Firenze

Ciao!

A lot has happened to me and my first week in Italy has been pretty hectic. So here is all of it in a nut shell.

I have been so busy adjusting and enjoying exploring. I have gone all around Florence and can't get enough. Everything here is so different and exciting. I live with 5 people, 3 UCONN kids and Joe (my buddy from PSU) and I. The UCONN kids are so cool, we all get along real well. Its just a blast here. Everyone lives in apartments scattered around town and all the places are pretty similar. We are on a ground floor and have a sick porch where we eat all of our meals and hang out.

I am taking Italian 1 and History of Rome. Both classes are so interesting and I am so eager to learn Italian. When I get back to PSU I am going to take Italian now instead of Spanish. You never appreciate a language until you travel and are thrown into the culture. Fun little fact, everyday on the way to my school I walk by the Duomo which is just amazing. I can't believe I am living here and I am taking nothing for granted.

We have been exploring during the days (and I have a friend Jess from FSU who was in Florence all of 2008 and is back for this summer so she is showing me the city and explaining all the history. It is so neat). Food here is so fresh, I can't get enough of it. CAPRESE IS AMAZING!!!!

All of my roomates and I have nicknames. We call them Phelps and Louis and Clark. Phelps cause he looks like him and Louis and Clark because they are always off on an adventure or lost ha. Joe is Richard Simmons (don't really know why) and I'm Lucky. Then we have these guys who live close to us, 7 guys, that we normally go out with and hit up the town with at night. The girls who live directly above us are from UCONN and are so nice. They made us all dinner one night, like a family dinner, and they are like our closest girl friends. The girl Krista, the one I road the double bike with is so cool and speaks Italian so she helps me and my roomate Phelps in our Italian class.

The clubs here that we go to are crazy like out of a movie. This one club, Space, is straight up out of a movie. You walk in and there is a huge bar with a huge fish tank under it and like stadium seating on the side. Then on the second floor its a crazy dance floor that I can't explain I'll have to take a picture and they have like another floor where you can go and dance and be seen over everyone (prob doesn't make sense, I'll take a pic). We went to a club called Yap, which was really nice. Sick bar, crazy dance floor with kids who like go there and break dance and battle, very cool BUT so expensive and I kinda got in a fight because they tried to over charge me because I was American. I called the women a gypsy and don't think I'll ever go back ha. AND don't think it was just me picking a fight because everyone else there who was in the program all got played as well.


My school is real cool, it is like an old building where a rich family used to live and our classrooms are just like in their rooms (I'll have to take pictures).
Everyone is so nice who works for the program and I always joke around with the receptionists and they all know me.

On Wed and Thurs, I was sick like a dog with the FLU! It was so rough being sick and going to class but I bought meds here and they seem to be working. And what is cool here is you can buy prescription drugs here without a prescription, so you get good stuff .

Friday my roomates and I and our like close friends went to Pisa (through the school). The leaning tower of Pisa is amazing, honestly something you need to see to truly appreciate how special it is. We also went through some churches... they had amazing art work, just amazing.

After Pisa we went to a small town called Lucca. Lucca is real cool because it has a high wall that goes around the city. That is where we rented bikes and we went around the whole city on them which took like 30 minutes. The views were so nice and it was a fun time. I was going to ride the double bike with Joe but he got scared so Krista jumped on. I was popping wheely's and she was freaking out haha.

So my week has been exploring, sick, and trip. I'm sorry I haven’t updated sooner and that it is all over the place... I just used an e-mail I sent family for this. I will update it sooner and give better details from here on out.