Sleeping In

So today was a very lazy Sunday. I slept until 10 a.m. and woke up alone in the apartment, since Erika and Bethany slept over at the six-person apartment after going out last night.

I didn't know this until I woke up and found myself alone, but I was able to locate them by sending a few Facebook messages. I spent the next hour or two alone on Facebook and reading "Every Day In Tuscany," a book I brought with me by Frances Mayes, the author of "Under the Tuscan Sun."

Once le Ragazze di Aprile were reunited, we made mozzarella, spinaci e pomodori paninis on our George Foreman panini press and cafe Americano in our espresso maker (because we have both of those things - I can feel your jealousy) for lunch.

We spent the rest of the day lounging around the house until I went to the four-girl apartment for spaghetti dinner with Lydia and Caitlin. It was a brief but relaxing evening hanging out and learning a new card game from Lydia (Dutch Blitz; similar to double solitaire; lots of fun, even though Lydia crushed me).

I got home just in time for my 8 p.m. Skype date with the one and only Mike Cooknick (Oh my god Mike Cooknick the Mike Cooknick I know him!). And just got off Skype with him and my mom. It was so good to see them, even though we realized there wasn't much to talk about because of the blog (although we must have found something to discuss since we talked for two hours).

Anyhow, now it's time for a few more cookies (we found chocolate chip cookies at the 99 Cent store that are actually really good) and maybe a little reading before bed. Tomorrow is the first day of classes and I have Italian at 10:45. Luckily, it's not a super early day, but it will be early enough.

So buona notte, amici! And I will write again soon.

A Day With My Favorite Italian

It's the weekend! At last.

This week has been amazing, but I am so looking forward to sleeping in tomorrow.

Bethany and I headed out early again this morning for our last 9 a.m. orientation with Gloria. We just made it on time, even though I was dragging because the brand new tennis shoes I wore all day yesterday gave me really bad blisters. I really wish I had a pedometer to see how much I've walked this week. I heard someone in one of the groups bought one and walked two miles in the two hours with Gloria yesterday. I believe that.

Today's lesson was on art and how Michelangelo "liked to make fun and so he was boonched in the nose" (as Gloria put it). That's why his nose is broken in so many portraits of him, apparently.

Gloria also told us that Michelangelo's David was carved out of another sculptor's rejected marble. The other sculptor started to carve a person out of the marble, gave up, and gave it to Michelangelo, who refurbished it into the David. Talk about flip this rock.

We toured the sculptures at Piazza della Signoria - the gateway to the Museo Uffizi - walked through the alleyway (a work of art in itself with its own sculptures of famous Florentines and actors posing as living sculptures) and wandered around the Arno and Ponte Vecchio while Gloria talked about tourists and provided more history about the Ponte Vecchio. I missed much of this last part because I was having trouble getting close enough to hear her mouse voice. At least I already know one important thing about Ponte Vecchio : Dr. Lecter himself spent some time hanging out there.

"I came halfway around the world to watch you run, Clarice."

Yes. Because anywhere Hannibal is must be a prime vacation spot... And on a lighter note, I stood there today!

We also toured some of the ancient churches here. Many of them look very plain and unimpressive from the outside, but are just as gorgeous and full of art as any museum (and much more amazing than many museums I've seen) on the inside.

I didn't get any good photos in the churches because none of them allowed photos without a flash, but it was a fun tour nonetheless.

After this, I walked to Il Duomo where I sat on the front steps and waited for Elena, one of my best friends from high school, who is currently studying in Rome for three weeks and was able to come visit me in Firenze.

We caused quite a scene and probably looked like really obnoxious Americans running to meet each other in the Piazza. But it was so awesome to be able to hang out with an old friend from home in ITALY. I mean, who does that? Especially at our age. We're unbelievably fortunate.

The first thing we did was get paninis for lunch and head to a sunny bench on the Piazza to eat while we caught up on what Elena has been doing with her Italian class in Rome and what I have been doing here in Firenze.

While we ate, we fed pigeons bits of our sandwiches, until an Italian woman next to us scolded her son for imitating us... oops. Dumb Americans.

We spent the rest of the afternoon shopping at the outdoor market at Piazza della Republica, where I bought a scarf and was accosted by some man trying to sell me a leather jacket. I tried on a jacket in the style I've had my heart set on, but the guy was so pushy, I ended up not buying. Also, he dumped water on my sleeve and tried to light me on fire to prove how durable the jacket was. These vendors are intense.

Elena and I then made our way back to the statues we toured in the morning and took our photos posing as some of our favorite famous Florentines.

A living statue dressed as a really creepy cupid blew us kisses when we walked past. Elena took a picture of a really fluffy dog that clearly thought it was a lot tougher than it actually was since it barked and growled at her.

We walked along the Arno while Elena took a lot of the photos I've already taken this week. It was hard to get over the fact that we were in Firenze together hanging out together just like we've done since high school (but in a much grander scale today).

Once we got too tired to keep going, I took Elena back to my apartment for a tour and to meet the roommates before the two of us went to Il Giardino del Barbano Pizzeria where I got pizza with my roommates our first night. We shared a delicious funghi pizza and salad, then sat around awkwardly wondering how to pay. The Sexy Waiter from our first night took our money from the table and we left, but not before we saw the waiter pointing at our table and saying something, at which the other waiter and the cooks laughed... Fantastic.

Elena hung out at our apartment again for about an hour before leaving to catch her train back to Rome.

Bethany and Erika just went out with the rest of our group, but I'm staying home to watch Italian TV and relax before an early bedtime. I'm wiped out from all the walking today, but it was another perfect day in Firenze. I can't wait to sleep in tomorrow and spend the day relaxing.

Buona notte, tutta!

Friday, Friday

Friday. Day two of orientation with Gloria.

Today we woke up way late - too much of a good time last night - and ended up making it to Gloria's class in the middle of a lecture on the train system in Italy. At least we arrived before the class left on our second field trip, and even before a few of our classmates.

Once everyone was there, Gloria took us on another long walk; this time to the Firenze Stazione Santa Maria Novella (SMN Train Station) to learn how to ride a train. Along the way, we stopped at another open air market so that Gloria could do some grocery shopping...

At the SMN, we learned how to read the train schedule, find our departure platform and buy tickets. I've been on one or two trains in my life, but only because of Michael's childhood obsession with trains - we never used a train to travel, only for fun. So I didn't really know much about how to catch a train. It seems though that it's just like in the United States except you must stamp your own ticket with your departure time to validate it, rather than have a conductor stamp it. I expected this because my aunt Barb has been to Italy before and taken trains and warned be about this, but it was helpful seeing it all firsthand with Gloria.

After the train station, we walked to a three-story bookstore nearby that Gloria recommended as a great place to study. It is a lot like a giant Borders with a cafe area and book nooks everywhere. The third floor (second in Italy) even has an extensive English section for fiction and nonfiction books. It was definitely a cozy and inviting place, and one I will have to return to soon.

This time, instead of leaving us in a random part of Florence after our tour, Gloria directed us back to Cerchi and we were able to find our way home from there. Bethany and I thought we would be able to eat lunch, nap and have a relaxing afternoon with nothing to do but go to Petra's "girl talk" session in the late afternoon. Turns out we were wrong.

While chilling at la casa and checking Facebook, I got a message from Petra to come to Cerchi for a meeting that started in half an hour. The meeting was with a post office official to fill out more paperwork associated with our stay permits. Bethany and I ended up running out to Cerchi instead of napping, grabbing ham and egg sandwiches at a corner cafe and eating them on the way like typical Americans.

Third Lesson Learned: Italians NEVER walk and eat. They also can't understand the American trend of carrying a water bottle. When we try to buy normal sized water bottles at the grocery store, they get confused and try to sell us large bottles too big to carry.

The post office meeting was kind of a joke. We sat around while they checked everyone's passport one at a time for an hour. Then several of us had to stick around for a special orientation for Honors students by Marcello and Marijka that lasted another hour, before we finally had the girls' meeting with Petra.

This meeting was not too bad. It was mainly a lecture on basic safety, like not leaving your drink unattended or walking alone, and a chance to ask Petra anything that was on our mind.

We finally left that meeting around 5 p.m. and used the rest of the evening before dinner to go to the 99 Cent store with the rest of the girls in our group and do a little bit of shopping and walking around. We went to the grocery store and, for the first time this trip, bought enough food to stock our refrigerator and pantry.

I've been craving an omelet for the past few days, so I was excited to buy eggs, until I realized that the eggs in Italy are ultra-pasteurized. Instead of being refrigerated, they were sitting on a shelf next to the milk (which, disturbingly enough, also does not need to be refrigerated in Italy) and bread. Weird. But I really wanted them, so I bought a carton of four to try this weekend.

I was also really happy to see peanut butter here, until I saw that it was 8 Euros for a jar half the size of the Jiff I'm used to. I passed on the peanut butter and bought a cheap can of peanuts instead. :(

Bethany, Erika and I took our purchases back to the apartment where we cooked a frozen pizza by cutting it in half and baking each half separately in the toaster oven. Toast in this oven takes about ten minutes for two slices, so we put the first half pizza in for twenty. It burned. Round two was much better.

We ended the evening at the six-girl apartment for girls night with the whole group (minus Glenn and Kevin, obviously). It was wonderful drinking Italian wine and eating fresh bread dipped in olive oil and parmesan cheese. We talked, laughed, played Pit, and painted our nails before going home late. It would have been the perfect end to a perfect week - if it was the end. We still have one more orientation tomorrow morning with Gloria.

But then it's the weekend in Firenze. :)

Keeping Up With Gloria

Day Three was another early start, but not nearly as rough as yesterday. Bethany and I went to our first orientation class while Erika slept in for her first class at 11 a.m.

The good thing was, Bethany and I managed to find our way to Cerchi without our guide AND arrived on time for orientation. When we got there, we met Gloria who will be teaching my Elementary Italian 1 class this semester. She went over some more ground rules and drew us a map of Florence complete with some background on various founding families in Florence including the Medicis who built the Ponte Vecchio ("old bridge") over the Arno in the 1500's in order to have a quick escape to the countryside on the opposite side of the river. Gloria said the family needed this bridge because so many people hated them and wanted to kill them... Lovely.

After this, we went on a field trip to learn how to shop for ourselves. We visited a regular mercado, outdoor mercado and a supermercado to learn how to buy food in the three most common types of Florentine markets.

The supermercado was very similar to an American supermarket. It was large and had aisles just like in America. One difference that I really liked was that they have two-in-one shopping cart and basket combos. You pick up a basket by the door that can be used like a regular basket, or you can pull out a handle on the front to drag the basket around on two wheels. I saw one woman earlier in the week while walking past a mercado, dragging a shopping basket and just thought she was being lazy, but apparently not.

Once we finished touring the supermarket, Gloria announced she was leaving and that we could find our way home. Then she literally turned around and booked it out of the store. Bethany, Katy and I, and most of the rest of our group, took off after her, and chased her through Florence until we got to a road we recognized.

It turned out fine after all. Bethany and I met a woman from England who directed us to her favorite restaurant, but it wasn't open yet (this was just before 11 a.m.). Instead we went into a tiny convenience store along the way home and ordered sandwiches from a woman who didn't speak any English.

This was my first encounter with someone in Italy who does not speak any English. Luckily, I whipped out my high school Spanish and ordered una baguette con tacchino, formaggio del gorgonzola e pesto, and got a delicious turkey sandwich. I heard Spanish was a suitable replacement for Italian, and so far that theory has been working quite well. I've found the Spanish is close enough in a lot of cases that I just need to tweak my pronunciation a little bit in order to be understood.

I guess some parts of my North Hills education did pay off.

We brought our sandwiches home to eat just in time to meet Claire, who showed up unexpectedly to see if our apartment had been cleaned yet. It hadn't, of course. When we moved in, Claire told us the cleaning lady had needed to rush out for something and would return to finish the job later in the day. Our beds were clean, but the place obviously had not been dusted or swept in at least weeks. We waited all day for the cleaning lady to come, but she never did. And as of now, she still has not returned.

Claire promised to get on the apartment's case and have someone come to clean tomorrow. She also fixed our TV which hasn't been working, and we passed time between lunch and our next meeting watching Spaghetti Westerns (Aha Moment: Spaghetti Westerns are so titled because they're made in Italy...duh; I had a brain meltdown there for a little bit) on the Italian equivalent of TV Land.

At 3:00, we had our last cohort meeting with Deb and Stan to say goodbye to them as their plane back to Kent leaves tomorrow. We're all very sad to see them go because they really have been our Italian Mom and Dad this week. But Marcello, Petra and the rest of the KSU Florence staff are just as wonderful, so I know we're in excellent hands.

After this meeting, we walked around some more, then came home and made spaghetti, which we ate while watching Italian cartoons and updating Facebook (oh, 21st Century). We also marveled some more over the fact that we hear ambulances driving up and down the main streets all day long - I told you the drivers here are dangerous.

Erika got sick from eating too much chocolate (amateur) and went to bed around 9. Bethany and I headed out to Finnegan Irish Pub a few blocks away from our street, where we met the rest of our "family" (the main point of Deb and Stan's parting speech was to impress upon us the importance of looking out for one another since we are one big family now).

Thursday night at Finnegan is trivia night. Only minutes after arriving at the pub, I won a lovely green (of course) Finnegan's t-shirt. The contest was to solve an anagram written on poster board and held by the bartender who stood on a chair by the door. I managed to unscramble "Luciano Pavarotti" to claim my prize.

Some of the other contests included a geography quiz, a movie poster identification quiz, a word origin quiz, and a challenge where the bartender played a thirty second song clip and we had to write down the song name and artist. My team, "Raging Bulls," came in fourth place overall in the trivia, which was pretty pathetic considering most of our competitors were drunk, but we had fun anyhow.

We ended the night by getting a late night snack at an Indian market and heading home. There is another orientation field trip tomorrow, so I need to get to bed asap. My feet are killing me. I'll have to try my new tennies tomorrow. I've never walked so much in my life! I have no idea how people gain wait here because all we do is walk. Hopefully that will keep up so I don't pack on any pasta pounds. :)

Ciao ciao!

... And Ordering Cake From John Lennon

Day Two began bright and early with an 8 a.m. meeting at Il Duomo and a walk to some unidentified giant palace(?) for an introduction to the Florence program by Marcello, Dean of Florence Study Abroad.

The only problem with that was my flatmates and I ended up being late because we got locked in. Yes. Locked in our own apartment, and it took a good ten minutes to escape. There's some kind of deadbolt in the door that we can't control yet and apparently it chose this morning to show itself.

Bethany called Kevin and explained the situation to him so that he could relay the message to the rest of our group. Kevin told the group we got lost in our apartment (the smallest of the apartments at only four rooms), so of course we looked like idiots showing up late at Il Duomo. (Too bad Niccolo wasn't around for that one; we will never redeem ourselves around him).

When we all finally made it to the introduction, Marcello talked about what to expect of our time here, what is expected from us and ground rules for el Palazzo dei Cerchi. As hard as I tried to stay alert, the fact that I'm still not fully recovered from jetlag and that the building we were in was unheated and bitterly cold, I hate to admit that I drifted a bit during all of this.

Then Marijka, another professor, gave a very frightening speech that I'm pretty sure focused on all the students she's seen come through the program in the past two decades who died here due to drinking too much and 1) falling off a balcony, 2) falling in the Arno River or 3) being punted by a vehicle (which, to be fair, could happen to anyone, these Italians are psychos behind the wheel... or handlebars... or reigns).

By the time she finished I was shivering violently and couldn't feel my extremities, despite my layers and stylish pseudo-Italian scarf (a Christmas gift from the bro). I lost my flatmates in the crush of 130 students racing to escape into the comparative warmth of January afternoon sunshine, but ended up with the four guys from our group.

The five of us spent our two hour lunch break getting sandwiches at a tiny cafe and wandering down the banks of the truly breathtaking Arno River.

While down there, we saw some interesting sites, including a band of gypsies, a storefront of massive dead fish, postcards celebrating "the genitals of Firenze (on the statues at Museo Uffizi)," and this LIVING human statue.

Yes, this is a REAL person. Not moving. At all.

We finally made our way back to Cerchi to fill out stay permits and other paperwork before a snack reception hosted by the professors.

After that, it was another roommate night. We meandered around Firenze after leaving Cerchi in search of our first bottle of wine in Italy.

We got lost in a very wealthy part of the Arno, walking past unbelievably grand hotels right on the riverbank. It took us about an hour to get back to the Duomo and find our way home, but we spent that hour window shopping and not getting hit by cars.

Second Lesson Learned: Erika has the directional sense of a homing pigeon. No matter where we are in Florence and even though we're usually somewhere we've never been, Erika is able to sniff out our location and lead Bethany and me in the right direction. I shudder to think what would happen to us without Erika leading us around like a mother duck. (Although she does tend to walk across the streets and continue going whether we are with her or not.)

After this lovely little adventure, we returned home with our wine and took a minute to settle down before heading out to dinner.

We were going to go to the pizza place down the street where we ate our first night and appreciated the fine view of our sexy Italian waiter.

Turns out Sexy Waiter doesn't work Wednesdays. The shop was closed, so we backtracked to a cafe right on the corner of our street.

I was in love the second we walked in. The heavenly sounds of "Please, Please Me" serenaded us as the host seated us at a little table by the window.

The Beatles kept it up all dinner long, with our waiter and John Lennon himself singing along just to impress us Americans (or so it seemed).

I had absolutely perfect spaghetti alla carbonara while singing along to the Beatles' early albums, pumped out of a laptop courtesy of the John Lennon look-alike cook.

He really did look exactly like John Lennon circa 1969, complete with owl eye specs. We spent our whole evening trying to sneak a photo of him without his noticing. We failed, but when we got up to pay our bill, John met us at the register.

He was a complete sweetheart, asking us if we were students and teaching us how to say "a piece of cake," una feta di torta after we ordered a coconut and chocolate slice of cake.

It turns out John's real name is Alessandro and he's our new best friend. For real. We love him. We'll be getting a picture with him as soon as we work up the nerve to ask in Italian. La Casa de Aprile (Bethany's new name for us) will definitely be making many trips to Alessandro's Beatle-inspired ristorante this semester.

And now, a little wine to warm up since the sun has gone down, the heat has turned off and the afghans have come out.

Buona notte!