Our new home!

Welcome to our second day in Perugia!
However, before I get to that I need to do a quick update. Our last day in Rome was another busy day of walking -this time to the Colosseum via the Church of St Peter in Chains. This church is famous for its relic - the chains which are said to have imprisoned St Peter - and the statue of Moses by Michelangelo. This statue suffers from a translation issue though, because Michelangelo gave Moses a set of horns instead of the rays of light which he should have had. Oops! Our next stop was the Colosseum from a different angle this time, and then it was a walk past the Circus Maximus (the chariot race track of ancient Rome) to the Bocca della Verita`. Sadly, the queue to have a photo next to this famous drain cover stretched around the corner, so we gave it a miss and kept going, winding our way back towards the hotel to collect our luggage for our trip to Perugia. Unfortunately, our departing platform was so far down the opposite side of the station that it felt like we could have walked to Perugia, but we all made it in the end.
The train journey was smooth as usual, although once again the dicovery of wifi on the train meant that some people really didn't appreciate the scenery - at least until we got to Assisi, that is. From there, it wasn't far to Perugia and the excitement of taxi rides in crazy traffic before we settled into our new home.
A quick walk around the historic centre and a delicious dinner out finished off the Easter weekend for us.
This morning we were all up ready for the adventure of enrolling at the Universita` per Stranieri, after breakfast at a little cafe down the hill. The enrolment process began with an entrance test, which was really just filling out a form since I told various teachers there which course I thought our students should do. After a bit of a debate and discussion about whether they should or should not have to do a quick colloquio, they finally relented and saw things my way - no 'chat' in Italian required. Then it was off to join the queue for the rest of the process, which again went unexpectedly smoothly - definitely no visas required this time! I did have to go back at lunch to collect all the student cards and timetables, but at least they were all there waiting.  This afternoon was time to explore aka hit the shops, and everyone seems happy and excited about lessons beginning tomorrow - not so much the 8am lesson start though and three hours straight of Italian Language lessons. Still, they are here to learn, and no doubt there will be many stories to recount tomorrow before exhaustion hits!