I am so glad you ended that sentence with torch....

Today I went to Saldi(!), the first day of the month long sales in Italy. I wanted to buy boots to fit in with the locals (everyone wears boots here, they are beautiful). I found some at moderately priced stores- hard to find on the Via del Corso, where people are lined up for blocks to get into Gucci, Dior, etc etc. It's probably the best day to go pickpocketing.

This picture shows how the street was completely full of people. (Look towards the back- the dark color is one solid crowd).

I took some pictures for Manda of the store windows:

I was going to post pictures of my apartment, the studio, etc, but both Mo and Vikki already did...so if you want to see what my apartment looks like, you can see a nice description there. However, I liked my picture of the Campo di Fiori so I will post that.

This is the view from studio. Most of the students live in an apartment right on the campo, you can see it in the picture (just another window, hard to point out). I will eventually put a picture up of my street, it's about a 10 minute walk from the campo and studio. I live with 4 other girls- Mo, Vikki, Rose, and Lauren. I like having the smaller apartment (everyone else is in apartments of 10 people on the campo), because there is more privacy and I get to use the kitchen a lot. So far I made dinner twice, but I'm not sure how good it was. Italians don't really sell tomato or other spaghetti sauces, because they use so many other random things in their pasta. Needless to say, I am not that good of a cook.

Speaking of food, there are markets every day in both the campo di fiori and outside my apartment too, where they sell fresh fruits and vegetables, along with fish, meat, random spices, and kitchen utensils. You can also buy a pair of boxers with part of Michelangelo's "David" on the front... At the supermercato, everything is insanely difficult to find, because there aren't really labels or aisles- there are different small rooms with different foods in them. I still haven't found the eggs. The ceilings in the supermercato are vaulted and frescoed though- quite a surprise to see when you are looking for shampoo on the top shelf.

And randomly:
The evil lock on our door that is impossible to get open whether you are outside or inside. It took us about a week to figure out how to use our keys. Italian doors have locks where you have to turn the keys at least four times. Our front door is horrible too- you have to pull the key out a tiny fraction of a millitrillionith of a millimeter to get it to work. Too far and it won't work, but if, for some crazy reason, you just stick the key in all the way like for a normal lock, it won't work either.

This is the building right out my living room window. It's painted in my favorite shades of blue and green. I love how a lot of the buildings have color- lots of oranges and yellow. Even the dirtier buildings have shades of color where various paint jobs have worn off over the years.

And finally, Adam's lesson on how to use an adaptor correctly: