Venezia.

Saturday morning we woke up early and left on a train for Venice at about 7:45. We rode the train from Carpi to Modena, from Modena to Bologna, and then Bologna to Venice. I slept most of the way. Once we got to Venice we soon realized it was POURING down rain. If you know anything about Venice, you know that there are no cars or anything.. it's all walking. So we walked in the rain to our residence. Unfortunately the directors were confused so we got a little lost, but we finally made it there. Once we got there we found out that 2 of the rooms were not ready so 10 of us girls had to leave our stuff in another room until later. After that we all kind of split up and did our own thing with our groups. I was with Allison, Shaun, Mary Jo, and Katie. We stopped to eat lunch at a restaurant that had Mario in the name. The food was good. It was a pasta with a ratatouille sauce. The wine was better. :) After lunch we started making our way to Piazza St. Marco to meet the rest of the group who was going on the Doge's Palace tour as well. Little did we know, when it rains this hard in Venice... the square floods. There was about 6 inches of water on the ground in certain places. It was hideous. Unfortunately I had on tennis shoes so I stopped and took my socks off so at least those would be dry later.

Then we went on the tour of the palace. It was very old and beautiful. And we got to go walk through the jail cells in the basement too. It was interesting. After that the 4 girls I mentioned earlier and I started our walk back to the hotel. We stopped and shopped a bit, got gelato, and bought a bottle of wine on our way.. so we got back around 7:00. Once we got back we organized things, cleaned up, drank our wine, and then we went out for dinner at a nice restaurant. I had spaghetti and meat sauce and wine. Mary Jo and I also split some french fries just to have a little taste of home. Then we went to a Jazz Bar and sat there for a little while. It was interesting to hear songs in English, and this bar hung bras on the ceiling.. haha. At around 11:45 we headed back to the hotel and I went to sleep almost instantly after getting into my bed.

Luckily, on Sunday, the rain had stopped. The weather was quite nice, sunny with a light breeze. We got up early around 845 and met Dr. Bradley to check out of our rooms. We turned in the keys and left our bags in a special room they had for us so we wouldn't have to carry them around. Once back on our way we stopped for croissants and coffee for breakfast. We walked around town taking pictures and shopping until noon when we decided to stop for lunch. I had ravioli and white wine for lunch. It was very good. After lunch we went back to the Piazza St. Marco to see it without the flood. Little did we know, some of the water would still be there in addition to a mass amount of people. At least this time our shoes didn't get wet. After this we started heading back towards the hotel/train station. We stopped and had gelato again (haha) and then picked up our bags at the hotel. We then walked to the train station where we sat and waited for everyone else, as well as let our shoes from the day before sit out in the sun to dry. I am so glad I took 2 pairs of shoes to Venice.

Our train from Venice went to Bologna, then we rode another train (in reserved seats!) back to Carpi. Overall, Venice was pretty.. but it reminded me a lot of the touristy parts of NYC. All of the stores had the same thing, and there were soooo many people.

Once I got back to the house, we ate dinner, I showered, then I Skyped with Stacey, Jessica, and Hannah. Then I Skyped with Cesar. After that I went to sleep because I was very tired.

Today I went to school. For the first 2 hours Paige, Allison, Katie, and I went to watch the athletic competition off campus, but it got started late so we didn't get to see anything. Once we got back to Fassi we sat in on 2 music classes to listen to them practice for their concert on Wednesday night. Then we went to Censia's third year English class (8th graders). Censia is the English teacher in charge of this program for this school. We listened to the students present their information on Independence Day and Thanksgiving in small groups helping them with pronunciation and such.

After school I came home and Alessandra had made lunch. We had salad, cold cuts, and hot bread. Andrea left for Athens today on business and won't be home until late Saturday night. She also told me that she has errands to run and choir practice later so I will be kind of on my own tonight, which I don't mind. Asia will be with her grandparents so I'm going to go to the pharmacy, bank, and post office here in a bit and then just relax and watch movies. Tomorrow I will be on my own too because Alessandra is going to the regional athletic competition where one of her students who is partially deaf will be competing. I'm excited to cook lunch for myself as bad as that sounds.

Ciao for now!