Piazzale Michelangelo

View of Florence

Old City Wall

Me!

My granita, which is like a slurpie but better

Katie and I went for a nice walk today up to the Piazzale Michelangelo. You have to climb up a million stairs but the view was totally worth it.

Forza Fiorentina! Ale Viola!

Jordan, Me, Katie & Luisa

The fenced off section is where the other team's fans sit

Last night we went to a football (soccer) game here in Florence. Italians are REALLY into their teams and it's a big deal here. It was freezing out! The best part of the game was that the players were all really cute. We also learned many new words in Italian as the crowds chants insults to the Refs and the other team. I did think it was interesting that the fans of the away team had a different entrance and a fenced off section that they had to sit it. I guess this helps with the fighting. Also for the first time I ever can think of, the line for the mens washroom was about 10 times longer than the Womens. Oh, and Florence won 1-0!

Birthday Fun

My Roommates put up some decorations at our apartment

Dinner

Gelato

And my surprise, a bunny (named Piccante). I am told he will stay small and cute and not get big and scary. When the semester is over he will stay and live in Italy with one of Luisa's family members.

Cinque Terra & Portofino

This weekend I traveled around the Italian Riviera. It was a very relaxing weekend and I really just spent the whole time hiking, exploring, taking pictures and shopping. One of the small towns that we went to, San Fruttuoso, was reachable only by boat. It had a very small beach, an old Monastery and one restaurant. My favorite town was Monterosso, which is the largest of the five towns known as Cinque Terra. I also really enjoyed Portofino, I saw some of the largest yachts ever there and, there was some kind of huge wedding going on and all the men were in these great kilts. There was also a really cool path that took us up to the lighthouse and gave us a great view of the ocean. The water is really clear and an amazing blue color where it's deep. 

Ferragamo Shoe Museum!!

Is there a better way to spend a rainy day than in a shoe museum? Jordan and I went to it a few days ago and had an amazing time. You can't take pictures in there so I only have 1 of inside the museum but it's pretty much tons of shoes that Ferragamo has made over the years, many of them belonged to Marilyn Monroe, Sofia Loren, Audrey Hepburn ect.! At the end instead of walking through a gift store you walk into a boutique set up and they have all these shoes that are still being made by Ferragamo. I was very tempted to purchase a pair but I decided I'd rather eat for the next 3 months!

This week in my cooking class we learned all about coffee. It's a HUGE deal here in Italy and so 2 of the dishes we made we "cooked" with it. The first was a pretty traditional way, we made Tiramisu alla ricotta (normally you use Mascarpone which is a much fattier cheese). You dip the ladyfingers in the coffee to coat them. The second dish we made with the coffee was Linguine spinaci, figgiolini e caffe or Linguine with spinach, green beans and coffee. It sounds so gross but it was actually very tasty. You boil the pasta in the coffee to give it kind of an earthier taste. Very interesting and definetly not something I would have come up with or even tried had I not been in the class. The 2 non coffee dishes were Mousse de ricotta alla mediterranea and Scaloppine con nicciole. I didn't help or taste with the meat dish but the mousse was really good on bread and was very easy to make. Cooking is by far my favorite class here and one of my roommates has it with me which makes it more fun too!

Other interesting things I have observed out about Italy/Italians while I have been here...

1. They love our 90's pop music and you hear it everywhere.
2. They love the Clintons/ Hillary. They know so much about our politics, and I often hear "It's too bad about Hillary". They also don't think Obama is "American enough" to be elected. 
3. They have no problem telling you exactly how to eat EVERYTHING, ex. Not allowing my roommate to order mousse in a cone, Not allowing me to buy a certain cheese when I mention I was making pizza with it, Certain Pastas go with certain sauces, ect. It makes sense now why my Mom never let me mix 2 different kinds of pastas together when I was little.
4. Trash lines the street and doorways at night and a million mini garbage trucks come out and collect it all.
5. My women teachers look like they could go straight to the clubs after class. Women have a "If you've got it, flaunt it" attitude here, no matter their age. In general the women here are much smaller than us Americans.
6. The McDonalds here (We have 2) does not serve breakfast. I found this out the hard way when I was craving a greasy egg and cheese biscuit and it was closed! At 9 am! I don't know what they serve for lunch or dinner but I'm sure I'll find out one of these day.

I made it through my first week of school! My only class on Thursdays is Digital Photography. It's from 9-2:30 and is also my longest class. Last night we had a welcoming dinner with our Advisor. It was actually a lot of fun. It was at this Rowing Club on the bank of the Arno River, right by the Ponte Vecchio. It was a really nice evening as it has been in the 90's all week. I cannot wait for the cooler fall weather as there is NO a/c here!

School

 The Parade to the Piazza

Jordan and I parading!

Yummy snacks

School started on Monday and so far I have been to 4 of my 5 classes. Monday is my long day, I have 3 classes and Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday I have only one class. My Italian class meets on both Monday and Wednesdays but only for an hour and 15 min. All of my other classes are 3 hours long and my Digital Photography class is 6 hours! All of my teachers have been very Italian, but they seem really nice. I really need to work on my Italian b/c my teacher only speaks to us in Italian and it's kind of hard to really understand what's going on all the time.

 I think my favorite was my cooking class. We walked all over the city and our teacher showed us all the best places to eat or buy food and gelato. That night my roommates and I went to GRON which is one of the best Gelato places that our teacher suggested and it was very tasty!

We also went to the Festival of Lanterns or something like that.  We were out for dinner and leaving to walk home when we came upon a parade of people and a band leading them. So we joined in and ended up in a Piazza filled with people, music, lanterns and of course yummy snacks to eat! (pictures are above ^ )

My roommates and I are also starting to plan our fall break trips so if any one has any suggestions I'd love to get an e-mail from you!

Ciao!

Ikea & other shopping adventures

Ikea Rub the boars nose for good luck and you will one day return to Florence Farmers Market in one of the Piazzas A yummy gelato and fruit treat!

I have had the past few days to hang out and shop and get to know the area before classes start on Monday. We did have orientation on Friday but it was fairly typical and boring. One of the Cabainieri (Their police)

came and talked to us about safety. He told us that every semester a few students get run over by mopeds or cars and to watch where we were going because people do not stop for you.

We did find and go to the local Ikea (pronouced E-kay-Ah here). They have a free bus that takes you there from the train station because it's about 20 min. outside of the city. We picked up a few things to make our place look a little cuter and some cookies. Yum!

Tonight we plan on going out for some pizza and then we all start classes in the morning.

I'm Here!

Some of the lovely items for sale at the Mercato View from our window Arno River After about 17 hours of traveling I finally made it to my apartment here in Florence. My flight went pretty well I slept for about 5 hours of it and watched movies and read for the remainder of the time. I did not have much of a dinner because of a food mix up leaving me with only meat choices so when breakfast rolled around I was starving. It was the best croissant I have ever had!!!

When we got off the airplane  we walked down a flight of stairs and then had to be bussed over to the terminal. Upon entering I was met with the smell of BO. The Rome airport is super gross and old. Air conditioning leaked water everywhere and the luggage took forever. I was a mess with all my big suit cases and almost missed my train to the Rome Train station. Trains don't leave on time here which has turned out to work in my favor as I again almost missed my train from Rome Termini to Florence. That was a EuroStar train and was much nicer than the previous. Only problem was I had gotten on the wrong car and could not get to my seat/car, and had no place for my luggage. It was so awful. I finally just gave up and sat on the ground. There were not a lot of people working on the train and no one came by for quite a while. Then one of the ladies who worked there saw me and took pity on me and told  me to sit in the dining room part of the car. Turns out I had gotten on the first class car..whoops.

I finally arrived at the Florence train station and took a cab over to my school and signed in and got my keys. My apartment is super close to the school and the Mercato Centrale. It's small but cute and I like it a lot so far. From seeing on the map where the other apartments are we defiantly lucked out. I'll put up pictures soon! My roommate Jordan was already there so we went out for a walk and to explore a little. We came back and 2 of the other girls were there so we went and bought fruit from the market. One of the girls has family here and is pretty fluent so we relied on her a lot to tell them what we wanted. It's not like at home where you pick out your own fruit and veggies, you are not aloud to touch them and the people who work there get it for you. After that we went to one of the restaurants that we live above and had lunch. 

When we got back I took a nice nap and then our landlord, Vincenzo, came and showed us how everything in our apartment works and set up the Internet. The washing machine is soooo weird and we don't have a dryer, you just hang it out back on a line to dry. All over the city you see people clothes and sheets out to dry. Everything else in the kitchen is normal, just a bit smaller than what we are used to. We have 2 bathrooms (complete with bidets) but only one teeny tiny shower.

After all that we just wandered around for a while, visited the Duomo and then found a pizzeria and had dinner and then walked around for a little more! Tomorrow we plan on doing some more grocery shopping and I want to look for shoes!