Bright, sunshiny day!

I think that song best describes today in Macerata. For the past 4 days it has been cloudy, rainy, all around gross. Today it is a beautiful clear day with a high of 11° C. Whitney and I headed out early this morning because today was our first day of actual class. However, we only have one class today, Italian, so it wasn't anything too tragic. We ended up going to the market after class and buying some food before we stopped off at home. But before I get all boring on you let me refresh you on this past weekends events.

Saturday we had another walking tour of Macerata, to show the students where we would be taking our classes. Beginning at 8 am is rough enough, but let me remind you that this was our 4th tour around the city. However, the tour ended shortly, because we took time to go to the local mall. This mall was no Castleton. I'm going to make the assumption that there were about 15 shops all together and one large Wal*Mart type store in the center. We all ate lunch in the "common area" before taking time to walk around the mall, which took all of 10 min. All of the stores were over priced, and nothing really sparked my interest. Until I got to the one bookstore at the end, and they had every Harry Potter book except for the last one, which I think is the one that I want to buy. So that was a bust, but it was interesting seeing the other book covers that exist in Europe, and specifically Italy. We came back and got ready for our nightly activities. We went over to some friends house for dinner and then we were joined by about half of the rest of the group. Needless to say it got a little crowed so we headed out to our favorite bar. (By the way, we have only been there once.) Once we got there we headed up to our same upstairs location to sit on our couches, but we were unable to because there were about seven 16 year olds. At first we were like, "Well this should be interesting, young kids in a bar, just hanging out and taking up our seating...." However they ended up being some of the coolest people that we met. Justin Timberlake was playing over the speakers, and everyone one of them were singing in English all of the words with their accents. One of the funniest things ever. Then a couple of our boys joined in and they went on to sing "Umbrella" by Rihanna. So funny. Our night ended, and Whit and I walked home.

Sunday was brought in by rain and more rain, but we had heard of the local flea market that began around 10 am, so we got up early to check it out and meet the Jersey Boys. Well...it was just that. The Flea Market had nothing great in particular, except a candy counter, where Whitney and I both bought German Roasted Nuts - that were WARM and kept our hands from freezing. We said bye to the boys and headed home to make spaghetti...where we totally succeed in that and then took a nap for 3 hours. We were then woken up by John and Evan saying that they were bored and wanted to hang out. So they came over and we ended up teaching Whitney how to play Euchre. Soon the Fam called (love you guys) and we talked for a while about everything that I'm telling you now. After that, the group left our place and proceeded to Jersey's house where we then taught THEM how to play Euchre. One amazing Indiana night.

So now it's Monday. And it's beautiful outside. Whitney and I took tons of pictures today which I will soon be uploading. We wanted to get a few more so that we could show the "local hot-spots" on the first upload. Enjoy the rest of your days and I will should you soon where I live. Ciao!

Lots of Love to all of you,
Audrey