Getting to Firenze!

PREFACE:

Okay, so  1. Prepare for a few posts, because I have been writing, they just haven’t gone up due to the terribly uncooperative internet in my apartment.

2. If you’ve ever heard me tell a story before, I generally tell way too many details just end up taking forever, so my writing stories may not be too much better -- I apologize in advance.

Day 1 and 2(ish?) 

After going to bed late, waking up early, running to CVS, finishing packing, driving to Dad’s office and getting my (just fixed) computer from Costa Mesa -- I finally got to the airport and was on my way to Florence. The ten-ish hour flight actually wasn’t too bad! I had a window seat, and read The Scarlet Pimpernel (which, if you were wondering, is an awesome book. . . and awesome movie with Leslie Howard too), watched “It’s Complicated,” read the Italy materials I had been given and then tried (unsuccessfully) to read one of my school books -- but by that point I was too tired to focus.  I have an extremely hard time sleeping on planes, and because Florence is nine hours ahead, I basically lost a nights worth of sleep.  By the time we got to Frankfurt, all I wanted to do was lay down and sleep.  Also -- it was the weirdest thing, but it never got dark outside when we were on the plane -- it was like we were running away from the night or chasing the day or something.  Anyways, I then took the plane to Florence, got my bag (luckily not lost!) and shared a taxi with a couple of girls from the program.  At that point it was around 3:30pm Florence time, so around 6:30 AM United States time.  Exhaustion doesn’t even begin to cover how I felt at that moment -- but we got to the apartments, which are actually fairly nice (although up three flights of stone stairs. . . I am going to have legs of steel by the end of this trip) 

Here’s my street.  There is a surprising amount of graffiti everywhere, but it’s a nice block. To one side is the Mercato Centrale and the other is San Lorenzo (which is a fairly big church...well, compared to churches at home)

The living room:

The Kitchen -- don’t let it fool you, it looks nice, but the drawers are mostly broken.

The other side of the kitchen with the washing machine and table

My Room -- desk and such

My side of the room -- I’m in a double

I love the bright colors. It’s rather funny, because all of the furniture and such are all from Ikea.  My bedside lamp is the same as my desk lamp at school.  I am in a double, and luckily my room mate karma has held strong and I got a very good roommate.  After dropping stuff off, we went with the professor to the cell phone store and then to the supermercato to get some groceries (I definitely wasn’t up to going out for dinner or breakfast).  Then I came home and made my first Italian meal, which was pasta and carrots with pesto and a roll, which was easy and pretty delicious.  The roll especially was AMAZING. Italians definitely know their food! 

After that I finished unpacking and slept for about 12ish hours. =)