I had the apartment to myself this weekend. Bethany left for Paris Thursday afternoon and is still travelling. Erika left for Interlaken Thursday night and is home now.
With most of our class going either to Paris or Interlaken (I decided to save my money since neither of those places is on my list of top destinations), that left me alone in the apartment with only Caitlin and Kate left from our group in Firenze.
Friday I slept in and spent the morning reading, doing dishes and updating Facebook. I met Cait and Kate in the afternoon to do some shopping at San Lorenzo, then go back to the girls' apartment to make chicken nugget parmesan. We tried to watch "Hannibal" on Netflix in honor of being in Firenze, but a slow internet connection meant it was taking hours to load. Instead we played more Dutch Blitz.
Saturday we had planned to spend the day museum hopping at the Uffizi, Palazzo Piti and the Accademia. But Caitlin called as I was heading out the door to meet the girls at the Uffizi at 10 to let me know she and Kate had slept in... We ended up not getting to the Uffizi until almost 3:00...
I don't want to talk about it.
The Uffizi was really cool though. Not as good as the museums we saw in Rome, but still pretty awesome.
The first floor of the Uffizi misleads you. There are only two display rooms and it takes no time at all to get through them. I thought, as we made our way to the second floor, that we could be out of the museum in two hours.
Boy was I wrong.
The second floor of the Uffizi is ENDLESS. We went from room to room to room. We figured out about three rooms in that there is a proper order to viewing the museum, but we were hopelessly out of order at that point. That combined with the fact that everything is written in Italian made it difficult for us to navigate or understand what was going on. Luckily, we're going back with Rocky in a few weeks so he can explain everything to us then.
Despite not understanding what any of the artwork was or what it meant, I enjoyed looking at everything. The Uffizi is home to the Medici family's personal collection of sculptures and paintings, including work from Michelangelo, Bernini, Caravaggio, Giotto, and Brunelleschi. I'm excited to go back and do it again with a guide because there was too much to see in the four hours we were there.
Today I again didn't do much because I was home alone still. Katy and Jess went to Genoa for the weekend, so I couldn't hang out with them, but they got home last night and the three of us plus their friend Grace went to an English speaking church for study abroad and foreign exchange students.
The church was interesting. It was in a real church, but of course it was all college students. It began like h2o in Kent, a live band, everyone singing praise songs off a projection on the wall. The songs weren't ones I knew, but the band was really into it. Things got a little strange though when the band leader asked if anyone wanted to come up and give a testimonial. Some guy in the back got up and took over the service. He sang a song, he told a story, he sang again, he read from the Bible, he sang again. I could see the band members exchanging glanses with the guy I assume had been scheduled to preach, but no one said anything.
When they guy from the back finally finished, another girl got up to read her favorite Bible verse, and then another to share a snapshot of her life in Florence and her challenges into adjusting to being in a new place with new people.
The pastor (I guess that's who he was) got up after that and did a five minute speed through of the sermon he had prepared, then the band closed us out.
After service, we were shepherded through a door, down the hall and up a flight of stairs into a lobby where they had a mismatched assortment of teacups sitting out for us to choose from on one table and cookies, chocolate wafers and Nutella pie on another. Katy, Jess, Grace, and I snacked and mingled a little bit with some of the other students (including a girl named Sarah who pulled me aside to tell me how much she loved my coat) before heading to our respective apartments.
Now Bethany and Erika are home and ready to tell me about their weekends, which sound decidedly more interesting than mine. I feel like I need to make up for this lazy weekend by booking a bunch of weekend trips asap. All I have officially booked as of now is Venice Carnival this Saturday. I feel like I need to step it up this week and start planning before another month is gone...
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