my first full day

Sorry for the slightly limited posting yesterday. I said I would try to keep this as up to date as possible, and thanks to our FREE wireless internet in the apartment (thank you god), I think that you will be able to hear about all my adventures quickly and effortlessly. Yesterday was quite a frenzy, and the whole cell phone thing really upset me because I could hear my mom but she couldn't hear me at all. But at least our internet at home is FINALLY working (note: verizon dsl is the devil) and my mom can communicate with me through that. Anyone who is home, please go over to my house and show my mom how to use AIM because she needs some help!
So today we woke up at the hotel after some much needed sleep. Had a really quick breakfast and rode vans over to our apartment. The driver dropped us off on a street and pointed up this really high narrow street and said "Luppatelli" so we just started walking. And walking. And walking. Then we found #42 and assumed it was our door. After weeks of thinking our apartment was going to be a hole in the wall with absolutely nothing up-to-date or anything like that, we walk up the stairs and into this little courtyard which leads to the actual door and lo and behold, our apartment is beautiful. We have a television, we have a washer, we have everything. The furniture is strangely from IKEA. We have internet. I mean, geez.
Oh and the views are gorgeous. All of them.
So we moved everything in and drew clothesline clips for the single room-- no I didn't get it, I am sharing a room with Alana who is from Northeastern University. All my roommates are nice and everyone that I have met from the program so far is very nice. I have met so many people and I can't remember anyone's names :\ and hopefully I will find some people that I click with well.
After moving in we went on a walking tour. To get to the walking tour, we left about 2 hours early because the paper said to meet "at the fountain" with absolutely no directions or streets at all. We got lost a few times and then found some girls that live on the street parallel to ours. Actually, there are a few apartments near ours so we will have to meet the girls over there-- we found them because one apartment's windows overlook ours and I heard American voices.. we were all waving and yelling out whose apartment has what. Everyone's apartments are different, some people don't have as nice places to live. Aparently the more people you live with the better it is, so hooray!
The walking tour was really helpful. We learned where all the buildings are for the school. We went around the basic circle of the town (where the fountain is) and where there are so many shops and restaurants. The tour guide pointed out which were cheap and which ones the italian students who are learning english hang out in and all kinds of useful information. He also told us where to buy bus tickets for getting around Perugia and getting out of Perugia. He also told us that Ryanair has plane tickets for 5 euro to London, so here I come! We also saw touristy things like the ferris wheel, carousel, and an overlook over the lower part of town. Perugia is basically in the hills and mountains and we are in the higher part of the town with the school. The picture above is me on the overlook, if you look over the hill to the left you can see Asissi and apparently the bus ride to that city is only 15 minutes!
The school gave us a welcome package with spagetti and sauce and cookies but I'm pretty sure we are going out for dinner. Tonight is a holiday and everything was pretty much closed earlier but now things should be opening up for dinner. I took a bunch of pictures today already but I want to get a few pictures of all the christmas lights before they take them down. I still need to sort out everything with my phone tomorrow, hopefully that will be easy, and then also buy a phone card and a converter for my computer. Luckily our apartment came with so many great things like a hair dryer, converters, so many things we don't have to buy!
I will try to update soon, but I also want to get out and explore the city. I opened up a photo page over on yahoophotos. The name there is also Ciaoelon and you can see the pictures here.
Let me know if the link doesn't work for you!
Love you all!