Dear mom, there is so much to catch up on!

So I will try to start from the beginning.
We spent last weekend in Castellammare! Castellammare is in the region of Italy called La Campagnia. La Campagnia is the region just south of Lazio, which is where Rome is. So, early friday morning we hopped on a bus that took us to the relatively small town of Castellammare. It was a beautiful small town on the bay of Naples with a great view of Vesuvius. We were staying at an institute which exists to excavte the ruins of ancient Stabiae so a few hours after we arrived we went on a tour of their excavation site.
The villas at Stabiae supposedly were places that the Roman elite would visit during the summer and they were absolutely amazing! We were able to see bedrooms, bathrooms, dining halls, roman baths, and beautiful gardens.
After the tour Danya, Avery, Dan, and I took a walk into the town of Castellammare. On the way we stopped into a bakery that smelled absolutely delicious. After gawking at all the pastries for a few minutes the woman who worked their gave us each a huge meringue for free! After that, he son came out from the back and gave us each one of his favorite cookie for free! We then each picked out what we wanted to buy and on our way out they asked us to return sometime and gave us more cookies for free! They seemed so pleased that we had gone into their small bakery, it was quite fun. Then we continued to meander around the town until it was time to head back to the intstitute for dinner. After dinner a few of us along with the young American woman who worked at the institute went to a wine bar where we sampled three wines native to the area. It was a fun day, but very long and very tiring.
The next day we woke up early and headed to Pompeii. We had a great tour guide who showed us a lot of the city and then we had time to explore on our own. On of my favorite parts was seeing the area where the school for the gladiators was. After that we went to the villa of mysteries and then headed back to Castellammare. Once we arrived in Castellammare almost all of us took a tram to the top of one of the mountains in the area. The tram ride was 8 minutes long and very scary, but totally woth it once we got to the top. The view was amazing. We took a walk around the area and found a heard of goats. We heard them coming from a ways away because of their bells. It was so neat! That night I was so exausted that I just stayed home and slept. We had to wake up early to go to the Naples museum and then we took the bus home. All in all it was a fun and successful weekend away from Rome but it was also very nice to get back to our dorm.
The rest of this week has been pretty regular, nothing too exciting has been happening because we have had a lot of work. I am getting very excited to go to Vienna and Bratislava this weekend. We made plans to see the Vienna Philharmonic and other than that we are just going to explore. Let me know if you have suggestions!