This past weekend we had a tough decision, either a) take a 10 hour over night train to torino on thursday for the olympics then take a return 10 hour train ride back friday night or b) take a 1.5 hour trip to florence for the weekend. We decided on B and I am pretty pleased with our decision. I'm not a big winter olympics fan, the only reason I would have gone was to say I went, and also tickets were hard to come by and they were also rather expensive, 40 euro for semi-finals of women'scurling, no joke. But anyway we went to florence and it is so far probably my favorite italian city. It's similar to Perugia in that it's very italian looking whereas in Rome it's sometimes hard to tell your actually in Italy, but it's alot bigger then Perugia, had I had a choice of a city to study in in Italy, it would probably be Florence. There isn't that much really famous to see in Florence other then the David and the Duomo, which we saw, but it's still a nice place to walk around and see random italian things. Another thing about Florence is the quantity of students that study there. Every place I went there were american students, I'm not complaining, it was just very weird seeing so many American's in one place. That's about that for Florence, this week however we will be heading to Venice for Carnivale, which is Italy's equivalent to Mardi Gras, apparent during Carnivale christains are allowed to set their morality aside for a couple days however it is a must that you always wear a mask to hide your identity, it sounded like a holiday I would like to partake in so we will be headed their friday to see what Venice has in store for us.

Also a couple more interesting things of note that took place this week.
1) An italian friend of ours, Marina, decided to cook for me, mike, and guy last night. She made us lasagna from scratch, chicken wings and french fries. However, what I found phenominal was when we asked if we could help clean or anything she responded with, "your boys, your not allowed." and she would actually get mad if we tried to help clean or serve ourselves. I will now be offering green cards to any cute italian girls i see.

2) In a really obscure clothing store here in Perugia, I found a surplus of Penn State hoodies. There was no other college or american article of clothing in the story other then the hoodies. I told the owner I was very pleased.