Wow, what a week.

Last Thursday was glorious as soon as class was done, as I had an incredibly long nap before playing ultimate frisbee in the evening. Ultimate Frisbee is our new favorite pastime, and we even recruited several of our Italian friends to join in the fun. After pizza we went to this resteurant and I got this incredible pizza with mushrooms on it. Everyone else was quite impressed with their food as well, and at the reasonable prices.

On Friday we had a field trip to Viterbo and Villa Lante. Viterbo is a city nearby, and Villa Lante is this huge garden/estate place just outside of Viterbo. It was absolutely gorgeous, although there could ahve been a few more flowers and colorful things, but the fountains and the view were spectacular!

We got back around 3, so we took a nap, played frisbee again, changed, got aperitivos, and went to this thing at a theatre. First this guy, I forget his name, told us about the ancient Italian form of entertainment called Commedia Dell Arte. Basically, they do this improv. thing wearing these crazy masks, only using several words (no full sentences) and noises, and this incredibly odd posture. It is hilarious to watch. Next, Mei, one of our student advisors, showed us her variation of this, and to be honest I did not understand the point of her discipline at all, but it was very interesting to watch none-the-less. After she was done, the theatre guy whose name escapes me had two of the students go up in front of us and try out the Commedia Dell Arte thing, using the correct posture and noises and even the masks. It was one of the funniest things I have ever seen! All of our advisors were dying of laughter along with us.

Saturday was a day to finally sleep in. Around 12 or 1 one of our friends came over and ate an amazing breakfast that my roomate Ashley cooked. It was a very American breakfast, and I was glad to be eating bacon and eggs as opposed to caffe (espresso) and pastries. Very delicious! In the afternoon, guess what we did... that is correct, FRISBEE, which was incredibly fun, as usual. We went and ate at the same restuerant again, then went to our friends Dan and Cory's house to hang out. A little later on several of us went to our Italian friend Marco's farm, and got to try some of his family's homemade wine.

Now Sunday was probably one of the most beautiful and fun-filled days we've had since we got here. We got up early (which for us was abouto 8am) and went back to Marco's farm and helped his family with the grape harvest. We hardly did any work, but I guess they were grateful because it would've taken much longer if they had to do it all themselves. Marco's mother, Teresa, then cooked us this delicious lunch of spaghetti, lamb, and potatoes. She was such a sweet woman. Marco's grandparents on his mother's side were also there, as was his father. And non of them spoke any English, but Dan and Allessio were there to translate when we couldn't understand, so it was fine. My Italian was helped out a great deal just by listening to the others talk in Italian. I finally felt like I was starting to pick up on some of it. Yaay.

After lunch, we hiked down this huge hill through the woods and bushes and thorns to this stream. The stream was so wonderful! There were this huge rocks and great places to just dangle your feet in the water, which I did. It would be a great place to go swimming over the summer. I also saw a pile of charred wood on the rocks, so it looked like someone had a campfire there. I can't help but think how fun that would be as well. Anyway, the sun was warm, and I could have just layed on theh rock for hours, but we had to go look at some Etruscan tombs with Allessio.

Not that I'm complaining! Allessio is studying archeology, so he showed us these tombs that we had to climb all over steep hills and rocks to get to, and they were really cool because we could actually go in them and touch them and sit in them and everything! On the way back I almost fell about 15 feet, but luckily grabbed on to a thorny bush and saved myself from that, but did get a few small cuts on my hand. It was such an incredible day, I cannot describe it well enough to tell how wonderful it was.

It made me glad I chose to come here to Tuscania. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have had such an experience had I chosen to go to Florence or Rome. This town is so great, and there are so many kind people here. I love it.

Today we painted the same fountain as last week, and I'm getting quite frustrated with my decision to paint the entire fountain and then some, but I think it will turn out well. I simply have a lot of work cut out for myself. I'm just hoping that Marco or someone will let me use an easel to take to the fountain and use to paint. Oh, and right next to where we are painting is this cute little cafe called San Marco, and the owner, Valdo, is such a sweet guy. He's originally from Chile, and he is always giving us free drinks and whatnot. Today he brought out gelatos for all of us while we were painting. How nice.