ugh lots to catch up on...

alrighty... sunday. i slept practically the WHOLE days since i was still feeling pretty sick. I accidentally slept through mass :/. Monday we had italian. giovanni was back! i personally like having the two separate classes. only the bad news was that he had to have another xray on tuesday and he might be out for another week...he told us that he had slipped on some wet tile and when he caught himself, he landed weird on his wrist. after class we had to study for our quiz the next day. tuesday was just a boring. italian class, then quiz and then theology. after classes i tried once again to put up my pics from germany, but nothing would work.:/ wel also watched Henry the Vth. we really didnt want to watch it but when we saw who was in it we got excited. wednesday was culture class. we went and saw David...finally. he is magnificent! michaelangelo carved him out of marble when he was 23! the only thing odd about the sculpture was davids hands. they were too big, but it really didnt notice it to much. tonight was spent packing for our Assisi trip this weekend. i hope i dont get sick on the bus again :/ *knocks on wood* we will go to assisi, perugia and norcia. we get back on saturday night. im excited for sunday tho too. were going to an Italian soccer game!!! that will be a blast. well im off to bed now. i hope everything is well back home. ciao!

ah germany part 2

ok so part 2. in the last part i forgot to mention, that while we were on the train, there were a bunch of people already pregaming for Oktoberfest. one guy said, "we will start off with italian wine and end with German beer!" it was crazy. now to continue with the story. It was also really cool to see the sun rise up above the mountains. After Munich, we were on our way to Oberammergau. I was still feeling bad but the advil was defiantly working. We got to the town and dropped our stuff off at the Youth Hostel. It was really nice. We went for a walk around the town and stopped in this beautiful church called the Church of St. Peter and Paul. (I believe. I may have to double check in my pictures.) the art work was astonishing!. They even had the body of St. Amadeus located in the church. When we walked in the church, we had accidentally walked into them celebrating mass. It was neat because they were talking in English. We decided to be respectful and leave to come back later since they were at the homily. After lunch we went down to watch the 1st act of the passion play. The place we sat in was huge. It held 4700 people and it was covered, but the stage was under the open sky. The first half of the play was a little boring, because we had to keep referring back to our texts book since the play was in German. For the second half though it was a lot easier to understand because we knew what was happening on the stage. It was sooo cold the 2nd half. i wish i had grabbed one of the blankets that they were handing out. i would have but it was warm when the 2nd half started, so i was like ok ill be fine with my long sleeved shirt and jacket on my legs....nope not a good idea at all. But in the end it was a very good show. I would have had a better connection to the play and actors if it was in English, but it was still very well done.
The next morning we headed back to Munich for Oktoberfest. It was the 200th anniversary. The train was packed with people heading the same way. It was really neat to see all of the kids on the train wearing the dirndls and lederhosen. Once we got out to the fair grounds, it kind of reminded me of the state fair with all of the food stands and rides. The beer halls were huge! We tried to walk through one because Kayla wanted her beer. It was so crowded inside and out! I was starting to feel a little better but I still didn’t want anything heavy on my stomach. I did however have oneof the famous foods from germany, the PRETZEL! As we were walking we couldn’t help but notice all of the drunk people. All in all it was a fun weekend and I was glad we got to go.

ah germany...part 1

after class we got a ride from jennifer to the train station. we had already gotten our tickets last week so we didnt have to worry about that. we did however have to get our eurail passes validated with a stamp. 1st line= no good we were sent somewhere else. the lady at the first place was really rude too. the second place that we were told to go to was no good either. once we had gotten to the front of that line and were denied, we had 15 mins before our train left. the big ticket line was way to long. we went to a help station in front of the trains. we asked the guy there for help but he didnt have the right stamp. we had less than 10 mins now before the train left. he saw how frantic we were so he went back and stamped them for us. during our whole frantic search, mean lady from place #1 was telling the man not to stamp them. we were thankful that he stamped them. now we were on our way to venice. there are 2 train stations in venice. our train from florence stopped at the train right out side of venice, but our train that took us to munich was from the train station inside of venice. once we got to the 1st train station, we went to the ticket office to get our ticket to the other train but right before we got up to the window they closed. so we went over to the ticket machines to buy the ticket, but there was a sign that said that they didnt sell the tickets to the other station. there were 2 men standing there selling the tickets for 2 euros, even though it only cost 1 :/. well we needed the ticket so we bought it but the guy didnt have enough change so he ripped me off by 30 cents....oh well. once we got there, we had 2 hours to spare so we walked around and got some gelatto. :)when we finished walking around we headed to the train station. i was starting to feel really sick, and thats when i realized that i was having a migraine. :/ i wished that i had figured it out sooner than then so i would have my medication, but oh well. at least i had some advil with me. that was my savior the whole trip. so on our 7 hour train ride, i got sick 3 times and slept maybe 1 hour total. the chairs werent that comfy either. around 4:30 i decided to go stand out by the window and breathe in some cold air. and it was really cold. it was also really neat to see the sun come up over the mountains and see all of the fog. right now im still feeling pretty bad so i will continue my story later. miss everyone!

BBQ!!!

today was long just like yesterday.... italian and theology....Giovanni is still out, but we were told that he would be back next week. after classes we got to chill out before we made dinner. bring out the hot dogs hamburgers and italian sasuage!!! after that i wasnt feeling to well so i went up to get ready for bed. while i was getting ready i also started packing for germany. we leave in just a few hours! im soo excited. it was also nice being able to talk to my family before i left. I got to see andrew and annemarie this time. now its off to cultural class before we leave! i will post all of the happenings when i get back on saturday night! ciao!

monday and tuesday

ah the beginning of the week... my favorite time of the week!....not. monday was our kinda free day of the week since we only had italian in the morning. so we all just kinda relaxed. After dinner Christina Zach and I went up into town to get some money from the bank. I am so happy my card worked! we needed to pay Pietro for our Siena trip last weekend, which was 25 euros. Unfortunately the atm decided to give me only 50's so all three of us stopped to get some gelatto. I am a big big big fan of the Lemon flavor. Once we got back we all had to watch a movie on St. Francis for out trip to Assisi next weekend. It was called Francesco and it starred Mickey Rourke and Helena Bonham Carter. It was kinda weird seeing both of them in the movie since the last movies that i had seen with them in it was Iron Man 2 and Harry Potter 6... It was very good and I really enjoyed it. Tuesday was the longest day ever! we had italian and theology. Italian seemed so much longer bc one of the teachers was in a cast bc he had just broken his arm and couldnt teach. so instead of 2 classes 1 hour and 15 mins long it was one long 3 hour class. after classes a bunch of us went into town to the supermarket to get some necessities. that night a bunch of people went into town to a karaoke bar. i really didnt want to go so i stayed back with a few people and went to bed early and just relaxed. all in all it was a nice night.

I got my Italian Leather Jacket!!

we were all so exhausted from saturday in siena, that we wanted to sleep in. in settingnano, they have mass at 9 and 11. everyone went to the 11 o'clock mass. the people in town were so nice to us. they gave us a print out of the readings and even introduced the group to everyone and thanked us for coming and being part of the church. at mass they had a Bishop come in from India. (we think... we couldn't understand some of the things he said in english) The Bishop could speak some italian, but the homily was in english. like i said before, we werent quite sure what he was saying. After mass we went into town to go eat lunch and shop. we took about an hour to find a restaurant that our teacher Francesco told us about. we were going h=to head back to the villa, but then decided to go to a nice little pizza and sandwich shop that we went to last week. after lunch bri rachel sr judith and i all went to look at leather jackets. we ended up getting matching jackets in the same style but in all different colors. total price to begin: $380 euros... final price: $110 euros. the jacket was $100 but the $10 extra was to get the sleeves tailored. they were just a tad to long. lol. I am glad we got them at such a good deal. the owner of the shop was very nice. after we paid for the jackets we went shopping around the tents. i got my dad brother and some cousins present. still looking ofr my mom and sisters. once we got back it was time for a little nap before dinner, but then that changed to sitting down and watching some cartoons and music...everything else was either in italian or dubbed. it was really funny to see the Hills dubbed. after dinner it was study time! whoohoo!...not. we have a quiz in italian on monday. I was still really tired from saturday, that i was in bed and asleep before midnight.
Ciao!

a head and finger.....

i really need to find something stronger than Dramamine....strike #2!!!....not cool. today we went to Siena and San Gangalo for a day trip. In Siena we saw St. Catherine of Siena's head. It was kinda strange to see. i snapped a picture but it didnt turn out that great, we weren't supposed to take pictures anyway. after the head and finger, we walked to Catherines house. we saw her room and one of her sacrafices to jesus was a to sleep on a rock! after that we walked around to the big church on top of the hill. I cant remember the name right now. it is very hilly in Siena and those hills are super steep! :/ from there we walked to the amphitheater were they have horses races. that would have been neat to have watched, but alas they did not have any races going on. It was very windy and rainy out today so I was sure glad that i had brought my umbrella. After Siena we went to San Galgano were we ate lunch and tried some wine. I had a sip of a red wine but i didnt like it at all. it was way to dry. After lunch we went to see the churches that are in San Galgano. On of the churches had a sword in a stone. the sword belonged to Galgano himself. people had tried to pull the sword out, but no one succeeded. once we had finished our tours we still had 45 min before we had to be on the bus. Jennifer had a game for us that made us look like idiots. we were laughing so hard through out the whole game, that

the troubles are solved!!!

since today was a free day, me and kayla decided to figure out another way to get to germany. the one train to munich from florence was completely booked. we didnt know what to do. we found a train from venice to munich. apparently the train that we have for munich was the same train that was full but, people i guess are getting off in Venice. After we get to venice, we will have a 2 hour wait before we leave again, so we may walk around venice for awhile. once were are in munich, we will hop on another train to obermmeragau. on the way home we will be on a direct train from munich to florence. we are going to spend saturday in munich and celebrate octoberfest. were glad we found another way to get there. it only cost us $28 euros for the three trains with out eurail pass. I am excited this play is a once in a lifetime deal.

Pizza, french fries, beer, coke and tiramisu!

wow of those 5 things don remind one of America, then i dont know what is wrong with you. after theology class we had free time. during that free time one group got to make pizza for dinner. the girls who had signed up got lost in town and there was a set time that we needed to start to have dinner on time so the people who were here got to make it instead. first we made the dough from scratch. flour salt yeast and water. we had to let it sit to let the yeast work its magic. while to dough was rising, the other group made tiramisu. we made so much pizza we had it for leftovers. we had 4 cheese pizza margarita, and cheese and sausage. we thought all we were going to have with the pizza, but then the chef gilberto started frying up some french fries! it was a very yummy dinner and desert and it brought back good memories of being back home.

eh....

nothing really new happened today just had italian class with daniel and giovanni. same old same old. we have a quiz on the few phrases that we have learned so far and a few of the verbs that we have learned in our next class. after class we had free time till around 4 when we had a pingpong tournament.... i didnt do that good. :) maybe next time. after that a few of us went down to the cantina to play some games. there wasnt much to choose from and they were all in italian. we are thinking of having some one ship us a game of apples to apples if we cant find it in english here. we each started to wrute a story but then after a few seconds we had to switch papers so they all had a different twist to them. i want to teach the group the game "What if..." one day.the only really yummy food i had today was the risso and asparagus, with just a hint of Parmesan cheese....yummy!! that will have to be one of the things that my mom will have to make one day :) tomorrow kayla and i along with Pietro and jennifer will go into town to get our train tickets for germany...so you can stop fretting mom... Ciao bella everyone!

same old same old

today we had italian and theology class. the italian is getting a little bit easier, because now all of the spanish that i tried to learn and latin is coming back. it also is helping with the verb conjugations. today for lunch we had a delicious roast chicken...with pasta carbonera. Malto bene! classes were seemed like they were going really slow today. that first 3 hours dragged on soooo much. after theology i went and took a nice nap. :) dinner was ok we had risso with olives. im not a big fan of olives and the rice really tasted like olives, so i didnt eat much, and we also had a meatloaf thing again. Worked on some homework for a while, and then talked with the fam via skype!!! i wish the internet was a little better here but it works for now!!! now off to sleep and Italian class tomorrow morning!!!

lazy tiring monday....

today we had to be up early because we had to meet Francesco at the Doumo at 9:30 for our culture class. we mainly stayed over by there and talked about the design... it took over 125 years to complete the whole thing and then another 15 more before they could put the dome up. we also got to see the santa maria novella church. the inside was beautiful, but i wish i could have taken pictures, but no one was allowed to take pictures with or with out flash. once we were done in town we came back to the villa for lunch. we had yummy pasta and then chicken with ham on it for lunch. after lunch we had culture class in the villa for 3 hours... we had 2 breaks and about half the class fell asleep on the couches in the tv room. i was one of them. once class was over kayla and i talked with jennifer the program director about how we should get our germany tickets. we have to go back and talk to her tomorrow so she can talk with her travel agent. Dinner was untill the main course came out. i had oreder the fish kabobs, thinking that there would be veggies and regular fish on it, but it turned out to be calimari.....ewwwwwwwwww... i tried a bite and spit it out. it was too rubbery and yucky. after dinner we watched a movie..cant remeber the name atm, but ill get to that later. it was in italian w english subtitles and it was really good. since my first set of pics were being stubborn, i took some more and they are up now. good night everyone

<3>

Whew... its been a long week...

*Day 3*

Friday we had Italian class for 3 hours. it was sooo much easier than the first class. we went over vocab and started conjugations. it is kinda coming back to me from spanish 3 years ago. After class we had free time so we went into town to the supermarket. bought a few things that I needed, but they didnt seel shorts...i wish i had brought some. Friday was Clare Gieson's birthday, she just turned 19 so im not the baby of the group! Some people in the group have had friends study abroad before and they told us about a local discotheque so we decided to go there to celebrate. we got lost on the way there so we walked around for a good 30 mins before we finally got there...it took us 4 different people and 2 different hotels to get us in the right direction. we had an absolute blast there. myself as well as a few people in the group had never been to a club before so we had a blast. apparently they are much better than the ones in America.

*Day 4*

Beach Time!!! we had been out late the night before, so when 7 am rolled around we were super tired....we had to leave the villa at 7:30 to make it to the train station on time. that morning i wasnt feeling well because i didnt get a lot of sleep, so the whole traveling in a train for two hours was going to be really annoying... about half way thru the trip i woke up from a nap and was feeling really nauseous... and now i have officially been sick on every main form of transportation available. car plane and now train. i started to feel a little better after that and slept some more. once we arrived in Viareggio we could smell the beach. we walked a little bit to the free beach but there wasnt much room, so we decided to pay 5 euros (discounted for the big group that we had) to go and have lounge chairs and umbrellas. we played in the Mediterranean Sea for a little bit then decided to lay out in the sun.... WORSE IDEA OF THE TRIP YET! since i hadnt sleep that well i fell asleep in the sun and now i look like a lobster. it dosnt sting that much now but it will turn into a really nice tan :) we had 2 hours to spare once we left the beach so we all wanted to go get something to eat. we stopped at this yummy pizza place called cartoon pizza. it was pretty tasty. the shop was right next to the shopping center so after we ate we shopped around for a while. i mainly looked around and didnt buy anything. they did have some nice fedoras, but the were a little on the pricier side. after we shopped , we got some gelatto. i had lemon and it was delicious. we had to leave at 6 oclock because the strike was going to start at 9 so we had to be back. once we got back we all decided to watch a movie in the classroom. Step Up 2 was the movie of choice, so after a while of trying to get the computer and speakers to work we finally could start watching.

*day 5*

Today we went to mass and we shopped in Florence. We went to the Duomo for mass. it was really nice and we had a small celebration. i thought it was going to be much bigger but it wasnt. It was all in Italian, but there was a sheet that had the readings in English. After mass we were all starving, so we stopped at a pizza place and had pizza again. It was much better than the one the day before, and the owner was really nice. we may go there again. we also had some more gelatto. i had caffe and mint. they were really good together. there was coffee beans in the caffe and big chunks of chocolate in the mint. we shopped around for a while. i bought a purse, wallet, scarf and hairties. i also tried on a really nice leather jacket that was 380 euros, got it down to 100, but didnt buy it. the guy handed it to me and it was just the jacket that i wanted to get too. i may wait till it gets a little cooler out. now its time for dinner and after that ill try putting up my pictures. for some reason they will not upload to facebook :( maybe i should try to do it a little less at a time.

Ciao!

WOW thats all I can say.. part 2

ok now for day 2. As i said in the last post we slept for a good 12 hours. we were told to be up by 8:30 to go down to breakfast. they had cereal and croissants waiting for us. only 4 of us showed up so after we stood there for 10 minutes they told us to sit down and eat, so we ate. after breakfast we decided to sleep for a little bit because we could really feel that jet lag kicking in. a liitle while later we got up and decided to take pictures of our beautiful villa. Mainly this whole day was for relaxation and getting adjusted to the time. More people started showing up a little later and almost the whole group was here. one girl was stuck in dublin because she had missed her train in the morning which made her late for her flight. That night we go to go to San Marco square to go to the Festival of the Rificolona (Lanterns) for the Solemnity of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary. It was amazing and i even bought a lantern! we got back late and I went to bed. Day 3 was the day classes started. we had breakfast in the morning then after words we had an introduction meeting where we met the staff, one of which is currently watering the plants under my window at 1 am in the morning....and then we went over the rules. immediately after that we were whisked away to italian class. oh my i have no idea what i got my self into....they started going off an we just looked them them and shook our heads. when we do have italian classes, we will have it for 3 hours with 2 different teachers. one of the teachers told us today that we have to sign a contract that says that we will only speak in italian from breakfast all the way thru dinner....man thats going to be tough for me. next we had lunch. i guess my stomach is still getting used to the food, which is weird because i eat italian food all the time at home. after lunch we had theology. it will be fun because we can speak in english and for extra credit we can take pictures of Benedictine himself and benedictine monasteries. Since today was a feast day we had mass at 6:30 in the choir loft area. we fit all 22 of us in this tiny little area. after dinner we had a welcome party with Italian friends of the program director Jennifer. they came and sang songs and played there guitars all while we danced and had fun. i did have a few sips of beer and a little bit of wine, but apparently in italy they do not put some chemicals in the wine, and without that chemical you dont get hangovers. strange factiod of the night. when we got back we had to get the internet fixed, because for some weird reason we could not access the internet browser. we had to completely change the proxy address and now we have to put in a password every time we get on the internet. and the new proxy is messing with my firewall :/oh well. tomorrow we get to have out cultural class with Francesco and its all day :) that should be fun. we will be like VIPs in a sense beacuse he will be able to take us straight thru so we wont have to stand in lines because his other job is being a tour guide in Florence! and we also found out that there will be another party tomorrow too! I love and miss everyone back home! Ciao!!!

WOW thats all I can say...part 1

IM FINALLY HERE!!! it took forever but im here :) so on sunday i flew out of dallas at 12:55 got in to chicago a little after 3. i didnt have to wait long untill kalya and Danielle showed up. there flight got in a little early. we waited for a while before our flight left for rome!!! now comes then unfun part. the flight was 8 hours and it was the three of us sitting in the 2nd to last row. we had absolutly no leg room what so ever. then the inflight movies didnt work and they didnt work in just economy plus and economy...we were really bummed because they were showing letters to juliet and we really wanted to get psyched for italy. the food was ok it was either chicken and rice or pasta.. i went with the pasta because i wasnt sure what the chicken was going to be like. after that we tried... and i mean really tried to sleep. i maybe got 1 1/2 max the whole 8 hours. after that disaterous flight we buy our tickets to the roma termin and from the roma termini to florence. both trains cost 58 euros in total.. so it wasnt that bad. the first train was 30 and it was cramped so we stood. i almost flew into the door and kayla almost fell into the toilet. after that we got lost in the rome termini! our ticket said 12:15 to florence but on the call board there was only a 12:45 we found out that we had to take the train to milan and get off at florence. NEVER TAKE 2 SUITCASES WHILE TRAVELING IN EUROPE! one has to lift 50lbs bags up stairs... it is not fun and my muscles paid sorely from it. that train was 1 hr and 50 mins long and we stood the whole time. we couldnt fit our big suitcases anywhere or down the aisles and we didnt want to leave them so it ended up being a super long ride. once we were in florence we tried to find a place where we could get our tickets to germany, but we had no idea where to go and what to ask for since the tickets that we were looking at came from the DB Bahn train. next came one of the longest 2 hours of my life...we practically walked all around the train station looking for bus #10...after asking 3 different people and getting 3 different directions, we stopped for water in mcdonalds and decided to take a taxi. we split a 29,60 cab ride between the 3 of us. once we got to the villa we showered and got ready for dinner in the village. we got there a little early for dinner so we walked around. i had raviolis, but my nonis home made ones are better. after that we came back and passed out... i got a good 12 hours... :) part 2 will be upo tomorrow about all that i did on day 2

todays the day!!!

Ah im soo excited!!! I leave in just a few hours :). i dont think ill be able to sleep. everythings packed and ready to go tm morning early. I have to be up by 8 to start getting ready and I have to be at the airport at least 2 hours early for my 12:55 flight :/...soo what to do in that 2 hours.... still figuring that out. once im in chicago i will endure another wait, but it will only be for an hour since Kayla and Danielle will get in around 4:15. Jet lag is going to be a major problem for me. it will be wired taking off at 6 pm and getting in at 10:20 am the next day since its only a 7 hour flight. oh well i shall endure. card bananagrams and ipods will help me get through the long flight. much love to everyone and i will see you in 3 months!!!

Itinerary Euros and Phone....

Itinerary!!!

Sun Sept. 5th

12:55 Leave DFW for Chicago

3:16 Arrive in Chicago...wait for Kayla and Danielle (3 hour layover)

6:05 Leave Chicago for ROME!

Mon Sept 6th

10:20 Arrive in Rome

10:30-1:45 Figure out how to get to the train station from the airport and then on another train for Florence

5:00 Hopefully will have made it to Florence!

now for the euros....it just took forever to get it all figured out. finally ended up getting some, so now I have enough to get me over there and to pay for a few things the 1st 2 weeks. and the phone....looks like im going to have to pay $1.50 per min for every phone call and text I make...the phone we were looking at only works if you are in the US calling an international number. :( oh well....4 days and i cant wait!!!!!