So the Fortezza Medicea is towards the north of Siena and was built in the 16th century. After getting back from Firenze on Friday, Juliette and I decided to go for a run and explore the Fortezza a little bit. On top of the Fortezza are walking paths where people exercise or just take in the breathtaking views. After our run, we decided to come back that evening to watch the sunset. Sunday I went to the birthday party of my host family’s nephew. The party was "Carnivale" themed and all the kids were dressed up.

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Well, with classes in swing, and our first full week of school almost over, everyone's starting to get into the swing of things!  Orientation week came and went, and we all feel like a pretty united group of kids over on this hemisphere.  The RAs planned some great excursions into the city to explore, "Mystery Beijing" set us out in groups trying to get as many pictures as possible in a scavenger hunt all around Beijing!

As I am among my half-packed suitcase, lingering parents, and judgmental cat, I cannot help but repeatedly curl up into a half criss-crossed- child's-pose position. Basically, I am contemplating my decision to leave home for the next four months in the most awkward and unintentional yoga pose. I have been packing, unpacking, and repacking for the past two weeks. Should I pack some snacks for the journey? Probably. How about those mini shampoo bottles? Preferably. My sloth calendar from the natural foods store? Most definitely.

Hello again everyone! I will hopefully be posting a little more frequently from this point forward (the format in which we need to upload photos is quite time consuming and a real pain). For this post I wanted to highlight one of the student assistant socials (trips) that we went on. It was a boat ride down the Thames (pronounced Tems) to Greenwich to check out the surrounding area like the Royal Naval College, Prime Meridian, and Royal Observatory - among other things. We got off to a bit of a late start but after that things ran pretty smoothly.