Wow, so much has been going on lately, I'm not sure how to fit it all in, but I'll try. Let's see, my last post was Tuesday, so I'll start with Wednesday. I had Digital Photography and learned a little bit about how color works with computers, and then we went and shot pigeons. It was pretty cool, although it would've been more exciting had we been able to shoot them with guns instead of cameras. Later in the day I had my Mediteranean Cuisine class for the first time, and it was great! We made bruschetta, vegetable risotto, fried eggplant, cooked cauliflour with oil and vineger, cooked peppers, and so much more I can't even remember it all. When we were done we got to eat it all, complemented by some good white wine (vino bianca).

On Thursday we endured another session of trying to learn Italian from Rita, but we haven't been doing to well with that. I really think I would learn Italian better on my own if I was just given a good step by step book with and ORGANIZED format. But I'm trying not to complain, she's a really sweet and kind person.

Later on Thursday my roomate Ashley and I went and sketched the San Marco fountain (fontana di San Marco), one sketch in burnt umber diluted with turpentine, and one in pencil. It was a lot of fun, but I think we accidently made the guy working there stay longer than they were supposed to be open. We were sitting outside sketching, and we had gotten gelatos, and hadn't paid for them yet because that's the custom here, so he was waiting to close up until we paid and left. Literally as soon as we paid and walked out the doors, he followed us and locked the doors. Oops.

On Friday we went on a field trip to Tarquinia to the museum and the Etruscan tombs. The museum was ok, I probably would've enjoyed it more had I went to bed at a reasonable hour, but it was still cool to see all the Etruscan artifacts, and funny watching Dan get yelled at for taking pictures. The tombs were really neat, too. Alessio, one of the faculty at our school, showed us around, but really didn't explain much about them to us. But it was still really cool to see them at the actual site where they were found.

After that, we didn't go with the group back to Tuscania, but took a train from Tarquinia to Rome, and then got another train from Rome to Venice. Oh, and did I mention it rained pretty much all day Friday, so we were soaking wet on the train ride. We got to Venice, and waited for almost an hour for the bus to come to take us to our hostel, which turned out to be a campground. We were all pretty hungry, so we looked for food there, but the only thing open was the bar, which only had booze. Luckily Elizabeth had a stash of snacks in her backpack, so we lived off of that for the night.

On Saturday we explored Venice and found a lot of cool bridges. We also found Piazza di San Marco (a different place than the fountain in Tuscania). There was also a church in this piazza, which we went into, and I took several pictures (without flash) despite the "no photo" signs everywhere.

In the evening we ate at this incredibly overpriced place, where it was 7 EURO for a 20 oz. bottle of coke. (multiply that by about 1.5 and you get the price in US dollars... ridiculous, right?). We also walked around the city some more, and Gabby taught me how to use the manual settings on my camera, so I took some pretty cool pictures of the canals at night, with 8 second exposures and whatnot (I set my camera on the bridge and used it as a tripod).

Later we came to this group of people gathered around some band playing music near the bus station in Venice. They were from Canada, and the music was really good. It was just a really neat experience with everyone standing around, clapping along with the music.

On Sunday we got up early and went over to Murano, the island where they make all of the glass that Venice is known for. We took a quick tour of the Murano glass museum, and then headed back to the train station and caught our train back to Rome, and then our other train back to Tarquinia. In Tarquinia we had to wait about an hour or two for Massimo, our driver to get there. We would've taken the bus normally, but buses don't run on Sundays, so we had to pay him to pick us up and take us back to Tuscania. And since he was running late, it was a little longer of a wait than we had hoped for, but va benne (it's good).

Monday we had classes again, we got to take our easels to the fountain and paint for about 5 hours, and everyone was watching us. Some people would come up and make comments on our paintings, and it was just a very cool experience, as everyone here is so incredibly nice and friendly.

In the evening, six of us got together and played ultimate frisbee in the park for about an hour, which was incredibly fun.

On Tuesday we had Italian again, which was quite frustrating, but we also had Tuscania Sketchbook, and Carlos (our professor) took us to this really cool place in town with a really great view and we just did some sketches. When we were done sketching we stopped by the San Marco's cafe/var/gelateria for some caffe and hot chocolate (which is more like a melted candy bar than water flavored with powder that we're used to in the states).

We recruited more people to play frisbee, and altogether there were about 10 of us. It was a pretty intense game, and even more incredibly fun than the night before. Afterwards we went and got some amazing pizza before going home to sleep.

I apologize for how long it's been between postings. I just have trouble forcing myself to sit down and recall all of the activities of the week and type it when there is sooo much else to do. But I will try. :-)