Under the Tuscan Sun

It is 5:43am my time right now and most of you have probably gone to bed, accounting for the time difference. I am up because I need to be at school by 7am to leave for Tuscany (Siena and Florence). I'm anticipating the trip will be a great time and I'm very excited to be able to report back to you on Sunday when I return.

I apologize for not putting captions on all of my Webshots photos yet. It may be difficult (and painful) to look through them but I promise they will get done sooner or later, most likely this week because it is much less busy on the school front.

Some pretty crazy things have been happening recently and just as an American may begin to feel as though he/she fits into the Italian culture, they do not. A boy in my marketing class was jumped the other morning in broad daylight at 6am and the story is nothing short of bizarre. A group of guys were laughing and joking around when one of them threw a coin in front of an acquaintance of mine, Alex. Alex goes to Salve Regina and has the typical personality of many people and did not see this as a threat. When he went to pick up the coin for the group of guys, he figured he was doing them a favor. He was and they started kicking him in the face and eventually did enough damage to send him to the hospital for an overnight stay. He was with Mike, a guy who lives with my friends Jon and AJ. No one would really mess with Mike....he's about 6'8" weighing in at probably a bit over 200lbs. He's not joking around. One guy out of the group was distracting Mike to the point that he actually didn't even see his friend getting beat up. The fools didn't take anything from Mike or Alex, they just beat Alex up and then left. Imagine that.

People say that the City is bad, that Los Angeles is bad, that even Providence you need to watch yourself, but it is so much easier for the people here who want to attack others. Americans stick out like sore thumbs for many reasons and if people want to profile others, it is simple and does not really take much effort at all. A scary story that teaches you that you can never be too cautious.

On that note, I had my second finance exam yesterday and hopefully that went well. My finance class is cancelled on Monday so I will have all afternoon to sightsee and I'm thinking I am going to head down to the Colosseo and go inside. We shall see.

Have a great weekend!
Ciao ciao!
xo,
Kristen