Siena has a McDonald's...

As fun as Rome was, I am so excited to be in Siena! Except I don't love homework. But besides homework, it's great! Okay, besides homework and trying to figure out laundry. But there are a lot of things to love about Siena, and I would say two of the most obvious are the abundance of dachshunds and pigeons! Haha seriously, though, I have never seen so many dachshunds in my life. And there are pigeon feathers floating down from above, like, all the time. I think I might be in heaven. No wait, it's just Siena.

The world's cutest pigeon

How cute is that pigeon?? It flew down and landed in the Campo near us and I think I almost had a heart attack because it was so cute! Look how fluffy it is! Okay, enough about the pigeon. The world's cutest pigeon. That was just chilling on the ground, taking a break next to us. With its fluffy feathers. Okay, really now, enough.

I love my host family! My roommate, Katie, and I live with a couple right outside Siena. Our host dad raised two Palio horses and our mom cooks the yummiest, hugest dinners! So huge that Katie and I are in physical pain after we eat and we have to take a nightly passegiata to try to digest. I started out really nervous to speak Italian to my host parents (shocker), but I am getting better! I still panic a little when they talk to me, and all the Italian words I've learned turn into English or French...  But they are really nice and try to slow down and speak up. My host dad always says, "ANNE! COME VA? VA BENE?" They are so cute!

We don't have internet at our home, so we only have the school as a source for internet. But it closes on the weekend, which was a problem because we desperately needed wifi last weekend. After a long day of walking and exploring Siena on Saturday, we realized Saturday evening was our last chance to find an internet cafe or something. But we really didn't want to walk all the way back into town because we were tired and our feet hurt (when they told us Siena is hilly, they weren't kidding). Then we remembered that there is a sign for McDonald's near our house, and McDonald's always has free wifi! So we were like, "Let's just walk to McDonald's - the sign says it's two minutes away!" Sounds easy enough, right? WRONG. For a more detailed story, you should read my roommate's blog, but let's just say, it's by no means two minutes away. Maybe by spaceship or something. The only reason we kept going was the Big Mac wrappers strewn on the grown that signaled that we must be getting closer.

After walking for hours to get there, we had about 15 minutes to use the wifi and we didn't even have time to order our Cokes before we had to turn back to go to dinner. But we've never felt so patriotic! And this isn't the first time I've gone to ridiculous lengths to find a McDonald's - the Frankfurt airport with my family comes to mind. Maybe the saddest part of the story is that later that night, we found out we can get wifi by sitting on the steps to our school, even when it's closed.

p.s. This post's layout is a little weird... But I'm too lazy to fix it! Enjoy!