Buonasera,

It's been almost a week since I blogged so I have a lot to catch all of you up on :)

The week was pretty uneventful, just had my classes and some homework to do.  One of my classes was cancelled since we're going to have a longer field trip time in April.  We learned all about Fiesole, which is the countryside right outside of Florence.  We will go there on our field trip. It's supposed to be beautiful and it was one of the Etruscans first colonies back in the ancient times.  I'm really excited to go there; it's supposed to be awesome at sunset.  This week I also signed up for a soccer tournament and we play during the week.  I'm excited to play soccer again, although I didn't bring my cleats with me! I also signed up for volunteer activities.  I signed up for helping out with preschoolers or helping high school students with their english.  Hopefully the schools schedule matches up with mine and I can do one of the activities.  I was debating on buying a gym membership this past week.  It's about 200€ for a semester.  I would love to go to a gym but I just don't think I'll have time to get my money's worth out of it.  I should start running again, but I do walk around a lot.

This Friday, we took a school trip to Chianti.  I wasn't sure what to expect, I knew it was an Italian countryside.  It was so beautiful and quaint.  Our first stop was the Trebbio castle.  We got a tour throughout some of the rooms and the wine cellar.  The tour guide was great, she told us about how the castle originally belonged to the Pazzi family, who competed closely with the Medici family for popularity and wealth.  The Pazzi family decided they wanted to kill the two Medici brothers, and asked the Pope for help.  The Pope agreed and gave the Pazzi family an army.  They succeeded in killing one of the brothers on Easter in a church, but Lorenzo Medici escaped.  He then plotted and succeeded in killing off the whole entire Pazzi family.  The Medici Family took over the Trebbio castle and only left two of the Pazzi family crests on the walls since Davinci had created them.  The castle was huge, about 43 rooms, but we were only allowed to see a few.  There is a family who looks after the castle that lives there now.  After the tour, we had an awesome lunch and wine tasting.  Chianti is famous for their red wine, and vineyards can only call their wine Chianti if it is made in the Chianti area, and only if they use a certain type of grape.  It was interesting to learn that if a wine is older, the droplets will fall slower down the side of the glass after swirling it around, than a new wine would fall. The first two wines were good.  The dessert wine was gross.  It's apparently a tradition to eat biscotti with the dessert wine and dip it into the dessert wine.  I just liked the biscotti on it's own.  We then got to walk around the area and take pictures.  I was incredibly bus sick on the way back so after I got home I had to buy these stabilizing bracelets and medicine for the next day trip!

On Saturday, we went on another school trip to Siena and San Gimignano.  I wasn't bus sick, so that was a plus.  We got to Siena first, and it was a gorgeous day.  It was sunny and warm and perfect for walking around.  In Siena, we went to the cathedral and it was so pretty.  It's a lot smaller than the duomo here in Florence, but it is a little more detailed inside.  Everything was covered in beautiful paintings, or tiles.  It was really cool to see how intricate every picture was.  We were able to see the baptistry also, and climb up to the top of one museum to see all of Siena.  We got lunch in Siena at a great pasta place with a bunch of our friends, and then we were off to San Gimignano.  San Gimignano was a lot smaller of a city than Siena.  It was soooo small but really cute.  It was cool but I don't think there were that many locals walking around, we only saw tourists.  We got to walk around, and see the little church they had there.  They have walls surrounding the city from medieval times, since the walls were a form of protection from attacks.  We could have walked around the city in just an hour or two.  After we saw the church, we climbed up to the fortress and just sat down and enjoyed the sun and the view.  It was nice to relax for a while.

And finally today, was maybe one of my favorite days in Florence so far.  We woke up and wanted to go to the American Diner for pancakes! Italians don't eat any pancakes or waffles for breakfast; they just eat croissants and donuts and pastries.  We got to the diner and it was a long wait, so we decided instead to go to our favorite pizza place - Gustopizza.  We grabbed it to go and ate outside on the stairs of a church because it was so warm out today (I got sunburn...) We were trying to see the boboli gardens at Palazzo Pitti, and they close early so we wanted to eat as quickly as possible.  We finally got to see the gardens after our first two failed visits! I guess third time really is the charm.  The gardens were very pretty, and on a hill so we did a lot of climbing.  We climbed to the top and could see a great view of Florence.  We had no idea the gardens were so huge... we will have to go back another day to see the rest of the gardens we didn't see today.  We ended up even going to another section of the gardens called the bardini gardens.  There we could also see more awesome views of the city.  We will have to go back into the gardens in springtime when all the flowers have bloomed.  When walking around these gardens we heard music and saw all these people, and realized they were on piazzale Michelangelo.  We decided to walk up there, and see more beautiful views of the whole city.  The Piazzale is free and anyone can go and stand up in the big square.  The fake David (Michelangelo's famous statue) is up there, and doesn't even compare to the real one.  There was a lady singing and we ended up grabbing a drink and listening to a free concert for about an hour.  She was singing english songs too! It was so awesome to see the view of the city from there.  Then we went home and now we're just doing some homework and relaxing.  It was a great day.


Upcoming Plans:

This weekend (Feb 1-3): Opera on Friday, Venice Carnivale on Saturday, and possibly Pisa on Sunday!!

Next weekend (Feb 7-10): We have officially booked Interlaken!!! So excited for the Alps!! I'm thinking about ice skating, Zurich day trip, maybe trying skiing, and definitely the chocolate show. :)  I just have to figure out how to rent all the snow gear I'm going to need!

Feb 15-17: Paris!! We officially booked our hostel.  It's a little far away but we can just take the metro in.  It looks nice and it's in our price range!!

Ciao!!! I miss you all!