TUNISIA OR GREECE???

at the moment clarissa and i are doing major research to organize some sort of trip to tunisia (yes, north africa) with 3 of our other classmates. i think we've possibly decided on the island of djerba off of the city of Tunis; lots of roman ruins, a pirate castle, small villages, white beaches, etc... the problem is getting there. i believe we can fly from rome to tunis for a little more than $200, but then we also have to pay roundtrip ferry/boat to the island and for the hotel. it will just take a little effort and time to get together, but it's most definitely possible. otherwise, greece was the other possibility, but, again, we must fly to athens and take a ferry to one of the islands on the other side of the country. a ferry from southern italy to the islands takes over 10 hours, but apparently the hotels are really cheap. SOOOO.... we basically just need to make some executive decisions.

as for other news, clarissa and i have done some hardcore brainstorming to decide where we want go for our other long weekends and for our 10 day break between here and london. we were thinking about going to prague next weekend, but it's really expensive to get there and would take about 15 hours on the train. tomorrow we are going to Siena with the majority of the group. i've been looking forward to siena for a long, long time. we have about 3 other long weekends outside of the 5 day long weekend which is when we would go to tunisia or greece. we were thinking possibly austria or amsterdam. perhaps we might even just stay in italy. i would definitely like to try to go to another country before we go to london, though. clarissa and i just spent an hour last night marveling over the fact that we are so close to EVERYWHERE. we tried making lists of places to go and when, but there are just so many destinations. it's really difficult to plan because we dont have internet at our house, so the only time we can check train/flight/bus/hotel fares, is at school, our only internet source. it is very frustrating, but, then again, clarissa and i get a lot done at night homework-wise. we even took a good chunk of the night to quiz eachother on the day's notes. it really helps though.

anyway, i think i mentioned in another entry that clarissa and i moved, but nadia and pasquelle (pahss-kwall-eh). communication is difficult as clarissa and i have only had 3 italian classes, but everyone is progressing very quickly and every dinner with the mercuri family is less and less awkard as we learn new words. unfortunately, we only just learned verbs and, of course, only in the present tense. we dont learn past and future until next week. i think conversation will flow well by the time we leave.

CIAO!