I'm Mary...

... A quick Wikipedia search told me that Siena is located in the region of Tuscany, with a population of 52,000. It’s about an hour from Florence and two and a half from Rome. The city has a wall surrounding the inner part and a lot of its buildings date back to the medieval and Renaissance times.

One of the city wall's gates. The big archway is used for cars but naturally I tried to walk out of it and almost got hit.
 

The "porta" from the outside of the city.

 

The less-fabulous "Porta all'Arco"
 

A picture of the wall surrounding the inner city.
 

Another picture of the wall. The trees on the outside of the wall are olive trees.
 

School

Monday thru Friday 8:30 to 1:00 we have class at the University. The school is outside of the city wall and is about a 20 minute walk. From what I understand, we’re all a little confused, the first month we’ll just be learning and practicing Italian. February we’ll start our Contemporary History, and Architecture and Art classes. Those will continue until the end of the program, April 30^th, but the Italian classes stop at the end of March.
I love going to the language classes. During the first part we usually listen to a tape with Italian speakers, on the phone or in an interview for example, and answer questions about their conversations. Then we'll get into small groups or pairs and have a conversation in Italian. The second part of the day we work on grammar with another professor. The whole day is spoken completely in Italian which isn't bad until I try to ask a question and just say nonsense.
Conversations with the other students is my favorite part of the day. Five of us are from UMass but the rest are from all over the world. Seven are from Japan, two are from Korea and then there are students from Argentina, England, China, Germany, Hungary, Russia, Switzerland, and Ukraine. It's great learning about the other countries and the students.  

My Apartment

This semester I’m sharing an apartment with two UMass girls and a young Italian woman. Katie, Zoe and I share a room while Maria has her own. Living with Maria has been so helpful; she speaks English which makes communicating easy, plus she loves to answer our questions about the Italian culture and language.
Across the hall is an apartment of four UMass girls and next door are two UMass guys living also with an Italian student from the Università di Siena. We live in a small building on a street named “Via del Paradiso”. Our program director keeps saying we're literally living in Paradise but two days ago a pipe broke leaving us without water for 12 hours; so it's loosely named.
Here are some pictures of the apartment:

Ceiling of our bedroom.

Face that haunts me while I sleep.

View from our kitchen. 

View from the living room.
What mysteries do you hold gated Italian archway?

Our apartment is the door next to the jewelry store.
 

The post office is to the left of our apartment in the "Piazza Giacomo Matteotti". Only slightly better than the Dedham one.
 

So far I'm loving Siena. The other students are very friendly and we all seem to have the same goals for the program: better our language skills, experience new things, and eat lots of food.
There are some downsides like trying to gain any respect as a tourist. It's obvious who's not Italian, even to us. It's hard to explain the difference but the native Italians have a certain attitude and confidence. They also have a permanent facial expression that seems to says "I'll rumble if you cut me in line", which is necessary because the other students and I get cut frequently.
I miss everyone back home and I hope to write again soon. Hopefully by then I'll have a trip planned somewhere exciting. Ciao!