Today was first day of class! We had Italian language and studio. We started out with the basics: abc's and 123's, some simple/common phrases, common verbs.. for instance, "come ti chiami?" = what is your name? "come stai" = how are you? etc. We went to the open air market today in the piazza. There are vendors selling all kinds of fruits and veggies, meat, cheese, etc. We made a couple friends who at the cheese stand that told us we had beautiful eyes. Oldest trick in the book. We had to go to the supermarket discount store also for other things, ended up with some weird smelling laundry detergent.. not real sure how that's going to work. We went to find a coca cola classic between classes.. on the way, saw Roman roadkill- dead pigeon squashed into the cobblestones. GROSS. Anyway, studio consisted of us going over our projects for the week: creating our interpretation of Sixtus V's plan for Rome, and doing an analytical documentation of our apartment and how they meet the urban street. We're are in small groups, so that's sounds pretty fun. All of our projects are experiential and have something to do with the urban fabric of Rome, obviously, so we get to wander around the city a lot of the time basically. We had dinner tonight with the students from Arkansas (the program we are collaborating with) .. It was fun! Didn't get to meet all of them, but I'm sure I will soon. We had a 5 course meal! - fried vegatables (such as cauliflower, zucchini, onions), prosciutto (bread and ham-like meat), pasta with red sauce and eggplant, some kind of meat (not real sure what it was! tasted like beef), and tiramisu. Needless to say, we were stuffed. Tomorrow, we're meeting at the Spanish Steps to take a walk down the roads that Sixtus V implemented in his plan of Rome, leading to Santa Maria Maggiore (the church my group has already done a project on!) So that's exciting to actually see what I've already researched about before coming here. Going to bed now. Buona notte!!