Umbria!!!

Wow it was a long week...  So last Sunday we went to the beach, which was cool except I fell asleep on my back and the front of my legs got absolutely fried which hurt.  Then on Monday classes started up.... There isn't really much to say about that, it's school.  I love my professors and my classes but it's nothing too interesting.  Wednesday night some friends and I went out for a bottle of wine and Thursday night a different group of people and had a movie night in our room, we watched Roman Holiday and I actually really enjoyed it!!!  The only other interesting thing during the week was another bee got into my and Anne's room....

This is how we deal with bees...  the blanket is still there, we're kind of afraid to pick it up and we haven't found anyone to come move it for us yet!

Anyways, Friday morning we left for Umbria, a region in Italy. This was our orientation group, so the ENTIRE JFRC (John Felice Rome Center) was there.  It took three buses, I'm pretty sure there are about 150 of us so sometimes it was a little bit overwhelming but it was fun overall.  I don't know that I can actually narrate everything we did...  this is mostly just gonna be a log of things with lotsa pictures...  haha here we go

Friday we left at 7am (totally not my favorite part of the trip) and drove to Umbria.  We first went to Bevagna (Most of these are just little towns on random hills) and visited some of the medieval shops there.

 We saw a candle shop...

 An old coin shop....

 Paper shop...

and silk factory.

Once we finished up the tours we took off to lunch, and then to a winery for a wine tasting. 

 Gorgeous view from the winery (Sorry, there are going to be a lot of random pretty views in this post...)

Grapes with the view in the background

Kind of ridiculous amounts of wine

 Wine tasting portion: Anne, Me, Aaron

Me and Carly

Photo Cred to Anne: Anne, me, Rachel, Aaron, Lauren

Then we went back to the hotel and had a really nice dinner.  (Except meals here are like four-five courses and it's ridiculously too much food) 

Saturday we started off with a walking tour of Spoleto, the town that we were staying in.  

 Christine and me

 Lauren and me (This church was gorgeous)

Both pictures from inside the church

 Rachel and I

 Me, Anne, and kind of Aaron

 Awesome view from Spoleto

 On the bridge (that was kind of scary)

So after our walking tours we had lunch, and then went to Foligno.  We went to mass (very quickly since we were late and there was a Confirmation at 6) and then had time to just explore.  I don't really have many pictures from that.... we were kind of tired of pictures.  But at dinner Anne did take my phone and take a few... 

There were many more....  these are just a few of my favorites. 

And Anne did post one that she took on Facebook

 Lauren, me, Carly, Christine, Aaron, Anne

Today we did a walking tour of Spello and then had lunch at an olive oil mill. When we got to Spello the tour guides weren't ready yet and we continued our karaoke obsession (for some reason our bus kept singing all the time) with a random dance party!!!  

Then we walked for like a mile to see an old Roman aqueduct (aka we walked like a mile to see a wall, there really wasn't much to see.  We kind of regretted going to that one) 

 Spello: Just showing how they're all on hills

 Mural in one of the churches

 This was the aqueduct we walked at least a mile uphill for.... so that was something...

At least we got a pretty view out of it.

Well that's pretty much it for me at the moment.  I have ridiculous amounts of reading to do for my classes this week and then I'm staying in Rome this weekend.  Hopefully going to finally see some of the important stuff here, I could probably spend an entire semester just here and always have something new to see.  I'll probably post again next weekend.

Ciao  =) 

Almost forgot: I applied to tutor English to someone in the neighborhood here and I got the job!!!  I have to email her tonight and set things up.... Should be interesting since I do NOT know a lot of Italian but it should be fine...  haha I'm super excited!!!  I'll be sure to keep updated on that as well =)   Mk for real now, Ciao