The Final Countdown!

So, I only have four sessions in each class, five finals, and 12 days left until I am home! It's crazy.  This semester flew by so quickly.  I have been so busy lately with school and Carly visiting that I have not had time to post on here, but now I am, so please forgive how long it took me.  Some of you have probably talked to Carly since she returned home, but I will sum up her week quickly.  She got here on Sunday, her plane was obviously late, because I arrived at the airport on time.  It always goes like that. So I waited at the airport for ages, and she finally showed up with more bags that I brought over. Haha. I guess that is partially my fault. (Thanks by the way to everyone who sent me food! Caitlin, the toffee was amazing it was the first thing I opened up when Carly unloaded all of my stuff.  Ms. Thill, everyone absolutely loved your chocolate chip cookies.  Ruth, the pumpkin bread was awesome!)  So by noon we were back at the hotel and settled in.  We wen out and grabbed some lunch and walked around for a bit before coming back to the hotel and taking four hour naps, which were great.  After our long naps, it was already getting dark outside, so we went and looked at the Pantheon and the Trevi Fountain and got some gelato.  

Ok this summary is not as short as I was hoping, so I am going to make it shorter...

We went to the Colosseum, the Forum, and all of the other major tourist attractions in Rome, ate a lot of gelato, and did quite a bit of shopping.  I introduced Carly to the staff at Pascucci's and she ate some of her meals there.  She also met some of the hotel staff.  She attended the Thanksgiving Banquet and got to meet all of the people in the program as well as my RA and the Program Director.  I am pretty sure every single person she talked to asked her if she was going to St. Mary's, well at least all of the ones that didn't think she was already in college did.  

After the banquet, I had to go on a walking tour of some of the churches here, so Carly explored with my roommate Liz.  The next morning we departed for Venice extremely early in the morning.  We made it there in a little over four hours.  We took a water bus down the Grand Canal, and we EVENTUALLY found our hostel and started exploring Venice.  We got to see St. Mark's Square, where we fed the pigeons; the island of Murano, where we watched people blow glass in a little workshop; Accademia, which was full of paintings and other artwork; and every little shop that existed in Venice.  I bought a sweet gondolier shirt and little scarf tie thing.  Carly bought a lot of stuff too. 

The next morning we were supposed to receive a wake up call at 5 AM, but as we found out the night before, the hostel didn't really have wake up "calls."  The front desk person simply came and knocked on your door at the time you wanted, classy right?  So anyway, we did not get our wake up knock on Saturday morning, so we missed our 6:42 train to Florence. Luckily I woke up around 7:30, and we scrambled to get ready and leave ASAP.  We took a water bus back to the train station and jumped on the next train leaving for Florence.  All was well until we figured out that we had assigned seats on the trains.  We were good for the first couple stops, but at one point two people came up and said we were in their seats, so we got up and moved to two more seats.  To make a long story short, we did this several times, and thank goodness no one checked our tickets, or we would have been kicked off.  Well, we finally made it to Florence and jumped on a bus to Accademia.  This museum is where David is.  We paid the ten euro entrance fee and sat with David for quite awhile.  I managed to snap a few illegal pictures, and we moved on to the rest of the museum.  We also got the see the Duomo (church) in Florence and go inside, it was really really nice, as all the Duomos are.  We shopped for a bit, and then headed back to the train station.

We got on our scheduled train this time and made our way to Pisa.  We went and saw the Leaning tower and took pictures and perused the little stands for cool souvenirs before we grabbed some dinner and headed back to Rome.  We made it in the room at about eleven and started packing for Carly's return flight.  She had a lot of extra space so I sent a bunch of clothes home.  That will be nice when I try to bring back all the stuff I have bought here.  

Well, I hope that is enough about her visit to appease everyone for now, I am sure you will get to hear it all again at Christmas.  I need to get some homework done now, like I said only four more of each class left.  And then I have finals, which I guess I should study for.  I am going to the Papal Audience this coming week, so if you sent something with Carly it is for sure getting blessed this time.  When Carly was here it was extremely unfortunate that the Audience was inside, and I requested tickets but did not get them.  So we could not get in at all.  Usually it is in the Square at St. Peter's, so even if you don't have a seat, you are still right there.  I guess she will just have to come back to see B XVI.

Hope all is well! See everyone in less than two weeks!

Ciao for now.

Allie