10 we were on our way back to Perugia. we walked around the town and went into the Cathedral there. the church is believe to had the wedding ring of the virgin mary in a case in the wall. they also had a replica out for people to see. we a a little bit of free time to walk around so we decided to het some chocolate. francesco said that Perugia is known for there chocolate, so why not. I got some dark chocolate with almonds and some orange chocolate. both are really good! i figured out what im going to do for my family members for christmas, but it will not be discussed here! after that we stopped at this castle on the lake. a feww of us went up into the castle to take picstures. it was amazing! once we were back at the villa we all just chilled and relaxed after our long trip. sunday was game day! not football, but SOCCER! we went to mass at 11 and the walked around for a while befpre the game at 3. we kinda got lost and couldnt find where we were supposed to meet everyone. we stopped at one place and waited while the guys ran to find the other group. we were then told that the other group was on the opposite side of the stadium so we had to run around to the other side. once we were on the other side, we couldnt find them and we had to run all the way back around to where we first started...it was a long run/walk. at the game we had a blast. soccer here is like football back home it is a lifestyle. one person i saw there was a pregnant lady who was cheering and watching the game. there was also a bunch of guys who were in front of us who were completely drunk and crazy. i guess you could say that they were the italians version of rednecks. one of them kept blowing this thing in my ear it was kinda like a vuvuzella, but worse..... oh well. They lost to Palermo, and i learned a lot of italain... none f which is appropiate...but all in all i had a great adventure in italy this weekend.