ciao a roma! we had a fun 1st weekend- friday was interesting. we had our first attempt of navigating the city (wait annie did and rachel just followed-terrrible sense of direction and space) and we ended up being 45 minutes late to our orientation meeting..it was okay though because the us embassy lady was talking to everybody like we were in kindergarten. so we didn't miss out! Then we went on a "practical tour" of the area around our school so we could get acquainted. After that we headed to Trastevere (the area where our friends Bri and Lili reside) and walked around with Bri and Blake..and then went and checked up on Lili who was hit with some kind of illness. She is soo sick but such a good sport. We love her! oh and the whole time we were walking around we took turns carrying rachel's huge hiking backpack that she had forgotten on the bus. so we looked like some serious backpackers all day..we were getting the stare down. oh and it was raining...pretty rough. Saturday we ran some errands in our hood and saw one of the most beautiful male models we have ever seen in our lives we decided. It started raining really hard on us and a really cute italian guy rescued us with his huge umbrella. His name is Valerio and he got our digits. So we might be hearing from him soon..we will keep you updated. He was soo sweet. That afternoon we went on an art tour and hit up the Pantheon and Trevi Fountain. We threw coins in the Trevi so we will def come back to Roma one day.  That night we went on a pub crawl with our amici and it was ridiculous. When the night was over we had proobably walked about ten miles..they should have defined exactly what "crawl" meant. we went to some VIP club...there were like B list actors there along with a transvestie and some dancers wearing bikinis. although we tried our hardest, we didn't get asked to go into the VIP section. We capped off our night with some delicious pasta shared among us, kelsey, and kimbo. Woke up on sunday and walked around beautiful sun shiny roma with our friends...we visited the trevi fountain and the spanish steps. rachel bought some euro shoes and some gelato. then we chilled in piazza del populo which was amazing. a guy selling roses talked to rachel about obama and bill clinton for 30 minutes...so, our first weekend in roma was a success! more great stories to come...diana is still amazing and sweet as ever. we love her to death. She would do anything for us- we are the daughters she never had! ok we are going to sleep now...miss and love you all. ciao!