so here i am, sick! staying in alone on thursday night because there is an incontrollable amount of fluids coming out of my nose, sounds lovely right? im hoping to sleep it off because i have been sleeping and taking day quil and nyquil and vitamins and emergenC and i have been on the edge for almost 2 weeks and nowwww i get sick. it was awful because this morning i had my Italian midterm and i had to constantly get up to go blow my nose and my head is so clogged. i just want to get better so i can enjoy myself this weekend. the midterm went pretty well, and the rest of the midterms are next week so i have the weekend to study and then we have our mid semester break! and we go to spain! i am so excited. anyways this weekend i have a day trip with my contemporary Italian Society class to Siena, which im really excited for because it is supposed to be beautiful and have an amazing duomo! we are going to see the Piazza where the Palio takes place every year, which is a horse racing competition between the different neighborhoods in Siena, i will update you with more specifics after i go and i know more about it. it is Me and Sara and Carson here this weekend because we all have feild trips. I cant even imagine doing a lot of traveling in this state because i find it draining enough when i am in good health! still i feel a little bad that i havent done much traveling in the past 3 weekends! but after this they all fill up so i should just appreciate it while i can. i think tomorrow i am going to try to do a little shopping to cheer myself up :-) that usually works for me.

what is strange about italy is all of the organized strikes that go on! there is a mass transit strike scheduled for next friday which is when we are planning to go to florence before flying to Barcelona, the trains, airlines, and busses are all scheduling stikes of some sort! and this is like the 3rd time this has happened since we have been here! Mauro, who works at the school as a tech guy was telling us how regular this is, and that in Italy even the cleaning ladies go on organized strike!!! we are going to have to work something out around that.

so the murder trial here in Perugia, i havent heard many updates on it, although apparently everyone in the US has. all i really know about it is Amanda Knox is the American girl who is a suspect along with her lover and another club owner from Perugia for the murder/sexual assault of Meredith Kercher. this murder happened in November of last year. as of September 16th they have all been brought to pre-trial seeing as they are not even under direct charges yet. the Italian court allows them to be held for up to one year before charges are pressed. no real updates have been released yet except fot the request for a speedy trial, so i guess the big thing is if and who will go to real court for this murder.