Nov 21 Update

I wanted to give a quick update before I head out of the country for Thanksgiving! Last week was pretty mellow. I finished Italian 2 and my Art History class and I’m now in Italian 3 and have a Food & Wine class, in addition to our Italian Culture class, which lasts the whole semester. I love my culture class right now. We’re learning about the Mafia and I find it so incredibly interesting. America has such a misunderstanding of the mafia and I think that’s mostly due to Hollywood and ‘The Godfather’. It's a great movie, but not entirely accurate. So that’s a fun class right now. I’ll have lots of mafia facts to share when I come home =)

Last weekend I headed to Firenze (Florence) for a day trip with a girlfriend, so I added a picture from that trip. The picture is me on the Ponte Vecchio (a beautiful old bridge full of jewelry shops). I really enjoy Florence. If I wasn’t studying in Siena, I think my second choice would be Florence. It has a big city feel, but isn’t as busy or as dangerous as Rome. It’s really a fun city to visit.

I also added a picture of the fall colors in Siena. Most of the leaves have fallen by now, but a few weeks ago, I took my camera and wandered around the city taking pictures because the changing colors here were so beautiful. I’ve never experienced the fall colors on the east coast at home, but I imagine they’d look something like this. Now the leaves have fallen and it has gotten really really cold here. It’s come close to snowing, but Siena is at a low altitude, so it’s rare that it snows here. But we definitely get frost and ice!

I realized I don’t think I mentioned my gym that I belong to here. The week I got here, I found out about a tiny gym under the stadium seats at the soccer field in Siena. It’s small and funky, but it gets the job done and I really like that it’s unknown, so only locals workout there. It’s small, so I know most of the people and it makes me feel more part of the city.

I also forgot to mention that I am taking salsa lessons! I found out about a few trial classes for locals here and a friend and I tried them out. We tried tango, cha cha, cubano, afro, and salsa. We both liked salsa the best, so we’ve been taking classes for a couple months now. It’s completely in Italian and no one speaks English there, so it’s hard, but SO much fun. It’s amazing how dance is such a universal language. You really don’t need to know how to speak to understand and learn dance. Of course, we are learning a lot of Italian and are getting lots of practice while we’re there, which is always a plus. I hope I can find a class when I get back home because I would hate to lose all that I’ve learned here.

As for this weekend, in a couple of hours I’ll be headed out of town for the weekend. Italians don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, but our school gave us a few days off. So some friends and I are heading to Prague and Amsterdam! It’s going to be a compact and very fast trip, but I’m so excited to be able to experience two new places. I’m definitely going to miss Thanksgiving dinner, but I’m sure the trade-off will be worth it this year. I’ll be sure to post pictures and let everyone know how it goes when I get back.

Hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving and please eat lots of turkey and pumpkin pie for me! Ciao!

P.S. Joel sent me some pictures from when he was here, so I posted a few.