Greetings,

By now you have probably have given up on checking my blog.  I have a terrible time trying to keep up with all that we do.  Since I last posted about Rome and Siena we have covered a lot of ground so I am going to just try to give you a brief summary of the last couple of weeks so that I can feel caught up.

The weekend after the ten day trip the villa hosted a wine and cheese tasting.  Not knowing anything about wine I was very interested in what our instructor had to say.  Basically it was a quick over view of what you want to look for in wines and how to distinguish one from another.  It really enjoyed it and hope we get a chance to do it again before the semester is over.  The one thing that I took away from the tasting is the strong difference in what I had been buying at the local store (cheapest they have) and what she offered us to taste.  She also warned us against this practice because she said that cheap wines are unhealthy for you.  

That next Saturday morning we loaded up on a train to Nice, France.  Nice is located on the French Riveria.  It is actually only about a 2 1/2 hour train ride to such a wonderful place.  We were lucky enough to be going the same weekend as Nice's Carnival, which is Europe's equivalent to Mardi Gras.  This was a really fun weekend.  I had never seen so many people and live music in one place before in my life.  There were people dancing everywhere and they all were dressed up in this elaborate costumes. 

The next weekend was our four day "blitzkrieg" of four countries in four days.  We left the villa right after our Friday class on a modern architectural tour of Switzerland, Austria, Germany, and France.   We were separated into 3 rental cars that students drove.  Luckily I didn't have to drive as we had a couple of minor bump ins. The first night we traveled all the way through Switzerland stopping along the way to look at different types of architecture and structural bridges.  Switzerland was actually my favorite country on the tour because of the beautiful scenery that we passed along the way.  The Swiss alps are amazing.  My most favorite place we visited we couldn't really see it because it was almost dark.  But this site was on a small narrow country road covered in snow.  It was so quite and peaceful there.  It was here that we had a bump in with one of the vans.  It started sliding back on the slope and ran into a fence post and busted out a tail light.  And then our professor who was in a hurry to go the next stop back into the other rental car at the same time.  I thought that it was hilarious but he sure didn't.  

The next day we had a stop in Bregens, Austria and then on to Germany for two nights.  In Germany we visited Munich and Stuttgart.  I was very impressed with Germany also.  The food and German beer was really good.  On Monday, we left Germany going through Ron Champs, France, which was a small town hit hard by WWII.  After that we were on the road for most of the day and night until we returned to Genova.  It was a face paced tour but I still enjoyed it.

I know that it is vague but thats probably how it is going to be until I get home and can sit down with pictures. Today we are exactly half way through the semester.  We have only two more months to go.  I know it is going to fly by because every week until mid April someone has either family or friends coming to visit. We also have spring break coming up and another ten day trip throughout Italy.  I think I am going to need to rest when I get home.  

Lastly we did have a mid-term last week and a major project due next week.  I just wanted to say that we are having some school work during all this. (ha, ha)