went to paris this weekend and loved it. not the romantic city i had imagined but it was a great starter trip for the semester. saw all the major tourist attractions (arc, tower, louvre, etc) and even got a free 4 hour tour from our hostel which was wonderful. the hostel was almost that of a holiday inn and they had others scattered across europe so when michelle and i go on spring break i think we'll try to hit them up in the cities we stop in. i would have to s...

so today was pretty awesome. i finally feel somewhat assimilated into the culture. after sitting through some interesting lectures, watching a video on the development of a state wide fight against the mafia in palermo, i ventured out and found a grocery store. sounds boring...but...it has international foods. so now i have poptarts for breakfast and we'll make tacos sometime soon. after the homesick splurge on food. i went to what has to be one of the highlights...

its valentines day in rome...there are millions walking around with flowers or heart balloons. makes it look like home almost. anyways, michelle and i went out today and just walked around. she went shopping for stuff and we ate at a self service place which was surprisingly good. we walked over to campo di fiori, then to the wedding cake, then the trevi fountain, the piazza berlini. we caught the metro over to the vatican and were going to go inside until we saw...

Today was the second day of class. Just had one today so it wasn’t too bad except for the fact it was a 9 am class. It is high renaissance art and we have a lot of on site learning so I’m really looking forward to getting everything started. Yesterday I sat through my other 3 main courses: classical mythology, the history of the Italian mafia, and religions and cults of the Roman Empire. All of them should be very interesting and provide some interesting fie...