I have been here for 2 months and I am in love. I wish I could stay longer. Italy is amazing. Europe in general is amazing. I have had so many opportunities to travel and have seen a lot! I just got back from a 10 day trip to 6 different countries. I went to Vienna, Austria, Berlin, Germany, Amsterdam, Netherlands, Brussels, Belgium, Paris, France and finally Basel Switzerland. I went with 3 friends and we traveled by train the whole time. I liked it at frist, but by the end of the week, I decided I did not want to get on another train for a very long time. Especially an overnight train. No matter how hard you try, it is just impossible to sleep comfortably on trains. Anyway, we saw so many beautiful places and a learned a lot about the history of the cities we went to. It was a really good experience and I'm glad we went, but the trip was exhausting. We a lot in a very short amount of time and my only regret is that we didn't have more time to spend in each country. I definitely plan to go back someday.

I came to Europe completely by myself. I didn't even know the names of my room mates before I arrived and I was very scared. I thought I would have a hard time adjusting, and especially meeting new people, but I have made such good friends. I feel like I have known these people for much longer than 2 months. I have a lot of friends from America, but also a lot from other countries too. It's really cool learning about other people's cultures and lives in other countries. It is going to be so hard to leave everyone at the end of the semester. It definitely gives me motivation to travel more often. My best friend here is from California. She couldn't be any farther away from me at home, but we have already made plans for her to come visit me in January. I haven't traveled throughout the states at all really so it will be nice to see more of the country.

School is not too bad here. My classes seemed really hard at first but I'm used to them now. All of my classes are in English (except for my Italian language course, obviously) which is good. I am trying very hard to learn Italian, but learning a language is so difficult. I am finding that I can almost completely understand the language, but I really struggle when it comes to reading and writing it. My speaking is getting better, but I definitely need to expand on my vocabulary. It is fun being able to speak with the locals though. I have visited both Florence and Rome and people there tend to speak English a lot. They have so many tourists visit all the time so they are used to people not being able to speak Italian. In Perugia, however, a lot of people don't speak English. I like it better that way because it forces me to learn more. Conversing with people makes such a difference. I only have about a month and a half left so I'm hoping I can learn a lot more in that time. I also plan on continuing with it when I return home.

I love Europe, I really wish I could spend more time here...