You Had Me at Firenze

Today I went to Florence, here it is called Firenze which I think is a much prettier way of saying it. The town is just fabulous, much different then the little town of Arezzo that I'm used to. I'll take you through my day, so I can re-live it and hopefully everyone can feel like they were there also!

Got up early to get on a train, met up with a friend, train ride, arrive in Florence, walk around, walk around, BOOM there's the Duomo.  Seriously, you just walk around the corner and there it is.  

So after staring at this huge huge building, being haggled by a gypsy wearing wedge heels, maybe shedding a couple of tears whenever I saw the Baptistery of St. John doors (one of my favorite Renaissance artworks), it was time to grab a cappuccino and pastry. 

We found this really cute cafe right next to Piazza Della Signoria. This was one of the prettiest drinks I've ever had so I needed a picture. The barista gave me a weird look when I took the picture so I said "It's pretty!" then he smiled and straightened his tie, thanking me for calling him pretty! Some people just have the best humor. Haha 

After breakfast it was a trip to see the canal and then off to the leather market to meet up with more friends. All of the vendors kept telling us that for us everything is free. Yeah right. I didn't end up buying anything, but a few people did some price haggling. 

The rest of the afternoon we walked and shopped around. 

Some of our group in front of the Duomo 

Next was to make the climb up to Piazza Michelangelo to see the most beautiful view of the city.  We luckily made it right before sun set! The sightseeing and people watching is pretty great, this brings so many tourists so you get all kinds of people. We were even treated with a small concert going on! A man playing acoustic guitar singing some classic songs, like Elton John and The Beetles, in Italian. I tried singing along, but it didn't work out. 

I could spend all day, everyday here

After walking back down the hill it was dark and time to go back home. We made it to the train station and within 10 minutes we were on a train headed home, seriously the best timing ever. Getting back to Arezzo was the best feeling ever. I love the big city feel of Florence, but it is so nice coming back to a small quite area that I'm familiar with. 

I'll have to post more pictures on facebook later, I think I took around 200! But right now I'm exhausted!    

Ciao and buona notte! 

A Day of Firsts

In a nutshell, today was absolutely crazy busy. It gets its own blog post! So let's start from the beginning:

Today was the first day of classes. This past week we have been blessed with no classes and almost everyone forgot we were here to actually study instead of hanging out and eating delicious food...bummer.

First class of the day was Italian. Our teacher is born and raised from Arezzo so she knows her stuff. We worked mostly on the alphabet and how to pronounce letters....I definitely need to look over that before I go to bed. Right after class I went to grab a cappuccino at Coffee O' Clock! Probably the closet to America tasting coffee you can get here. After being haggled by a traveling salesman for about 5 minutes, I headed out to go to the grocery store.  I thought shopping in America was difficult, try it when everything is in Italian. It consisted of a lot of "I think this is ham?" Thankfully I have my handy pocket dictionary for use.

The biggest difference between grocery stores here is they charge you for plastic bags, so you have to bring your own.  Which is cool for them being eco-friendly, but not if you forget your bag-pack at home :(

After shopping I had another class at 1; Italian Culture through Literature and Cinema. It should be a very interesting class with a LOT of reading. I have to read 15 chapters by next Monday. YIKES!

Since I'm an avid coffee drinker I need to save money on buying it at cafes everyday, so after class I went to the home goods store to buy a moca maker and back to the grocery store for things I forgot. On the way back home I bought my first bottle of wine!

Pinot Grigio from Michalengelo's cafe

After all the grocery shopping I had to rush back to school for a Student Advisor Council (SAC) meeting where we had elections, and I got elected to be secretary! 

The rest of the night consisted of cooking my first actual meal (with the stove and everything), buying my first gelato, and actually doing assigned reading before class! 

Tomorrow should be a pretty adventurous day as well, with more classes, food making, and attempting at learning this language I'm surrounded by. 

I'll leave you with some pictures in the meantime! 

Spinach ravioli with pesto sauce for dinner :)

First gelato! Nutella and a Cream flavor. Super delicious.

Falling in love with the Tuscan sun

Well I made it! Which I'm sure most of you know already.  These past five days have been the most exhausting, yet incredible days ever. So I'll take you day by day to share what I've been up to!

Sunday/Monday

The 8 and a half hour flight wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I got to my seat first (I sat in the middle section on the isle, it was perfect!), shortly after an Italian couple came to sit next to me.  I think they argued for about 5 minutes who was going to sit next to the weird American girl. The husband didn't win the argument, so I got to enjoy a long flight next to strangers who didn't speak a lick of English! I'm pretty sure about 25% of the people on that flight were not Italian. There was even a nun on my flight, so I knew I was okay :) 

I finally arrived in Rome, well really a half-hour outside of Rome. I got my bag just fine, and passport control wasn't as near bad as I thought it would be.  After that I was walking to the exit and saw the most beautiful thing, an OU in Arezzo staff member holding an OU sign. It was the most relieving thing yet. Since I was 1 of 5 early arrivals I didn't have to wait at all to make the drive to Arezzo! Around 2 hours later we arrived in my new home. Getting there was interesting, but that's for another story. 

The rest of the day consisted of finding wifi, finding an ATM, and finding food.  All of which I did on the street I live on, Corso Italia! 

Tuesday

In the morning a staff member came to our apartment to basically teach us how things work, nothing much different then normal apartments.  Afterwards a couple of my roommates and I walked around town and ran into someone in our program! We found a grocery store (the wrong one and more expensive one) and we loved it when they started playing Bruno Mars and Coldplay music! 

Later that afternoon we met up with our group to do a walking tour of Arezzo.  Kaydee, the Resident Advisor, showed us all around the town and we went to see the most amazing view of the city. I'll post pictures later :) The tour ended in our study center, where all of our classes are held.  The place is so pretty and it's just for us! For dinner, Lucio, one of the staff members cooked us his famous ragu dishes! Then we were off for our very first gelato! I didn't buy any myself, but one of the girls couldn't finish hers so free gelato for me! It was pistachio :)

Wednesday/Thursday

These days were full of orientations/filling out paperwork/more orientation sessions/more filling out paperwork 

But on Wednesday we had our welcome dinner at Antica Fonte Restaurant. It. was. delicious. Seriously one of the best meals ever. I could go back there and have a full meal with just the bruschetta.

Friday

This brings us up to today! In the morning we had our first Getting to Know Arezzo class where we went around the town to find places to buy meat, cheese, bread, chocolate, and then finally to the grocery store. We learned that you have to wear a plastic glove to handle the fruit, you cannot touch the fruit in the grocery store with bare hands! Afterwards we toured around the UNISI campus which is the local college in Arezzo. We can use their library to study in and eat in their cafeteria :)

Tonight we are doing a Faculty-in-Residence Progressive Dinner! 

I hope to post more then just once a week since there's so much going on! Stay tuned for pictures of my apartment/town!

Ciao! 

Is this really happening?!??

I cannot believe it. I only have less then four days left in the States until May! All of my deadlines, applications, reservations will finally be put into use.

Everyone keeps asking me how I feel, and honestly I think I'm feeling every single emotion possible at the same exact time.  Whenever I look at pictures of my apartment or of my town I get excited.  Whenever I start to think of packing I get flustered.  Whenever I have to say goodbye to friends I get extremely sad. Everything is just so overwhelming, but fantastic at the same time.  So far I've gotten so much out of this experience and I'm not even there yet!

These next few days bring more frustrating attempts at packing (or just looking at my suitcase), some of the hardest goodbyes, and every single appointment I could squeeze in. This will probably be my last post until I'm in Italy (unless I get bored at my layover in Philly).

Please please please send thoughts and prayers for my safe travels!!!