A day full of drizzles.

January 11, 2011

Last night I guess it poured so today was pretty gloomy and it was drizzling on and off all day. We had to go to school for our second day of orientation, and once we got there we realized there lists of names on different doors to split the students up into smaller groups. We came to the main room to read those names and all of my roommates names were on the list except for mine and Claire’s. The next room Claire found her name, but still my name wasn’t posted. Finally the 3^rd and last room had my name on it and I found myself in a room full of architecture students who all knew each other and were connected at the hip – not so welcoming. I never thought I would be so happy to see my one roommate Jackie from the other side of the apartment walk in the room like almost exactly at the last minute before class started.

The teacher that we had (I’m not even sure she told us her name) spoke very little English and immediately made us start learning Italian. After a while of the Italian lesson she gave us a short break and took my group to the library which is actually like a hangout for many kids both at the high school and college level. They had many floors to the library and the very top was like an open area with a roof and you could see roofs of buildings and the hills in the distance and it was extremely pretty! We got an application for a library card and I think it would be something cool to get even if I don’t use it, because it could be like a memorabilia type thing. After the library she took us to this huge supermarket called Billa, but I swear it seemed like it was way in the boondocks! And all of a sudden me and Jackie realized that our teacher just left us there so her and I luckily found our way back to the apartment and just laid around for the rest of the day.

For dinner we cooked up some of the peppers and onions I bought with some olive oil and pasta and the girls were highly impressed with my skillet skills because I can flip the vegetables and whatnot. We decided that our dinner was so delicious that we deserved a dessert so we went out to this one little shop and Danielle and Marissa got their first cannoli and I got a big waffle with chocolate drizzled on the top…YUM!

My roommates accidentally bought carbonated water, so they shake them
and leave them out all night hoping they de-fizz.

The view from the top of the library.

A different view from the top of the library.

Marissa and Danielle got their first cannolis and Lauren got tiramisu!

Kebabs!

January 10, 2011

Today was the first day of orientation at the school and we were first welcomed by the dean of the school Marcello Fantoni (who I must say is a pretty awesome guy and all of the girls would love to marry him if he weren’t married and like 55). After Marcello talked for a while we had to begin the process of filling out our home stay permits. Everyone who lives in Florence must fill out a stay permit and if anyone were to spend the night in our apartment it would be against the law because they wouldn’t have a stay permit for our apartment – it’s pretty serious stuff.

We had a break for lunch and I got my first Kebab and it was out of this world! It was like a huge pita that the guy cooked and then he brought it out, put fresh clumps of cheese on it and shaved pieces of chicken off of this huge rotating hunk of meat (all the girls claim it was lamb but I swear the guy said it was chicken). He put it back into the oven and then brought it out and put lettuce and a yogurt sauce on top. I always thought you were supposed to eat Kebabs rolled up but he cut mine like a pizza for me and I could have probably ate the whole thing, but I saved two pieces. After I got my Kebab and everyone else had lunch we went to the market – and I must saw walking around with food in a pizza box is a bad idea because I got harassed by so many vendors asking me for a slice. At the market I bought red and yellow peppers, onions, and potatoes which combined only cost me less than 5 euro and it filled an entire plastic shopping bag.

We had to go back to the school to meet with our housing people and they re-went over different things inside of our apartments and whatnot. Italy highly stresses energy conservation so fuses blow extremely easily if say too many lights are turned on or if the stove and washing machine are both in use. Also the have heat regulations on how warm each person’s heating elements can be in their household and literally the heat won’t go up any higher even if you try to turn the dial yourself. We also got talked to by a police officer on different ways to stay safe in the city and he gave really helpful pointers that I wouldn’t have ever thought about – like if you’re wearing a backpack to class someone can easily open one of your small outer pockets without you knowing, so I carry my book bag with all of the zippers toward my back. The school had a reception with mini sandwiches and fruit, so me and my roommates filled up on the free food and then headed to a gelato shop to use their free Wi-Fi because there still is no internet in our apartment. I got chocolate chip (in Italian it’s some crazy s word) and tiramisu gelato and finally got to Skype mom! We came back from the gelato shop and sat in the family room and watched Lauren’s season one DVD’s of Modern Family with a little wine, and went to bed.

My lesson about Sundays is learned.

January 9, 2011

My roommates and I woke up early to start our adventure off to go find towels, because we had a hard time finding any and I had been drying off with a t-shirt after I showered. We looked in this book that our landlords left for us which has tons of information about Florence in it and found a department store called Upim which was supposively huge and cheap and about a half hour walk. We started our journey there and walking down the cobble streets I stepped in something squishy and looked at my shoe...yep I stepped in dog crap! But there isn't grass like anywhere so I tried scraping as much off as I could, but all of a sudden we got to this huge arch that had grass near it and could finally wipe it off! But practically half of the people you see walking the streets have dogs, and they're mainly small dogs with short stubby legs. Anyways as we walked the streets we saw that not very many stores were open and after walking 30 minutes to get to Upim it was definitely closed. I guess stores normally aren't open on Sundays, and if they do open it isn't until later in the afternoon/evening. Thankfully we passed this store on our way back that I was able to buy a towel and two hand towels. We also were extremely hungry as we were walking back and right down our street we discovered this small precious gem that has paninis and different dinner specials. I ordered a panini that had roast beef cutlets on it with lettuce and tomato - it was so good and so cheap! We decided it would be a good idea to find the school, but we couldn't find the name of our school's street on the map and ended up in this awesome piazza with tons of statues (including the fake statue of the David) and saw a couple Kent students who pointed us in the right direction. My one friend Claire has a best friend Nick that came with us and he took us to this awesome restaurant called El Gato E Il Volpe (the cat and fox) and it was the most amazing food in the entire world! I got tortellini con creme e proscuitto (ham and cheese) - I literally couldn't finish it because it was so rich and delicious! Afterward Nick also took us to his favorite gelato shop - Gelateria Dei Neri (which has now become all of our favorite gelato shop!). I was so stuffed though that I only got a little cone with caffe gelato for 50 cents and I said to the man behind the counter "come se dice" (meaning how do you say) and pointed to the little cones and he looked at me, giggled and said "uhh mini cone?" It was a great ending to a day that started off a little on the rough side!

This cool arch on the way to Upim. (also the grass I wiped my poopy shoe in)

Converse shoe ads in Italy?

My dish tortellini dish at El Gato e El Volpe (Cat and Fox)

Time to Explore!

January 8, 2011

It is our first full day in the city! We live extremely close to the biggest open market in Florence called Mercato Centrale and we went to go buy fruits and vegetables and realized we were kinda in deeper than our heads. The market ended up being kinda intimidating because at some stands you can't touch their produce, you just have to tell them how much you want, and they weigh things in kg and we had no clue how much a kg was? But we just threw ourselves into it and the people can see that we are obviously American and they helped us out. I bought a few apples and carrots and then we went inside and discovered the butchers and bread shops...it's awesome! Although a little gross when you see pigs heads and hooves and rabbits legs tied up, and yeah. But we ended up figuring some things out and bought enough to get us established. We threw our things back into the apartment and went off exploring. We also live extremely close to the Duomo which is a well established catholic cathedral. The first time seeing it I got the goosebumps..it was so incredibly beautiful! It's also so extremely hard to take pictures of the Duomo because it's so gigantic and it seems like you can never get the whole thing in! But after taking pictures and just gazing we walked on and found a 99 cent store which are found ALL OVER! And have become my best friend. We also see gelaterias on every single street and we stopped at this one called Very Good, and had a little bit of miscommunication. We thought the woman said the price was 2 euro for a cone we agreed and each got a cone - I got half tiramisu and half caffe (coffee). We took our cones up to the register and the woman told us that it was 8 euro...apparently she thought we were asking how many scoops you got? But whatever, it was still good and I would never complain about eating gelato! As we walked the streets we realized that literally all the streets lead to the same place if you walk enough. The maps of the city look like a huge maze, but everything connects to everything, and it's really quite refreshing knowing that it's hard to get lost if everything can lead to the somewhere you're familiar with. Two things I giggled at while walking down the street: this one kid had a HUGE rattail, and I also could have sworn I saw a boy I know from Kent (Tyler Sells) and had to take a double-take to make sure it wasn't him. It was quite a fun, but exhausting day and came back to the apartment to make our first dinner: spaghetti! Our apartment was supplied with a jar of marinara and spaghetti noodles so we cooked some up and I had bought orange Fanta (the Fanta here had a more orange juice taste, rather than sugary like in the States) earlier in the day and it with dinner, along with my fresh bread - D-ELICIOUS.

This cute Christmas tree with red bows by the Duomo.

The big Piazza by the Duomo.

Danielle, Marissa, and Lauren in front of the Duomo.

More Duomo!

Margherita Pizza & Red Wine

My first plane ride!

How awesome is it waking up to this?

Margherita Pizza and Red Wine!

The pretty lights down our street!

January 7, 2011

So we have officially landed in Italy! We were thrown into a taxi and had the craziest drive ever to our apartment...they have these large streets with no lines and the cars basically drive wherever they want, I literally thought I was going to die before I got to see the city! haha. And there was a drunk old guy walking in the street and our cab driver rolled down his window and yelled something to him. We got to our apartment and luckily we only had to walk up one flight of stairs because all of the girls had at least two suitcases. But we walked in and our apartment is HUGE! It's so nice! It is like a long hallway with all of the rooms off of the hallway. There are 3 bedrooms (one single and two doubles), 3 bathrooms (2 with showers and bidets!), a large kitchen, a family room, and a large room which is like an entrance room. I was told I have 4 roommates, but technically we have two more because when you walk in our apartment there is a door to the right and a door to the left and on the right is the other apartment which has a kitchen, bedroom and bathroom. However, their toilet doesn't work so they have to come over to our side to go to the bathroom, so basically 7 girls live in one big apartment: Jackie and Sarah live on the one side, and Marissa, Danielle, Lauren, Claire, and I live on the other side. Claire and Lauren played rock, paper, scissors to determine who got the single, and then once Claire won we put the final 4 names into a hat and the first two drawn would room together in the room with the balcony off of it....and me and Marissa's names were pulled! We all tried to unpack but realized we were STARVING! Our landlords came to explain the apartment briefly and described a few pizzerias we could go to for a good dinner. We ended up going to this cute little restaurant and ordered the most classic thing: Margherita pizza and red wine. The pizza came out and was enormous...I swear it was the size of a large pizza and you better believe I ate every single bite of it! We all went home and realized that two of our toilets didn't work, but I was able to take a shower before heading to bed. However, the showers are like 2x2 cubes and I hit my elbows just shampooing my hair! When me and Marissa got settled down and laid in bed we both cracked up laughing because we went to lay our heads down and our pillows are like air! Literally your head sinks right down to the mattress, but it didn't even matter, sleep never felt so good!

First flight...success!

My very first flight from Detroit to Paris is a total success! I feel completely fine and thought the plane was pretty sweet! I sat next to a boy named Neil who had never flown before either, so our adventure was quite fun! I had a window seat and will hopefully be able to post a few pictures later when I get settled and find my camera cord. I didn't really sleep a whole lot on the plane, but still feel rested enough to function for now, but I reeeek and would love to shower. haha. I started watching The Social Network and Inception on the plane, but for some reason I was too tired to follow them, so I ended up falling asleep to one of my favorites, Charlie's Angels. We had dinner and breakfast on the plane, which actually was pretty good! I chose to have Beef Bourguignon with fettuccine pasta and 7up for dinner and it came with acini di pepe pasta salad with smoked salmon, cheese, vanilla pudding, banana-chocolate cake! Then for breakfast we got a mixed fruit cup and a chocolate chip muffin and orange juice. I officially am no longer scared of airport security, it's really not that big of a deal if you just watch and do what everyone else does...I'm pretty sure I'll be a pro at this whole airport thing by the time I come back! I think that's all for now from Paris, and hopefully blog about plane ride #2 once I arrive in our apartment in Florence! :D

The time is almost here!

I can't believe it is already January 5th! Where has the time gone?! I never thought I would be ready to head off tomorrow, but if I'm not ready now then I'll never be ready! I spent practically all day long packing my stuff, because yes, I waited until the last second to pack. However, I got everything to fit into one suitcase, my bookbag, and my purse...that's a little unbelievable if you know me :] My flight will depart from Detroit tomorrow around 9:00 p.m., the flight will be about 8 hours and we will land in Paris, then take a smaller flight from Paris to Florence which should bring us into Florence in the evening on January 7th. So, if everything goes well, I'll be blogging two nights from now in Italy!

Days til I leave: 1!