Good Morning, Vietnam!

Gooood Evening, or Buonasera, America! Or should I say, "Good Afternoon," for you! The weather's supposed to be getting gross again, soon; so, we've been sent briefings on protocol for doctors visits and insurance. We're not thrilled for the brutal chill because we were planning to skip over to Cortona for the weekend. It's in our province so it's literally a 20-ish minute drive from Arezzo. It's just unfortunate that this adventure is in the Italian winter because we want to see the beautiful sunflowers famous in Tuscany. Danielle looooves the movie, Under the Tuscan Sun, so Cortona was on her list of must-sees. It's costing us less than 3€ to travel there so maybe at the end, when it's warm, we'll head back there. You can tell that everyone's starting to get restless since we feel like we've seen the whole city. Everyone's planning trips soon -- to Rome, to Venice for Carnivale, to Milan for shopping (although, which of us could even afford that city, anyway??), and other, major cities.

Our classes started this week and this week's reading seemed a little overwhelming. The first day of Italian 2 was the professor's attempt to get a feel of how well each of us remember Italian 1's curriculum. The difference being that she's teaching the course... in Italian. I'm NOT ready for that, yet!! Sometimes, if you can imagine me doing this, she'll look at me and ask me a question that merits an answer and I say, "Si!" To which, she looks at me and says, "Si?? No. No. No. Si, cosa?" It makes me feel completely incompetent. The other courses I'm taking are a Renaissance Art History course and an Illicit Trafficking course. Both of those classes collectively required 10ish hours of reading for the first days of class. I've lost sooo much sleep this week, which is only adding to the severity of my cold.

^^Here's a picture of my beautiful Arezzo Family! (I'm front and center; which is actually a new thing for me. lol)

Danielle and I's room is haunted. You're rolling your eyes at me. Stop it, because it's true. The second night, I went to sleep after Danielle so I was the only one awake. The door was closed and when it opens, it's loud and annoying. I laid down in bed and in what could have only been a hallucination, I swear I saw the door open silently, a black shadowy figure walk across the room and then back towards me, getting closer and closer to my bed. I was exaggeratedly blinking, trying to wake myself up, when I finally just threw the covers over my head and shut my eyes. I was trying to decide what to do if it was a person... Should I wake Danielle up? Should I reach for something?? The closest thing to my bed is my slippers! I guess I eventually calmed down because I woke up the next morning and, of course, told Danielle. She scoffed at me and called me ridiculous, which is probably close to the truth. Then the next night, she was having constant nightmares when she finally rolled over and looked up to find a shadow in the corner of the room hovering. What do you have to say to that, hmmm?? Last night, we were reminiscing on all this at 2am (not a good idea, right?) and this creepy motion light came on. I said, "It looks like a Paranormal Acitivity trailer." Real smoothe, Courtney. So we ended up pushing the beds together and we've mutually decided to leave them there.

You wanna know my pony dream?? My pony dream is to fly to Ireland and spend a long weekend there. I want to go to Galway or Cork or somewhere beautiful and see the prettiest greens I've ever seen. Then I wanna happen upon a pub and hear the band playing Galway Girl. It'll be the first time in my whole life that being a redhead doesn't make me stand out. It'll be the best!! It's actually quite doable. RyanAir's really cheap if you don't mind turbulent-friendly flights and no amenities. Perfect! My friend Callie on the trip has family just outside of London so a couple of us are flirting with the idea of going home with her one weekend. We'll see! There's so much I'm trying to do while I'm on this continent!