Hello everyone!
I just got the internet set up at my house in Italy so hopefully I can be a little better about posting entries here. Italy is great so far! Perugia, where I am staying, is quite charming, especially the city center with its old winding streets. The main square has a big fountain and church, and is always teeming with people. I just started class yesterday. The school is not too far from my house, maybe a fifteen minute walk. I also discovered a really good pizza place that is on the way back to my house from school..yum. I have a lecture in the morning for three hours and a conversation class in the afternoon for one and a half hours. I really like my lecture teacher, she is really animated and fun. My whole class is made up of foreign students which is very cool. I am meeting people from all around the world from Poland and Turkey to China and Taiwan. I am actually the only American in my class. I've been having fun exploring Perugia, I already have a favorite place. If you walk all the way down the main street, corso vannucci, at the very end there is a shady area with trees and lots of benches, overlooking a spectacular view of the umbrian countryside- all rolling hills and church steeples poking up. It has been quite warm recently which makes it hard to stay cool walking up and down all of the hills in Perugia.

My host family is also great. My host mother is an older Italian woman, who speaks absolutely no English. We sort of communicate in hand gestures...haha. She is very sweet and helpful. My room is bigger than I expected, with a bed in one corner, a rolling clothes rack, small bookshelf, desk with two chairs, and two big windows. It even came furnished with a reading lamp! how perfect. There are currently two other students living in the house as well, both from Armenia, one girl and one boy. They don't speak English and we mostly communicate in Spanish since my Italian still needs work.

I am hoping to start traveling around Italy via the train soon! But now I need to go study my Italian. I will hopefully figure out how to post pictures soon as well.
Ciao!