The school planned a “Tuscany get-a-way” trip for the weekend of March 20-22. It was lodging, transportation, meals, and tours all included… we were going to be staying in a farm house so, my roommates and I as well as our other girlfriends all signed up and we left for Tuscany on Friday morning at 7am. Our first stop was Siena. For some reason it was ungodly cold and windy while we were there and our tour guide was boring, most of us mastered the art of falling asleep standing straight up that day. We did manage to see the main parts of the city, eat lunch and shop. We also saw the gorgeous cathedral; I forget the name of it though. After Siena, we took about an hour drive to the agritourismo in the middle of NOWHERE, but it was gorgeously situated right in the middle of a valley, surrounded by mountains, hills and vineyards. We un packed and got our room situated in the cute little countryside house. We had some free time but me and my roommates were exhausted, freezing and motion sick from the bus so we took a catnap and got ready for our dinner. The dinner was amazing! They served us all organic Tuscan cuisine with all the wine you can drink =] So me and my roommate Sarah decide to just go glass for glass, live it up like we are under the Tuscan sun. our first course was an antipasto of cheese and prosciutto and salami. When that was cleared from the table, so was the carafe of wine. Our plates were replaced with creamy rice and mushrooms, bread, and another carafe of wine. When we were finished eating and drinking the second carafe, our meal of some sort of meat came out. It was really good with vegetables and we ordered ANOTHER carafe. Then we had a nice salad and we slowed down with the wine and decided only to drink more wine if there was a toast. Needless to say, we made a toast every 5 minutes.  So our salads were finished and so were our stomachs and carafe’s. Desert came out and we didn’t order anymore wine so we quickly ate desert and stumbled back through the woods in pitch black to our room. We finally made it back and got ready for bed and my roommate was feeling sick and kept talking about how she was going to throw up… so I made her tell me about the Disney cruise to keep her mind off it but she told me no she had to throw up… about 10 minutes later, RED, RICE, MEAT, AND MUSHROOMS came up… she hasn’t drank wine since. Saturday morning we woke up and got ready for breakfast early because we were going horseback riding in the mountains at 10:30. So we went to breakfast and then headed over to the stable to check out the horses. The instructor came out and introduced us to the horses and told us a little bit about them after we got our helmets on. She told us the basics, how to make him go, how to make his stop, to get on, get off etc. She also told us that horses have 3 speeds… walking, trotting, galloping. But these horses were Icelandic horses and they had 2 more speeds. And I said I DON’T EVEN WANNA KNOW!  Apparently they were sprint and sprinting faster… So im the first one to get on the horse and im scared out of my mind of how tall this horse is and I don’t even have a booster step to get me up there. So I finally get on the horse with help from my roommate and she tells me my horses name is Artili and he is good for beginners because he knows when they are scared and he won’t misbehave. After everyone gets on their horse, we form a line and we all start walking down the hill, my horse decides to walk me right through a tree and I knew from there it was going to be one hell of an experience. Wouldn’t you know that I got the horse that stopped to eat every 5 minutes and wouldn’t keep walking!!!! The entire time while riding through the hills and the vineyards and the gorgeous Tuscany landscape, my horse would stop and eat and almost throw me off of him because he knew I wasn’t strong enough to keep him from bending over to eat. He took advantage of me but after a while he knew I was boss and that was the end of that. It was so much fun, and beautiful it was one of the coolest things I’ve done since I’ve been here. Im going to make a top 10 list of the cool things I’ve done while I’ve been here because its hard to keep track since EVERY trip is the coolest thing. After horse back riding we went to a city called San Gimignano (a.k.a San G). It was relaxing; we walked around, shopped, and ate like usual. I had the worst meal of my life in that city but I bought the prettiest scarf ever!  I am also going to make a list of all the things I have purchased just for myself…ANYWAY after a relaxing day in San G we went back to the agritourismo for some free time. I decided to read my book and once I noticed the sun setting, I went outside and took pictures and just watched the cotton candy colored blue and pink clouds move around in the sky. Then we went to dinner and our first carafe was not finished quite like the night before… in fact we only drank one carafe the whole meal between the 2 of us because my roommate vowed never to drink wine again. Our first course was again meats and cheese, then creamy pasta with asparagus, a big bowl of Pasta Fagioli and a dish of Pork with potatoes and Carrots and beans.  Dessert was a few slices of pineapple with a raspberry drizzle and whipped cream. After dinner we went back to sleep… or so we tried. As we were all laying down relaxing in the dark talking about life my boyfriend called, while I was on the phone my roommate screams “OH MY GOD” and jets out of the bed so naturally I do the same because I had no idea what was going on. She turns on the light and there is a HUGE BUG crawling on my pillow. The 3 of us are deathly afraid of bugs and after about 10 minutes of screaming and not knowing what to do, it started flying! We kept an eye on it and when it landed I grabbed some hairspray, grew some balls and went to kill it… WELL, the dam thing didn’t die and it flew across the room and none of us saw where it went so we were not going to go to sleep until we found it. We tore the room upside down to look for this bug and it was no where to be found. So we took turns sleeping with the lights on. 2 would sleep and 1 would keep watch… I didn’t sleep at all no matter who was keeping watch, and neither did the other girls. So we were up all night MISERABLE. The next day we woke up and packed our stuff to leave and we went to breakfast and found out that everyone heard us screaming… really? Then why didn’t you come into our room to make sure everything was okay? That was enough of Tuscany for me. So we loaded the bus and headed towards our last stop Cortona where they filmed the movie “under the Tuscan sun” It was a cute city on top of a mountain and like we did all the other days, we walked around, shopped, ate and relaxed on the steps of the municipal building and soaked up the warm sun while eating pistachio’s. Life couldn’t get any better. In this pretty little city Cortona, I FINALLY ate the best pizza. I have been searching for that amazing pizza since I arrived on January 9th. Everyone told me the pizza is to die for! After all It was invented in Italy! I have been up and down the country and I have yet to find amazing pizza… until I went to Cortona… go figure! We spent the rest of the day driving back to Perugia and when we arrived at our apartment it was 3:30. Being that I had no sleep the previous night, I went to sleep for a little nap and set my alarm for 7:30… 7:30 came, I woke up, set my alarm for 8am the next morning, and went back to sleep until the next morning when I woke up for class.