It is almost a month!! Im sure everyone is curious as to what I have been doing for the past 2 weeks!  so I visited Todi with my class on the 24. It is a little town in Umbria that is very religious. we went into a few churches for my Saints and Relics class. We a saw a church that was built by the man who constructed the st. petersburg church. He built this church in Todi and the first miracle for blindness occurred. A blind man wanted to help so they gave him a statue of the Blessed Mother to dust off. While he was dusting, he got dirt in his eyes and tried to wipe it out. When he was done, he could miraculously see! It was the most gorgeous church I have ever seen! Churches in Italy are not like they are at home. I also went to 2 other churches that day that were just as pretty. I felt cool using my new video camera that day that my mom bought me for christmas so I decided to have a little documentary in the church about the miracle. Apparently i was filming  in the wrong church. so there are 2 documentaries on film, one of the right church and one of the wrong one. LOL! We had dinner at a very overpriced restaraunt called pane e vino. It was really cute though. We were there at sunset and the town itself was just breathtaking. It was on a little hilltop overlooking a valley of endless mountains and villages. Later that night I went to a discotecka and didnt come home until 5 am!!! It was the greatest time of my life. Im slowly realizing that everynight ends up being the greatest night of my life, HAHA! This is such an amazing experience and as of now, I never want to come home! a few days later it was my birthday and we celebrated all week because in italy once is never enough! people were still saying happy birthday to me at the end of the week! It was fantastic!  my roomates bought me gifts, a cake, sang happy birthday and took me out to dinner. It was really nice. A few days later there was a festival "San Costanzo" for the patron saint of Perugia. Every year on his feast day all the pannetterias (pastry shops) fill their windows with a cake they bake once a year "the san costanzo" cake and if you cut it 5 ways, it is good luck. So our friends had a dinner party at their house and the night before we had the cake and cut it 5 ways =] The next day everything was closed and the entire town was at a festival. It was so cool, they had all kinds of vendors selling all sorts of things, food, music etc. I heard that if you go to the church of san costanzo on his feast day there is a statue of him and if he winks at you, you will get married that year before the next festival day. Needless to say, the statue didnt wink at me but a nice cute italian man on his motorcycle did!!! I went to another cathedral that was by far the most magnificent church I have ever seen. The ORIGINAL madonna with the baby jesus painting from Raphael in the 15 hundreds hung in a very exclusive room that I got to go in and see. They had all kinds of original paintings from rennaisance artists, but the madonna was the only one i recognized. I had learned about that painting in text book for years and i was 2 feet away from the original authentic masterpiece. It was the coolest thing I have experienced so far. It was a really fun day. I bought tons of stuff including ANOTHER pair of italian shoes and a gucci purse! i treated myself for my birthday since no one else could.. LOL. I came with 7 shoes and I am leaving with 9.. as of today ;) Yesterday, my roomates and some friends we met took a trip to Pisa!  Long story short, i dont know what took longer, climbing to the top of the leaning tower or the train ride! It was the cutest town I have ever seen!! We were kind of walking aimlessly because we had no idea how to say the leaning tower in italian so we thought if we walked around maybe it would be peaking out somewhere behind something. So we got tired and asked someone  where is and then we stood like a tower and leaned to the side. hahahahaha! they said va bene va bene and pointed us in the right direction! good thing we werent looking for the statue of dante cause we would have had to stand naked or something! LOL. it was so neat, it looked fake! I couldnt believe I was really there looking at a building built in the 1300's that is 1 of the most infamous landmarks of the world. It was such a beautiful day and we climbed all 300 spiral steps to the very top and overlooked the region of Tuscany at sunset! Lets not forget we also took the typical picture of us holding up the tower! LOL.  It has been a really fun past 2 weeks and this coming weekend I am going to Assisi with my class to walk the streets that St. Francis once did.

Miss you all!!!