First Saturday

The past couple days has been crazy. Yesterday Zena and I walked all over Florence. We walked for a total of 5 and a half hours eating nothing but a small sandwich and (of course) some gelato. We were so tired when we finally got back to the apartment that we crashed for about an hour. Then we went out to a supermarket and bought food to contribute to our first dinner in the apartment. It turned out really well and it was nice to sit down and have a nice dinner with a glass of wine. Then after cleaning up a little we went out walking and ran into a few other girls we knew from the program. We simply walked around the rest of the night taking in the sights. It was gorgeous. The weather here is perfect right now. Even the sky seems to be a true velvet black because it isnt polluted by lights like they are in the states. Someone called Florence a renaissance disneyland, and i am beginning to think that this is true.

There is a little Irish pub not too far from us that I think we will start to frequent. It is where we ended up just to talk last night. Today we are going shopping. Other than our obvious english I really feel like we dont fit in very well. I am ready to know some Italian. When we have to buy things I resort to Spanish because they are so similar, but not too much. Everywhere we go they are playing American pop music. I guess there is no escaping our influence. I do love the pace of life here, though. We tend to just sit down and spend hours at a time just relaxing in the piazzas, especially at the Santa Croce near us. It will be nice to study there. We were able to tour the school and surrounding area yesterday and apparently in the winter people have hot chocolate...not the drink, but melted chocolate...to warm up. This is my kind of place, gelato and melted chocolate. The only weird thing is that the cheese has next to no taste here. Although I did find digestive crackers which I loved in London...that is really exciting. Also, I figured out the espresso machine and I know right now I will rely on it way too much and will have to purchase one before I go back to the states. The gas stoves are a lot of fun, the washer takes 2 hours while it stops and starts randomly, I actually enjoy hearing everything my neighbors say and I hope my clothes dont fall down when i hang them up to dry. Life is a little different here and I think a lot will change when class starts. I just hope they arent too time consuming!

My camera, which is fairly new, is being stupid and I hope to figure it out soon and figure out how to upload pictures.