It is Sunday evening, almost the end of a great weekend. Right now everyone is getting ready to go out to dinner. Our Italian teacher reserved a restaurant for all of us and we are going to have a really nice dinner with antipasto, primo, secondo, and dessert. On Friday afternoon, several of us went out to run errands, eat gelato, and look in shops. We stayed in the villa on Friday night and watched "Hitch" on the projector. (We have no TV, so we just project movies up onto the wall.) Saturday, after Italian class, we finally got phones and then me and a group of girls went shopping again. This time I actually bought stuff! We happened upon a market in the streets that they have every Saturday. It mostly had paintings, antiques, jewelry, and furniture, but the stuff was awesome. I got two great little paintings from an Italian artist. Last night, we went out to celebrate my roommate Ashley's birthday. (The picture shows me with my three roommates in Genoa. From left to right - Ashley, Catherine, me, Judith.)

I really enjoy going out in the city to see things. I also like challenging myself to speak in Italian whenever I have to interact with the locals. I'm hoping to pick up a lot of Italian just by being here. Living here for four months will certainly be different from vacationing. There's no rush to see everything. Instead you can just enjoy soaking everything in. Plus you get to see aspects of another culture that you normally don't see on a vacation - things like what types of foods are in the supermarkets.