Almost forgot about class

Buon giorno!! 

Woke up at the crack of dawn once again today because I heard people shouting in Italian on the street. I guess that adds to my experience? I haven't had school in nearly 2 months and have been enjoying all this free time so much that I almost forgot I came to Florence to take classes. I'm actually looking forward to having some sort of set schedule again. They start today!

My schedule:

Mon: 

•  Exploration of Wine Culture in Italy 

• Italian Language Intermediate 3 (I surprised myself by testing into the class I needed for credit without a problem!)

Tues: 

• Renaissance Art in Florence

• World Religions

Wed:  

• Art, Food, Fashion and Wine: Creative Advertising of Italian Destinations

• Italian

Each class is 2.5 hours long and italian is an hour and fifteen minutes. I can't remember the last time I've had this much free time! This will also be the first time that I haven't worked since I started my first job my sophmore year of highschool. It's strange to think about and scary/sad because it seems like I should have a lot more money than I do. But I'm so happy to have more free time because there is so much to do and see.

Little update from yesterday...I had what was probably one of the most delicious dinners of my life at Buca San Giovanni (went out again...oops!) This was a perfect Tuscan meal: Risotto, bistecca Fiorentina (SO GOOD!!), a strawberry/chocolate custard dessert and of course a glass of Chianti during dinner & limoncello afer dessert! My favorite mean here by far. 

We also went to an Italian mass at Santa Croce (very close to our apartment!)

It was beautiful on the inside!! I think we're going to try a new church every week. Well looks like I'm starting my day early! Ciao!

Meeting family from Italia!

Yesterday my cousin Laura came to Florence to visit! She's 26 and a student in Pisa, which is only an hour away. I haven't met her before and was really excited because we've been in contact through facebook. She's taken English before but doesn't know too much...and I'm still trying to work on remembering Italian! Needless to say we were actually able to communicate pretty well!

She showed me and two of my friends around Florence since there's still so much we haven't seen! This gave me a chance to take some cliche touristy pictures...yes! :) I can't wait to revisit the spots she showed us to really take time and explore. 

It was so exciting getting to meet and hang out with her! I was surprised at how much Italian I remembered and how easy it was to communicate. It was really great practice too!! I hope to visit her in Pisa soon (after I start Italian classes so I'm more fluent!) 

After she went back to Pisa, my roommates and I walked around until we found a place to eat dinner (so many restaurants here so we thought that would be an easy way to go and find something new!) We ended up enjoying a delicious dinner at Cibréo. The main dishes were 14 euro so we assumed they'd be pretty big portions and decided to split 3 things between 5 of us. First sign this wasn't a good idea...the owner walked passed the waiter taking our order and literally started laughing after he read it. Second sign: the first dish he brought out was chicken (can't remember exactly what it was but it was served with some of the best sauce I've ever tasted!) and it was literally the size of two chicken nuggets....so that split 5 ways was interesting hahah. Lesson learned! & we wonder how everyone knows we're American right away?! The waiter was kind enough to help us out though and brought us 2 other dishes as a "gift." It was flan with meat sauce and cheese (tastes much better than the way I describe this...I promise). Sooo nice of him!! 

I'd definitely go back to this place for a nice dinner. It was a great atmosphere, it felt very private because it was smaller and each dish was beautiful! Apparently, the place is very popular because there was a line out the door when we left. Successful dinner but I think we're just cooking at the apartment tonight...

ORD-ZRH-FLR

I CAN’T BELIEVE I’M IN ITALY!!!! After too much paperwork, too many hours of flying and waiting, I’m finally at my apartment in Florence!! My flight and everything went really well…although I couldn’t sleep at all. It was a little scary traveling by myself considering I get confused in O’Hare…but I made t without a problem! The best part was flying over the Swiss Alps. It’s absolutely amazing to see all of the mountains from the plane. I tried to take a picture but my camera died so I’m going to try again on my way home. Oh and because I flew with Swissair, we were given Swiss chocolate at the end of both flights…yum!!

Finding my apartment was a different story. I was dropped off in front with 2 suitcases, 1 bag and a backpack outside of my building. While I was able to get into the building, there were 2 apartments per floor and I had NO IDEA which one was mine. I spent at least a good ten minutes trying to find it and haul my suitcases up the little staircase. I rang the doorbell of the first apartment because I was so confused and some woman (I think she was Italian) opened the door and seemed pretty annoyed by my confusion and told me to look upstairs. After a couple failed attempts of calling home and the housing office I tried my keys to apartment number two and thankfully that worked. 


Also, to conserve energy, the lights in the apartment hallway go out after a minute or two. I of course, wasn’t aware of that and absolutely freaked out when I was standing in the pitch-black hallway still clueless on where my apartment was. Literally reminded me of the start of a bad scary movie…(Hostel? Taken?) Good thing is I’m here now and it’s so nice! The kitchen is big and we have every pot/pan/plate imaginable (can’t wait to cook!) I have four roommates and I’m sharing a room with one…it’s pretty big and overlooks our street (Via dell’Agnolo). We also have a TV, wireless internet and the cutest little balcony ever!! The dryer is on the balcony too…aka clothes pins and rope. 

Since we were all pretty tired we didn’t do too much tonight. We walked around the city and let ourselves get lost for a while. It is amazing!!! Sooo many pizza and gelato places! It looks like there are a lot of cool places to shop too but everything was closed since we went out late. I also saw the Duomo, which is amazing. I was completely speechless it’s HUGEEE! I’m really excited to explore more during the day! We have orientation most of tomorrow so I’ll be busy with that but I’ll try and post pictures sometime soon.

Ciao :)