I've done so much in the past few weeks I kept waiting for it to calm down a little so I had a chance to write, but then I realized that that's not how life works. I'm going to be busy so I have to take a moment to just do it!
 I'll try to add pictures and see if they do what I want, but I think that is not necessarily going to be the case, so I'll change how I write to match how the pictures are set up.
a few weekends ago I went south of Naples to Amalfi for a free weekend. it was gorgeous down there, but my camera died not long into the whole adventure, so most of the pictures I took are on Natalia's camera, if she still has them. she mentioned loosing pictures... but whatever. I have a few. Mostly of Salerno where we ended up before we went to Amalfi.
Story time: so we decided with our free weekend we wanted to use as much time as possible to see stuff, and not spend too much money on hostels or hotels, or whatever we were

 planning on staying. So we decided to take an overnight bus down to Salerno, which was close to Amalfi, and bigger so it actually has a lot of buses come into it. But Siena is small enough that there were no buses leaving it at the time we wanted to go, so we had to go up to Firenze to go down to Salerno. Didn't really make sense, but we didn't mind finding out about Florence for ourselves before we came as a class. and what a time we had! We had a few hours to wander around and explore. find good spots to eat and fun things to do. so we found bad gelato (it's possible although hard to find. we were just...

 lucky...) and merry-go-rounds and hari crishna people to parade with. (I don't know how to spell their name, but I did get a video of them before and a little during our participation in their parade. they actually have a temple in Spanish Fork that all the students go to in the spring when they throw all the colored dust up in the air. I'm going to go to that next year, if I can find a ride) I got a character done of myself, but I haven't taken a picture of it yet, so I can't show anyone. Finally it was time to go to the bus to sleep all night as we traveled. I don't know if I just don't rightly know how to ride on buses and sleep, but I feel like we did not get half the sleep we should have, any of us. my contacts were really bothering me, and so I took them out and watched the dark landscape pass us by without actually seeing it. then again, it was dark outside, so I didn't miss out on much anyways, but it was a cool experience kinda watching the world without being able to see the detail of it. We got to Salerno and looked horrible (and the bathroom at the train station was just not as helpful as it could be. and it was cold) but we decided that we needed to figure out something to do all day until we could go to the town our hostel was in and check in. so we went Paestum on the train. it was awesome seeing the ancient temples of the

Greeks and Romans. and we were dorks and checked the style of the columns we could see. I guess Professor Standford is having more of an effect on us than we thought she would be...
Well, because I have another weekend of out of town travel to get through, and class starts in an hour, that's probably a lot of what you are going to hear about that weekend. it was a lot of travel for a short stay, but it was pretty none the less. and I ate a lot of fish I've never had before: calamari, shrimp with the claws and feet still attached; I put my feet in the Mediterranian Sea, although we didn't have towels, so I didn't get in like everyone else in our group did. and yet, looking back, I still don't regret that. and our train was awesome. I already explained that a little bit, and I only wish I had a picture of it, but not long after sunrise in Salerno, my camera battery died, so this last picture above is about all I got. Gorgeous, but I would have liked to take more of my own pictures.