It's Raining.......it must be rainy season

Well it's 3am here right now which means if you are in the United States you are reading this at 9pm. So in your case, if you are in the U.S....then Today, was my last day of orientation. This was probably one of the dumbest days of orientation I have ever witnessed. I had to wake up around 8:15am, with all my extra sleeping was 9am, and had to arrive and Tintori, a street in Florence by 10. On the walk over it started raining, so I got to use my new umbrella and was very satisfied. :) See, I don't mind rain usually but in Florence, here's the issue: Rainy season is in January, February, and some of March. I'm here from the end of January until the end of May. That's a lot of rain taking up my time here. I disapprove. Knowing that the weather today was going to be awful, me and my roommate decide that after our orientation, we would go to Mercato Centrale and pick up more groceries. We got there around 11:30 and went to a tent in the back to look at all of the produce and proceded to go inside the main building. I decided that I wanted to cook something other than pasta and salad, and as a college student, I can't afford to go out every single night. We bought a lot, and I spoke more Italian and I was very proud because I feel like I'm getting a little better at it, but not much. I really need to study. After buying, sausage, bread, cheese, nuts, and produce, we left the market and headed back to our apartment. Almost back, we saw that there was a small flea market of some sort right by our apartment which was awesome! There was a booth with all of these breads there and my favorite one was there so I decided to buy more bread and split it with my friend for lunch. When we got back we both took at 3 hour nap and then I made a fresh dinner. While my roommates had salad a pasta (surprise!) I cooked sausage, peppers, and onions and it was DELICOUS! I was very proud of myself and my roommates were jealous. I was supposed to go to bed after that but I met a kid at one of the bars that is here for school too and I decided to go to his apartment to hang out and it was a lot of fun. I ended up there for about three hours. Night well spent. Now I'm extremely tired and heading to an All American Brunch tomorrow which i heard is amazing at a restaurant called Angels. I'm very excited for this and to get some french toast!! Another great night in Firenze!

Firenze. Part Due

Keeping this blog is a lot harder than I had anticipated because I'm so busy here. But I left off on thursday afternoon. After I had failed looking for that bank, i made my way back to my apartment. When I got back I noticed that all of my roommates were taking a nap. I didn't blame them; it was a tiring day. I knew that I had a lot of emails to write and some little things to do so I sat in my freezing kitchen, like the rest of the apartment, and got as much email writing done as possible. Speaking of freezing though, I found out that if it's winter outside than it's winter inside, which pretty much means, heat does not exist and dont' even bother trying to find any. So as I'm writing this blog, I'm wearing two sweatshirts. During my lonely writing session the long day started to get to me as I began to fall asleep. That's when I decided to take a nap with the rest of my roommates. We all had to attend another meeting at 6:30 on a street off from the Duomo, so I set my alarm and went straight to bed. When me and my roommate's alarm went off, we could not even move a muscle and get out of bed, so for the next ten minutes we sat in bed groaning and moaning until time made us get up. at aroudn 6pm, me and all my roommates left to head towards that meeting. They had no idea how to get there, luckily I looked at a map earlier and knew exactly the location so I led the way. On the way over we saw so many gelato shops and decided to have that for dinner because it looked so delicious but we would pick it up after the meeting. Around 7:30pm, the meeting was over and all of us headed over to the gelatteria to get our gelatos. I got chocolate chip and tiramisu. It was the single most delicious dessert I've ever had! I got it in a cup, but you have the option of getting the gelato in a waffle and if you get a cup, they stick a piece of waffle in your cup and it was so sweet and so soft, it was like taking a bite out of heaven. ITALY TIP: Gelato's cost around 2 or 3 Euro. NOT 8 Euro, which we didn't know until after we bought it. Oh well....it was still delicous. :) On the way back to our apartment, I stopped at a bank where withdrawal of money did not also take out a fee. I was soo lucky to find this bank because the atm charges a lot of money to take out any amount. Yesterday, we had orientation once again and we had to fill out all this paperwork to send off to show that we are staying in the country for a specific amount of months. Before I continue, let me say that yesterday, I had on a pedometer to see how much me and my friend would walk. Anyway, I had forgotten to make a photocopy of the single smallest stamp on a piece of paper so I had to run 3 blocks to a store, pay 10 euro cents and run back to return all my paperwork before the office closed. When that was over, me and Brittany went to la Piazza Santa Croce and took a bunch of pictures and then started to head over to the Fun for Florence Office. On the way, we passed this cute little cafe and we saw panini's in the window of a store called Caffe Verdi, so we decided to stop and get some lunch. We both got a ricotta, spinach, and proscuitto panini. Most amazing thing ever! The owner's were so cute; an elderly man and woman, I'm not sure if they were a couple though. After we finished, we continued on to the Fun for Florence office and paid for our ticket to go to Venice next week for the huge Carnivale they have every year. The man that was helping us also works at a club that we happened to be going to that night and he said he would give us free coat check and we both thought that was very sweet of him. The last item on my list for that day was to rent a hairdryer. Yes, rent a hairdryer. Strangely enough, this store was the single coolest store I had been to so far. The lights in there that this man sold were outrageous and very funky, very my style. We bought a hairdryer which he told us would could sell back when we were done so we were estatic about that. Around 3:45, we arrived back at our apartment and just hung out until our walking tour for school. We were shown all of the buildings where we could have classes. Honestly, I found it very boring and pointless, but it was time something to do and added more miles to my pedometer. The amount of miles I walked that day with my friend? 10.5! Miles! It was ridiculous. but by the end of the night...it was like around 14 miles. I can't feel my feet at all right now. By the time that was finished, at 6:30, everyone had to get ready to go to Space Discoteca, the biggest dance club in Firenze for a orientation party from 7:30-9:30. We recieved free drinks (which were horrible), food, and music. Earlier I mentioned club twentyone which was throwing a huge party for the beginning of the semester, but you couldn't get there until around 12am at the earliest. It wasn't too far away so my friend and I walked there but it got very very crowded and clostrophobic. I think every single student from any school was there last night. It was crazy so I left pretty early. Twentyone would definitely be more fun without hundreds of people on top of each other. But that's just my opinion. It's only five days into it and I've done so much and will continue to write more on my adventures in Firenze! :D

Firenze, Italia

So four days ago, I left for a semester abroad in Florence, Italy. The plane left on Monday at 5:25pm and arrived in Rome, Italy around 8am Tuesday (Keep in mind there is a six hour time difference). My plane arrived in Rom about 45 minutes later than we had expected and my next flight started to board at 9:05. Here's the thing: I have NO clue how to get around foriegn airports, and then you have to take these stupid buses over to your plane. You would think that you could just board like in the US, right from the main building but noooooooo, you have to go to your terminal, hand in your ticket and jump onto a tram looking thing over to your plane, so that pretty much means that if you landed late, than your never getting onto that tram, which means no plane ride. Luckily, my running a lot came in handy and I booked it through the airport and made it right when they starting taking tickets. I have never sweated so much in my life. Once I got on that plane, what I saw was not what I was expecing. It looked like St. Patrick's Day threw up all over the plane. Green Green Green! Not that I don't like the color green, but I mean, this was a little too much, and it was that ugly shade of green, you know? That flight was only an hour long, and I found some more students from my school going over to Florence too. So when we got off the plane in Florence, Finally!! :) I saw Maggie, the woman in charge of international studies at Endicott and she took me over to a woman who gave us our keys to our apartment. After getting my two fifty-pound bags into this huge van with a bunch of other kids' luggage, I was driven with my friend over to my street in Florence. This apartment is BEAUTIFUL! There are two bathrooms, one huge kitchen, a living room, tv, three bedrooms, a couch, a huge hallway, and best of all, WIFI! :D After unpacking all of my stuff with my roommate, Brittany R came over so that we could go get our cell phones. This cell phone, let me tell you, looks like it was from 1980. You remember, those ugly non flip, retarded ring tones, thick gray phones? Yep, that would be mine. Omg! the best feature about this phone though? The alarm, when it goes off is a Brittish woman's voice going "Wake up! It's 7:30! Wake up! It's 7:30" and when she says 30 it sounds like thiiiiiiiiiiirty. (say it with a brittish accent, it'll make you laugh, it does for me) hahahaha. After that, I went by the river and crossed the Ponte Vecchio, sooo beautiful! Huge bridge with stores all over it; mostly jewelry stores though. Then I saw Brittany R's apartment which is so quaint and cute but i love mine still. So yesterday, I went to fill out papers at a location where i will be taking some of my classes and yeah, that walk.....thirty minutes! It's horrible! and I have a class there all four days of the week. After that Brittany D and I walked over to Via Guelfa where my cooking classes are to see the distance and locations and it takes another fifteen minutes from that lsat place but it's a lot closer to my apartment. On the way, I passed the Duomo, the huuuge Dome you see pictures of everwhere. On the way back to my apartment, we stopped at the Mercato Centrale which is this really cool fresh food market and other types of markets as well. But I just got food yesterday and I got to use the very little knowledge of italian that I had hahaha. But last night was soooo much fun. Me and some friends went on a bar crawl and what that is, is you pay 10 Euros (15 dollars) to have two guys take you around to about 4 or 5 bars and when you walk in you get free beer, sangrias, or shots. It all depended on the bar you were at. But I had a blast and didnt' bring my camera unforunately but met AMAZING people from Kentucky University who I'm going to hang out with this weekend and next week as well. I got back to my apartment around 2-2:15am and went to bed after I ate pizza with my roommate as a late night snack :). Today I had the beginning of my orientation and I took my Italian placement exam which is kinda didn't know a lot but that wasn't my fault. But I'm still placed in Italian Intermediate 1 which I really wanted so I'm happy about that. :D On the way back to my apartment, I had to walk alone, and I walked through La Piazza de Republica. I took a couple of pictures and went looking for a bank but I failed miserably. :( I'll go out maybe later today. It's almost about 3 o'clock on my third day here and already I have done so much. I love it here and can't wait to see what the next four months bring.

Ciao!