Hello all! This is the first entry is what will (hopefully) be a successful blog. I am currently sitting in the little cafe that we have here at school, Rinaldo's, run by (surprise surprise) Rinaldo and his wife, Nella. They know me pretty well here since it is the only place on campus where I can get a cup of coffee (which in Italy really means cappuccino..)

So far this trip has been pretty amazing. Everyone who I meet at school is really cool, and I've made a bunch of pretty good friends. I haven't started any extensive travelling yet, since I am too poor to afford as muc as I would like, so I'm trying to save my money for the trips that really matter. Mainly, my fall break trip to Paris, Berlin, Vienna and Milan. I have booked it all this past week, and I am not looking forward to seeing the credit card bill. We fly into Paris on the 5th of October and don't return to Rome until the 14th. It is going to be so awesome.

But, this week, our school (as a school-sponsored event) brought all the students to a Papal Audience, which my friends and I woke up really early for, since they told us there would be a lot of people there. Since my ticket number was somewhere in the 10,000 area, I believed them. We arrived at the Piazza di San Pietro around 8:00, to wait in what we thought was a really long line, but turned out to be only a very short line, so we got pretty good seats that were (at one point) about 15 feet away from the Pope. Unfortunately, my camera is not very good and doesn't recharge itself quickly, so the pictures I got of good ol' Benedict have him looking away or waving his hand in front of his face.