So this week we had our first Italian quiz, so we were all pretty studious during the week and didnt go out until thursday night. I buckled down and did some work in the school library because i find it impossible to focus in the apartment. I also ventured out to the big grocery on tuesday, in my new flats, which was a huge mistake because i stil have a blister the size of a crater on my heel and it has been severely impairing my ability to wear any other shoes. We all try to buy groceries about once a week, but its so hard to stock up on food because we have a tiny refridgerator for the 5 of us and we can only buy as much as we can carry. However i was pretty excited because i found soy sauce and thai rice and i made a delicious stir fry dinner that did not have any pasta in it! haha its only been a month and i am already starting to miss some american foods. i have been eating granola and yogurt for breakfast, omlets or grilled cheese or pb and j for lunch and then usually some sort of pasta for dinner. rumor has it that there is a store that sells campells soup, so i am making it my mission to find that very soon. we have "family dinner" all the room mates together plus Katy who lives across the hall about 2 times a week. I am the only one who has really lived in an apartment before and actually cooked things other than leancuisine so my dinners have been a little more elaborate than just pasta and pesto. but its still a lot of fun and its nice to all sit down and share a meal because we all get a long so well. we are super lucky. the night before our italian quiz we all took a break and went across the street to the pizzeria Quatro Passi and had Nutella Pizza! oh my gosh it is heaven!! the owners of the pizzeria are Danielle and Gennaro and they also co-own the lounge that we like to go to, so we are quite friendly with them.

we thought this idea of having dinner parties with our italian friends was fun, but 3 dinners later two of which were at our apartment we realize that they dont know how to cook, its impossible to cook for 12 people at once, and they make more of a mess in our apartment than its worth. so from now on we are just sticking to us girls at our apartment.

Friday, we had a field trip for my History and Cultureof Food in Italy class and had to be at the bus by 6:45 AM! Sara left even earlier than that to go to Oktoberfest (i'm pretty jealous of her) and Carson, Angela, Kelley and I went on this field trip together. it was a 3 hour bus ride north to Tuscany and first we went to an agricultural/spiritual center outside of Florence where they live and produce milk, cheese, breads, pasta, fruit, meats, olive oil and wine. it was like an organic center that involved the whole lifestyle of the community. it was pretty awesome and the food was really good, we got to sample a lot of things and see allll of the animals there. After than we went to a near by town to have a typical Tuscan meal. it was the best meal i have had yet in Italy. we had an antipasta with amazing bruschetta and i even tried the pate' because my professor explained to me that tasting in not always about finding what is pleasing but rather challenging your tastebuds. next we had a pasta dish with meat sauce from a rooster which was actually delicious. and then for the main course we had bistecca florentine which is a seared piece of steak that is wonderfully flavored but almost entirely rare on the inside. i like my meat rare but not that rare! still i ate it and enjoyed it and i think its pretty cool that i got to try such a typical dish of that area. and for dessert we had an assortment of cakes my favorite of which was a coconut icecream like cake but instead of being covered in a normal frosting it was based and coated in maragne . definitely very unique.

Friday evening Kelley and Angela went straight to Bologna for the weekend but Carson and I decided to stay in Perugia. Carson's friend that we met a few weeks ago, Francesco is a criminal lawyer here in Perugia and likes to impress us by showing us things we would not normally see. he is quite cultured and has a connection to EVERYONE in this town. so Carson has gone out with him a few times and he invited her and I to a club opening outside of the city. we had no idea what to expect and were pretty nervous. Francesco knows the owner of the club so he had a VIP table for 15 people for a sit down meal before the dancing began. Needless to say it was very glamorous and the theme of the night was Safari so we knew it would be extravagant when we saw a real zebra at the entrance to the club. It was a huge disco, much larger than anything we have been to in the center of the city. Luckily one of our American friends Nathan who is a bartender at a local pub came also and a few of Francesco's other friends speak some English as well. the food was nothing special and Carson and I noticed that the drinks were quite expensive as well, but Francesco took care of everythingl. I dont even want to know what the tab for the group of us was at the end of the night. after dinner it became very very crowded with the younger dancing crowd. the club had dancers who were scantily dressed as cats and leopards with full make up dancing on tables and two shirtless men came around with a 12 foot boa constrictor. it was wild, i felt like i was in a movie or something. it was nice because we got to keep our VIP area for dancing so we had couches and a place for our bags and drinks and had much more space than if we were on the main dance floor. it was all so extravagent and typical of Francesco to want to show us an amazing time and flaunt his wealth and popularity. but that is just his personality, but the experience was well worth it. Carson and I went shopping a little bit on Saturday and Katy ended up staying the weekend as well, so the three of us went out to dinner last night to a nice restaurant where we ordered two courses each and payed wayyyyyy too much for meat that tasted as if it had been soaked in salt water for a month. very dissapointing, but the atmosphere was nice and the creamy tomato soup was delicious! we decided to branch out and go some place new last night because we always only go to Merlin's Pub because we know the owners. so we went to another popular pub called La Tonna which was nice, but more people sitting and less people dancing. Saturdays are a weird night because everyone just goes out to the discotecas and not to the pubs. it was good to see a new place though and there were other Americans there. and afterwards we went to Domus which is the main trendy discoteca in the center of Perugia, but it is too crowded on Saturday nights and I have more fun there when i have more friends with me to dance, so we left fairly early and came back to crash.

the temperature here has dropped dramatically, which i was not expecting at all. the first 2 weeks we were here were unseasonable hot and now they say it is unseasonably cold, and it isnt even october yet! i wore my heavy pea coat out last night to dinner and that is the heaviest coat that i brought. i also feel like it is almost colder in our apartment than it should be, i'm not sure how well insulated the walls are, all i know is that the city does not allow you to turn the heat on until november 3, unless it gets really cold before then. I definitely need to buy some heavier clothing and have the rest of my winter clothes shipped sooner rather than later.

well thats all for now, the week wasnt very exciting but i had so much to talk about from this weekend that i wanted to get it all down!