Hello all! FINALLY got my wireless connection figured out here in Peruga! I am now connected to the world! :)

Whew! It's been a whirlwind of a few days! The first few days in a new place are always extremely overwhelming - you have the ecstatic highs of emotion, like when I saw the beautiful hilly terrain of Umbria, the province that Perugia is in, or my first successful purchasing of a latte macchiato Italiano style! But then you also have those darn lows, where you're feeling a bit vulnerable, say perhaps because you went to purchase your groceries, and didn't realize that you had to weigh your fruit and get a price sticker before purchasing, and therefore making a bunch of impatient and annoyed local Italians wait while dumb little me has to go do so. Oops! I could practically hear them thinking, "La americana stupida!" Oh well. It'll just take a little time for me to grasp my surroundings, and fit in enough to the point where at least I don't annoy the locals! :)

My flight was fine - long, being 8 hours, but uneventful. I even got some sleep! :) Then we took a bus from the Rome airport to Perugia, which was about a 3 hour ride, which I slept most of - jet lag for the win! We stayed at a hotel at the bottom of the hill that Perugia is built on, had a welcome dinner, etc. Yesterday morning, we were driving to our apartments, had a few hours to settle in, etc. My apartment is very nice - there are four of us girls in the apartment, with two bedrooms with two beds in each. Our landlady speaks only Italian, as many of the residents here, which is a welcome challenge for me, and part of the reason I chose Perugia, as opposed to Roma or Firenze, where English is widely spoken.

My roommates and I went to our first Italian bar last night - don't worry, I didn't get anything! We just went to see what the local night life was all about, and to socialize with the other Umbra students (the school I'm going to). It was fun, but I was tired, and not exactly in a rambunctious night-life mood, so one of my roommates and I left after about 45 minutes.

I start my week of Intensive Italian Language course tomorrow. Next Wednesday, the 10th, is when we start our actual classes. I am in The Culture of Food in Italy course, a Drawing course, and a Creative Writing course, in addition to my Advanced Italian Conversation and Composition course that I start tomorrow.

Well, I'm going to sign off for now - will write more at a later date.